The difference in language use among social classes

8/12/2019 The difference in language use among social classes

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Paper 1 Outline

Thesis: There is variation in language use between different social classes, but it is

manifested in various ways. Moreover, the variation is a result of difference

in exposure to higher codes of different social classes.

Supporting Statements

1. There is contrast in language use among social classes in various societies and

societies differ in how social class difference is manifested through variation in

language use.

a. Bernstein mentions that middle-class children and working class children

have different use of elaborated and restricted codes.

b. English is viewed as a language with a high social and instrumental valueamong students. In addition, Middle class students in Hong Kong tend to

favor the use of English while working class favour the use of Cantonese

during post-colonial times.

2. People who belong to higher social classes are able to produce higher codes dueto more exposure to that code than lower social classes.

a. Middle-class children have relatively longer exposure and can have more

access to the elaborated code than working class children.

b. Elite middle-class students in Hong Kong are socially closer to Englishspeaking groups and their culture than working class students.

Examples

1a. A middle class child used elaborated codes when telling a story while a working

class child used restricted code. (Bernstein, 1971). Also, a group of middle class

teenagers scored significantly higher on the Mill-Hill vocabulary scale than working

class teenagers. (Bernstein, 1960)

1b. The governments decision to implement a policy encouraging the use of mothertongue as the medium of instruction in secondary schools is met with strong

resistance as mastering English positions oneself for personal advancement. (Chan,

2002) Furthermore, a survey indicates that the postcolonial generation of students

regards English as a language with high instrumental and social value. (Lai 2005)

Middle class elite students are more inclined to use English while working class

students are inclined to use the vernacular Cantonese. (Lai, 2001)


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2a. The reason why middle-class children are better at elaborated code is because

they are exposed to elaborated code in the family from an early age (Haliday, 1995)

and they have more access to elaborated code. (Bernstein, 1971)

2b. Elite middle class secondary school students in Hong Kong are culturally and

socially closer to English speaking groups and their culture. (Lee, 2001) Parents of

students in the 2 most prestigious universities in Hong Kong have higher education

levels and higher household incomes (Siu, 1988). A lot of students who faced

difficulty with programmes taught in English come from ill-resourced private

schools and most of them have lower socio-economic backgrounds (Yu and

Atkinson, 1988)


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The difference in language use among social classes

Does difference in language use indicate a difference in social class? Despite

this seemingly being an intuitive notion, it is interesting to think why people

belonging to different social classes speaking the same language would use

language differently. Stalin, in Marxism and Problems of Linguistics, said thefollowing:

It has been said above that language, as a means of intercoursebetween the people of a society, serves all classes of

society equally, and in this respect displays what may becalled an indifference to classes. But people, the various social

groups, the classes, are far from being indifferent tolanguage. They strive to utilize the language in their owninterests, to impose their own special lingo, their own specialterms, their own special expressions upon it. The upper strataof the propertied classes, who have divorced themselves from

and detest the people

the aristocratic nobility, the upperstrata of the bourgeoisieparticularly distinguish themselvesin this respect.

Here, Stalin provides a motive for people, especially for those who belong in the

upper echelons, to distinguish themselves from those who belong to a socio-

economically lower group. Whether this empirically true or not is difficult to

determine, yet besides the reason behind the variation in language use, the focus of

this essay is to explore whether or not different societies exemplify difference in

social classes via variation in language use and how is it exemplified.

First, let us find out how social classes are distinguished through the use oflanguage in different societies. In his paper Social class, language and socialization

(1971), Bernstein gave an example that featured two children (one from the middle-

class and one from the working-class) telling a story from a series of pictures that

depicted a group of boys playing football. The child from the middle-class used

decontextualized language (elaborated code) when he told the story while the

working-class child used heavily exophoric constructions (restricted code).

Bernstein concluded that the context of story telling triggered the use of elaborated

code in the middle-class child but not in the working-class child, hence there was a

restriction in the use of elaborated code for the working-class child, as the child had

difficulty managing the role relationships which such contexts require. (Bernstein,

1971). It should be noted that Bernstein did not make explicit the definitions ofmiddle-class and working-class. However, he did so in an earlier paper, Language

and Social Class(1960). This paper featured a study he did comparing non-verbal

intelligence test scores and scores on the Mill-Hill vocabulary test of a group of

middle-class teenagers and a group of working-class teenagers. There Bernstein

gave a clearer definition for middle-class and working-class. The 61 subjects he

chose for the working-class group attended a day release college once a week andhad never been educated in a grammar school while the 45 subjects in the group


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public schools (representing the middle-class) were all from the 6 major public

schools. The results showed that while the mean scores for both tests were similar

for the public school group, the mean score for the Mill-Hill vocabulary test was

depressed in relation with the mean score of the non-verbal intelligence test. This

implies that middle-class teenagers probably could use decontextualized language

more readily than working-class teenagers as the restricted code requires lessvocabulary due to its heavy use of exophora. The results of this study and

comparison of story-telling of a middle-class child and a working-class child implies

that the difference in the use of language between the middle-class and the working-

class is the relative ease at the command of the relative code.

Let us now look at the situation in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was colonized by

the British Empire from 1841 to 1997. English, being the language used in formal

contexts and in most secondary schools at that time, it is considered to be a

legitimate language. To individuals living in Hong Kong, learning English became a

way to distinguish themselves from one another and the ability to use it across

contexts enables one to advance up the socio-economic ladder. Moreover Englishwas regarded as a cultural capital and a way to distinguish themselves from the

people living in Mainland China. Due to the prestige that English possesses in Hong

Kong, the decision of switching to Cantonese as the medium of instruction for Forms

1 to 3 by the government in 1997 was met by severe resistance. Students actually

cried not being able to learn in English and felt that they had been treated unfairly.

(Chan, 2002). In the postcolonial period, students still regard English highly. In a

survey of 1048 form 4 students from 28 mainstream schools, they generally tended

to agree strongly that they liked English and its speakers, and viewed the language

as a symbol of modernity and westernization. They also agreed, though to a lesser

extent, that speaking English suggested positive attributes such as education,

intelligence, and wealth. Moreover, students agreed virtually unanimously thatEnglish was a highly regarded language in Hong Kong and the language could enable

them to have better opportunities for further studies and career development. (Lai,

2005). In a similar study, 64 middle-class students and 70 working-class students

were surveyed to look at their attitudes towards Cantonese, English and Putonghua.

Among these three languages, English was considered to be the most prestigious

language for both middle-class students and working-class students. They

considered the language useful and believed that it had a superior status in Hong

Kong. Like the subjects of the 2005 study, these students regarded English as the

most important language for their personal and career developments as well as the

development of Hong Kong in the 21stcentury. It should be noted that the subjects

expressed positive attitudes towards Cantonese and Putonghua as well.Notwithstanding, the affection that they had with Cantonese stemmed from the fact

that Cantonese was their mother tongue, and they did not think that Cantonese was

important for their education and careers. This view was more apparent among the

middle-class subjects, since none of them agreed that Cantonese was a useful

language in terms of getting them more career and educational opportunities in the

future. In the case of Putonghua, scarcely any subjects from both classes considered

Putonghua to be an important language, and the reason that they wanted to learn


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the language was mainly to communicate with people from the Mainland or Taiwan.

Apart from their language attitudes, more than half of the middle-class students

expressed that their favorite language is a mixed-code of English and Cantonese, but

only 10% of the working-class students agreed with this. In addition, 44% of the

middle-class subjects agreed that the mixed code best represented the language of

Hong Kong, while only 23% of the working class agreed with this statement (Lai,2001). From the above statistics and evidence, it could be said that the difference of

the frequency of the use of English in everyday speech (with middle-class people

code-mixing English and Cantonese more frequently than working-class people)

exemplifies the difference between the middle-class and the working class.

Comparing the middle-class and working-class of Britain and of Hong Kong,

one could see that although they do not display the same differences in their use of

language (between the two classes), there is a noticeable difference between their

uses of language(s), with one being the readiness of the use of the elaborated code

and one being the frequency of code-mixing. Though it is far from conclusive proof

that the difference among various social classes within the same society isexemplified through the variation in their uses of language, one could expect to see

some discrepancies in the language patterns produced by people from different

social classes.

Let us now go back to the examples and attempt to come up with a reason

behind these discrepancies.

Again, let us set our eyes on Britain once more. Regarding the variation in the

use of the restricted code and elaborated between middle and working classes,

Bernstein suggested that class limits the distribution of the elaborated code,

resulting in the relatively higher accessibility to this code for the middle-class thanfor the working-class. He made a further point suggesting that the division of labour

changes the availability of elaborated codes at the same time. For example, when a

society develops, it is likely that the people within the society will perform

increasingly specified jobs due to the increase in the complexity of the division of

labour(Bernstein, 1971). This increase in specificity prompts more education

opportunities for people as the jobs require perhaps wider or deeper knowledge,

enabling those who benefit from the further education to have more access to the

elaborated code. However, people who belong to the working-class may not be able

to afford further education, and therefore will not have this access. Thus class limits

the access to elaborated codes while division of labour provides people with more

opportunities to get in contact with elaborated codes. Moreover, middle-classchildren is likely to have more elaborated-code linguistic inputs from a very young

age. For example, when a child annoys his parents by blowing a whistle, working-

class parents might use the utterance Shut up! to convey their annoyance andauthority, the latter being made explicit, with much fragmentation and an emphasis

on the present context, whereas middle-class parents might likely use the utterance,

Id rather you made less noise with your whistle, darling. which is an elaborated

alternative to the former with an implicit expression of authority and also an explicit


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description of the childs personal experience (Haliday, 1995). Generally speaking,

middle-class children have more elaborated linguistic input than working-class

children do, and they also have more access to elaborated codes than the working-

class children do.

In Hong Kong, the situation is similar to that in Britain. It is argued that

middle-class elite students in Hong Kong attain higher English proficiency because

they are socially closer to English-speaking groups (Lai, 2001). In addition, a study

based on a similar argument was done in 1986 to find out the educational levels and

household income of the students of the 2 most prestigious universities in Hong

Kong, and the results showed that the educational level of the parents of the

students as well as the household income of them were higher than the average

population (Siu, 1998). During that time, better education usually meant better

English as the language was pervasively used as the medium of construction in most

secondary schools and universities. Conversely, a study about the difficulties that

students faced in English-medium schools showed that a large proportion ofstudents in private schools (that were not prestigious or well resourced) came from

lower income families (Yu and Atkinson, 1988). The above studies suggest that

children from higher income families are in an advantageous position to learn

English, most likely due to the fact that the middle-class are socially closer to the

English-speaking group and the fact that middle-class children are likely receive

more exposure to English at home than working-class students because middle-

class parents are better educated. It is possible that middle-class parents also speak

in an English-Cantonese mixed code as they themselves were possibly exposed to

more English when they received education.

Looking at the situations of both Britain and Hong Kong, it is suggested thatthe difference in the amount of exposure to the highercode (i.e. elaborated code inBritain and English/English-Cantonese mixed-code in Hong Kong) is a possible

explanation to the difference in the use of language among social classes in these

two societies. It appears that middle-class children usually receive more exposure to

the middle-class codes (elaborated codes or English/English-Cantonese mixedcode) than working-class children, especially at home, which is why there is

variation in language use among different social classes within the same society.


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References

Bernstein, B. (1960). Language and social class. The British Journal of Sociology, 11(3),271-276.

Bernstein, B. (1971). Social class, language and socialization. Class, codes and control

(pp. 170-189). London: Routledge and K. Paul.

Chan, E. (2002). Beyond Pedagogy: Language And Identity In Post-colonial Hong

Kong. British Journal of Sociology of Education,23(2), 271-285.

Haliday, M. (1995). Language And The Theory of Codes. Knowledge and pedagogy:

the sociology of Basil Bernstein(pp. 127-143). Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp..

Lai, M. (2001). Hong Kong Students' Attitudes Towards Cantonese, Putonghua And

English After The Change Of Sovereignty.Journal of Multilingual and MulticulturalDevelopment,22(2), 112-133.

Lai, M. (2005). Language Attitudes Of The First Postcolonial Generation In Hong

Kong Secondary Schools. Language in Society, 34(03), 363-388.

Siu, Y. M. (1988). Bilingual Education And Social Class: Some Speculative

Observations In The Hong Kong Context. Comparative Education,24(2), 217-227.

Stalin, J. (1972). Concerning Marxism in Linguistics. Marxism and problems of

linguistics(p. 11). Peking: Foreign Languages Press.

Yu, V. W., & Atkinson, P. A. (1988). An Investigation Of The Language DifficultiesExperienced By Hong Kong Secondary School Students In English medium Schools:

II Some Causal Factors.Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 9(4),

307-322.

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The difference in language use among social classes