Modeling Socioeconomic Class in Variationist Sociolinguistics

Modeling Socioeconomic Class in VariationistSociolinguistics

Robin Dodsworth*North Carolina State University

Abstract

Modeling socioeconomic class has been a persistent challenge in the analysis of sociolinguistic vari-ation. While early stratificational models formulated on the basis of socioeconomic indicators suchas income, occupation, and area of residence revealed compelling patterns of linguistic variation,they were critiqued for their lack of explanatory power at the interactional level and for theirmarginalization of those without paid employment. Subsequent models have employed cross-disciplinary concepts such as the linguistic market, social networks, and communities of practice,prioritizing local social distinctions that are understood to reflect or even constitute abstract struc-tural categories such as ‘working class’ or ‘middle class’. It is argued that a full socioeconomic classparadigm for sociolinguistics would also theorize class at the aggregate level, and to this end,sociological class models may prove useful. Contemporary sociological class analysis at the level ofsocial practice offers additional avenues for interfacing with sociology.

1 Introduction

From the perspective of linguistic variation, social class is strangely elusive. On one hand,its correlation with linguistic variables is so often empirically demonstrated, and thepatterns are so often (apparently) transparent at a glance, that the inclusion of social classvariables in quantitative studies goes unchallenged. On the other hand, although weknow intuitively that social class has to do with economic inequality or its cultural fallout,we are less sure about how to model it. Early sociolinguistic approaches to class, rootedentirely in amalgamated socioeconomic indicators such as income and occupation, havebeen partly supplanted by local social distinctions that are understood to instantiate oreven constitute abstract structural categories such as ‘working class’ or ‘middle class’. Thisshift motivates several questions about the nature of class for the purposes of sociolinguis-tics. Which aspects of material inequality have consequences for – rather than just corre-lating with – linguistic variation, directly or indirectly? How many social classes are there(if a set of discrete classes is even a reasonable model)? Should we rely on ethnography toanswer these questions, or should we posit some kind of supra-community class structure?Is class identity derived from aggregate class structure, or does it constitute aggregate classstructure, which then has no independent reality?

With some meaningful exceptions, this uncertainty has resulted in social class beingrepresented in quantitative studies by variables that have more descriptive than analyticalvalue. A set of unified answers to the questions above would equal a class paradigm forsociolinguistics, within which class theories could productively be formulated. This studyfirst and primarily summarizes and discusses past and emerging sociolinguistic approachesto class. It then argues for the value of attending to both economic and cultural factors, aswell as both macro- and micro-level representations, in conceptualizing a sociolinguistic

Language and Linguistics Compass 3/5 (2009): 1314–1327, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00167.x

ª 2009 The AuthorJournal Compilation ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

class paradigm, and briefly discusses the potential benefits of interfacing with sociologicalclass models and analysis.

2 Class Models in Variationist Sociolinguistics

2.1 EARLY MODELS

Foundational work in variationist sociolinguistics modeled class as an economic variablewith discrete categories that facilitated quantitative analysis. Labov’s (1966) study of fivephonological variables in the Lower East Side of New York City used a class model thatclosely followed the model developed in 1961 by the Mobilization for Youth project, afederally funded program intended to address juvenile delinquency in NYC. Class is rep-resented as a 10-category linear scale (Warner and Lunt 1942; Warner et al. 1949) com-bining the three components of education level, family income, and occupational rank.Uniting three class indicators was considered advantageous, both in Labov’s NYC studyand his later Philadelphia studies, on the grounds that it would achieve more consistentresults than any single economic indicator and would simultaneously tap multiple dimen-sions of socioeconomic status (cf. Labov 2001:60). Trudgill (1974) used a similar com-bined-class scale but considered occupation the most important component because,although economic mobility is possible, class identity and the associated behaviors tend toremain constant: ‘even the most affluent manual workers retain the values, ideas, behav-iour patterns and general culture of the working class, and there has been little embour-geoisement of the British working class’ (34). Macaulay (1977) relied to an even greaterextent on occupation, constructing a class scale for Glasgow, Scotland, based only onoccupational rank. This was done for several reasons: occupational data are relatively easyto collect and are not as a sensitive topic as income; the local schools kept records of eachstudent’s father’s occupation; there was no recent demographic survey of Glasgow thatcould serve as the background for constructing a combined-class index; and otherstandard-class indicators, including income and education, correlate strongly withoccupational rank.

In fact, Labov’s (2001; see also Labov 1972a,b) Philadelphia study includes a compari-son of the combined-class index with the individual components of occupation, educa-tion, and house value: which shows the strongest, most consistent correlations with stablesociolinguistic variables? Multiple regression analyses of three stable sociolinguistic vari-ables, with casual and careful speech treated separately, shows occupation to be a muchmore consistent predictor of linguistic variation than education and house value. How-ever, the combined index outperformed any of the individual class indicators. For thatreason, a six-category combined-class index was used in the analysis of linguistic changesin progress.

Remarkably clear patterns of linguistic variation emerged through the use of com-bined-class indices, particularly in cases of ‘stable’ sociolinguistic variables. For example,Labov (1966) found linear class distributions among adults for the variable realization ofthe -ing suffix as velar or alveolar and the stopping of voiced and voiceless interdentalfricatives. Wolfram’s (1969) study of African American English in Detroit, which used afour-category combined-class index (Hollingshead 1975), found a linear pattern forconsonant cluster reduction and nearly linear patterns for the deletion or devoicing ofcoda ⁄d ⁄ and the deletion of coda ⁄ r ⁄ . Many linguistic variables, rather than showing linearclass patterns, show a quantitative distinction between the working class (manual labor)and middle class (non-manual labor), even though these categories are defined somewhat

Modeling Socioeconomic Class in Variationist Sociolinguistics 1315

ª 2009 The Author Language and Linguistics Compass 3/5 (2009): 1314–1327, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00167.xJournal Compilation ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

differently across studies. Labov (2001) found that the older linguistic changes in progressin Philadelphia had reached a working- vs. middle-class distinction. In particular, thefronting of (ae) before voiceless fricatives, nasal consonants, and voiced stops (treated asthree distinct variables) shows no significant differentiation across the lower, middle, andupper working classes, dropping off gradually in the lower middle, upper middle, andupper classes (Labov 2001:168, Table 5.4). Macaulay’s (1977) investigation of phonologi-cal variables in Glasgow used a class scale based only on occupation, in which Classes Iand IIa correspond to the middle class, or non-manual laborers, while classes IIb and IIIcorrespond to working class ⁄manual laborers. The linguistic variables examined are thevowels in hit, book, hat, and now, plus the glottalization of the intervocalic or coda stop inwords such as better and get. All of the variables showed class stratification, with the largestquantitative gap generally found between the middle and working classes.

Another repeated quantitative finding, known as the ‘curvilinear’ pattern (Labov1966:147), is associated with variables undergoing change ‘from below’, meaning belowpublic consciousness. Here the working class, or lower middle class, shows higher rates ofthe non-standard form than both the lower and middle classes except in the most carefulstyle. Labov (2001), in fact, sets out to test the hypothesis that changes from below showthe curvilinear pattern early in their progression, motivated by parallel findings in threeindependent studies: the raising of (oh), (ay), and (aw) in NYC (Labov 1966); the leni-tion of ⁄ ch ⁄ in Panamanian Spanish (Cedergren 1973); and the backing of (e), as in bet,before [l] in Norwich English (Trudgill 1974). The two newest and most vigorouschanges in Philadelphia, the fronting of the (aw) nucleus as in how and the fronting ofthe preconsonantal (ey) nucleus as in take, are led by the upper working class, consistentwith the curvilinear hypothesis. Further evidence for the curvilinear hypothesis is foundin Trudgill (1974), where some linguistic changes from below in Norwich, including thelowering ⁄backing of (e) and the raising and diphthongization of (ae), show evidence ofan upper or middle working class lead.

Evidence for the productivity of the Labovian class model – chiefly economic, cate-gory-based, and usually composite – is geographically wide-ranging, including strong andweak palatalization of stops in Cairene Arabic (Haeri 1996); the diphthongization of sev-eral vowels in Quebecois French (Santerre and Millo 1978); the merger of unstressed midback vowels and the phonemic splitting of a post-alveolar fricative in a northern Russiandialect (Kochetov 2006); and others cited in Kerswill (2007).

2.2 CRITIQUES OF EARLY-CLASS MODELS

The clearest difference between the early economic-class indices and later models is thatthe former generate categories determined by the researcher that do not normally repre-sent locally recognized social groups. The class categories have methodological value, buttheir explanatory power is limited (Milroy 1980:14). Rickford (1986), drawing fromMacaulay’s (1977) justification of occupation as a sole class indicator, similarly argues thata composite-class scale fails on ethnographic grounds, ignoring locally meaningful distinc-tions in socioeconomic (or other types of) status that vary by region and community.Linguistic variation within a community arises not only just from differential access to thestandard language, which is often shaped by economic inequality, but also from the sym-bolic marking of locally recognized social identities.

Rickford argues further that composite-class scales implicitly represent consensualsocioeconomic hierarchy, neglecting ideological differences across groups.1 In contrast,conflict-based class theories (Marx 1906; Weber 1947; sociological class paradigms are

1316 Robin Dodsworth


discussed in Section III) prioritize the antipathy between classes stemming from materialdifferences. For sociolinguistic analysis, this paradigm predicts that members of the lowerclasses may aspire to different linguistic standards than those in the middle and upperclasses, in symbolic pursuit of in-group allegiance, rather than accommodating to upper-class prestige standards.2 A hierarchical class model that ignores this ideological classconflict may produce valid empirical results but fail to engage the social processes thatmotivate them. More generally, Rickford and others [including Ash (2002), Mallinson(2007), Romaine (1984), Williams (1992), and Woolard (1985)] argue for more purpose-ful and reflective incorporation of social theory in sociolinguistic approaches to class. Mil-roy and Milroy (1992:2), referring to the uncritical importation of the traditionalconsensus-driven class model from sociology, observe that ‘although many impressivelyconsistent patterns of variation have emerged from urban sociolinguistic work, an ade-quate social framework within which to interpret the results is still lacking’.

Rickford’s study of grammatical forms in Cane Walk, Guyana, illustrates the explana-tory value of a conflict-based view of class, also showing that lower-class speakers mayperceive that no personal gain will come from using standard linguistic forms because theclass structure is too rigid, and that class distinctions may be usefully identified via com-munity members’ ‘evaluated participation’. Workers in the sugar plantation fields,members of the Estate class, use standard English forms including the first-personpronoun ai with an average frequency of 18%, preferring the basilectal mi. In contrast,members of the Non-Estate class, who tend to be skilled laborers or foremen, use ai withan average frequency of 83%. This dramatic linguistic difference, Rickford contends,results from the rejection of standard English by the Estate class, who have not experi-enced it as a means to upward mobility; they believe socioeconomic improvement willonly be achieved through class struggle rather than accommodation to the standard.

There are several additional well-known and interrelated problems with the early-classindices. First, what justifies the placement of boundaries between classes on the scalethat results from combining income, education, occupation, etc.? Labov essentially treatsthe boundaries as artificial, using multiple class groupings to show sociolinguistic pat-terns. We may instead look for an approach to class that does not require the analysthim ⁄herself to create class boundaries in the absence of community-internal evidence,bearing in mind that this type of ethnographic approach is unrealistic in communities aslarge as NYC, where ‘artificial’ class groupings are useful provided that they are recog-nized as such. Second, the early models – and much recent work – ignore individualmobility. Labov 2001 does include mobility as a function of current occupation andfather’s occupation, but typically, quantitative studies do not indicate the length of timefor which a given individual has occupied or expects to occupy a class category. Third,the classification of women, particularly those without paying jobs, was entirely depen-dent on the classification of their husbands or fathers (Nichols 1983). The problem hereis inherent to the structure of the early-class models; with a near-exclusive focus onproduction rather than consumption (see Labov 1966:138), the class index marginalizesanyone without a paid occupation. Finally, the early-class models defined class in isola-tion from other dimensions of social identity such as gender, ethnicity, and age, andgeographic location.

2.3 LOCAL AND IDENTITY-BASED MODELS

Several alternative approaches to class have emerged that aim to avoid these shortcomings.All of them take the basic perspective that sociolinguists pursuing the socioeconomic



dimensions of linguistic variation are most directly interested not in economic (material)inequality but rather in its social consequences.

2.3.1 The linguistic marketOne theoretically influential alternative was proposed in Sankoff and Laberge (1978).Adopting the notion of the linguistic market from Bourdieu and Boltanski (1975),Sankoff and Laberge contend that grouping speakers according to their positions in apurely economic hierarchy neglects the fact that economic positions carry varyinglinguistic demands. For example, although a secretary in a high-profile firm may notoccupy the upper middle class in terms of income, education, or residence, he ⁄ shemust consistently use standard language as a representative of the firm when talkingto clients.3 A speaker’s use of standard language forms, they argue, should bemeasured directly against the speaker’s need for the standard. In pursuit of that goal,they devised ‘an index which measures specifically how speakers’ economic activity,taken in its widest sense, requires or is necessarily associated with, competence in thelegitimized language (or standard, elite, educated, etc., language)’ (Sankoff and Laberge1978:239).

For 120 Montreal French speakers, eight judges were asked to rate ‘the relative impor-tance of the legitimized language in the socioeconomic life of the speaker’ on the basis oflife histories and the judges’ familiarity with Montreal’s socioeconomic space, therebyassigning each speaker a score on the linguistic market index (241). Three grammaticalvariables were examined: the indefinite plural subject pronoun ils ⁄ on, the auxiliary verbavoir ⁄ etre, and qu’est-ce que ⁄ ce que as the syntactic head for dependent clauses and otherembedded phrases. The speakers who were judged to occupy low positions on the lin-guistic market index, and thus to have little need for standard language forms, also usedlower rates of the standard forms, offering support for the validity of the linguistic marketindex (see also Sankoff et al. 1989).

One of the methodological advantages of the linguistic market approach is that itavoids discrete class categories such as ‘middle’ or ‘working’ class. Yet this may also beseen as a disadvantage in theoretical terms, for two reasons. First, it suggests that the sub-jective socioeconomic space can be modeled as continuous, devoid of clear boundaries.Much of the work cited below focuses on well-defined and symbolically distinct localsocial groups that cannot be seen through the lens of a linguistic market index, even onethat relies on community members’ judgments. Second, it locates only a single type ofvalue that linguistic forms may hold, thereby missing the possible multidimensionality ofeconomic value or social prestige in the community. Addressing this concern, Woolard(1985) contends that the value of linguistic forms across mutually antipathetic social classesrequires the assumption of ‘alternative linguistic markets’. In this view, instead of a singleprestige-based market, the linguistic space consists of multiple conflicting markets associ-ated with different social groups, and a linguistic variant’s multiple values spring from classconflict and the local social space.

Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1999) use a linguistic market perspective to account forLabov’s (1990) finding in Philadelphia that among unskilled workers, women use higherrates of the non-standard (fronter) forms of (ae) and (aw) than men, but among profes-sionals, women use lower rates of the non-standard variables. The same basic patternemerges in Eckert’s (1989, 2000) data from Detroit area high-school speakers’ (uh) back-ing and (ay) raising: middle-class ‘jock’ girls show lower rates of the new, stigmatizedvariants than boys, while the working-class ‘burnout’ girls use higher rates than theburnout boys. They conclude,



Such data suggest an extension of the generalization that women have to do much more thanmen simply to maintain their place in the standard language market. … women may have touse linguistic extremes in order to solidify their place, wherever it may be (195–196).

Finally, Eckert (2000) relies on the linguistic market concept in explaining the curvilinearpattern described above, arguing that ‘the lower middle class constitutes the bufferbetween the opposed linguistic markets, demonstrating a tension between participation inthe standard and the vernacular markets’ (26). Conscious of this ‘buffer’ status and alsotheir tendency toward working-class roots, members of the lower middle class are linguis-tically insecure. The linguistic market has thus been conceptually influential in the mod-eling of class, though the type of index in Sankoff and Laberge (1978) has not beenwidely replicated.

2.3.2 Life-modes and social networksOther alternatives to the early-class models are even less directly linked to purely eco-nomic facts, relying more on local social dynamics. A promising but under-utilized andnever fully developed approach is described by Milroy and Milroy (1992; see also Lane1998, 2000), who argue that an adequate model of sociolinguistic variation would linksocial class with information about the density and multiplexity of social networks. Theypropose, for example, that the curvilinear pattern, in which the middle socioeconomicgroups lead linguistic changes from below, is explicable in terms of network structure:both the lower and upper classes tend to have the most dense and multiplex social net-works, which stifle linguistic change among their members.4 More generally, Milroy andMilroy (1992:16) argue that the demonstrated correlations between network type andsocial class

…suggest a route for constructing a two-level sociolinguistic theory, linking small-scale struc-tures such as networks, in which individuals are embedded and act purposively in their dailylives, with larger scale and more abstract social structures (classes) that determine relationships ofpower at the institutional level.

This perspective identifies both a level of social structure in which actions are meaningful,and an ‘abstract’ level at which social classes are located. Economic classes exist but onlyindirectly guide linguistic choices. To link network and class, Milroy and Milroy positthe anthropologist Thomas Højrup’s (1983) concept of ‘life-mode’. Højrup recognizedthree life-modes in western Europe, each resulting from the macroeconomic structureand defined partly in opposition to the others. Life-mode 1 describes those self-employedin family businesses, where strong and multiplex network ties are essential to economicsuccess. Life-mode 2 is that of unskilled or low-skilled wage earners – the working orlower middle class, using traditional terms, where economic insecurity breeds class soli-darity and, by extension, dense and multiplex networks. People occupying life-mode 3are highly skilled wage earners, likely to have some managerial functions and possessconsiderable career ambition; their individualism and geographic mobility result in loose-knit networks that do not impede linguistic change.

This approach moves beyond previous class models in sociolinguistics by, first, positingtwo distinct social levels at which something like ‘class’ operates, and second, offeringspecific empirical methods for identifying class membership at the individual level.Nevertheless, it is not a complete model – nor do the Milroys claim it is – because itleaves class at the aggregate level underspecified. Højrup’s three life-modes link networktype to economic facts, but the Milroys make few claims about the nature of what theycall ‘abstract social structures (classes) that determine relationships of power at the



institutional level’. Further, the modeling of class with respect to network types has notadvanced in sociolinguistics because very few subsequent studies have provided quantita-tive network data.

2.3.3 Communities of practiceThe community of practice concept (Wenger 1998) has been used similarly in attemptsto articulate class at the level of the individual and the local group (Eckert 2000; Meyer-hoff 2002). Communities of practice are social groups with regular interaction, a jointenterprise, and shared communicative and symbolic norms. They are linked to class struc-tures in as much as

people’s access and exposure to, need for, and interest in different communities of practice arerelated to where they find themselves in the world, as embodied in such things as class, age,ethnicity, and gender.

(Eckert 2000:39)

Class and other macro-social structures are viewed as being instantiated by daily practices.Therefore, class-related linguistic practices must be analyzed in the context of locallymeaningful social groups that are small enough for interactions – ‘the process of makingmeaning’ – to be observed (42). In this approach, the relationship between linguistic vari-ables and traditional economic indicators is explored as a background for the analysis ofsocial meanings that are (re-)produced when linguistic forms are used in the contexts ofcommunities of practice. However, economic status as such is considered secondary toclass identity, the primary motivator of linguistic patterns.

In Eckert’s (2000) investigation of Northern Cities vowels in a Detroit high school,two communities of practice, jocks and burnouts, are associated with the middle class andthe working class respectively. Jocks affiliate with school culture and activities, valuingacademic achievement. Burnouts, in contrast, affiliate with an urban culture that stands inopposition to school-based institutional activities and achievements. Although there is acorrelation between jock ⁄burnout identity and parents’ socioeconomic status, particularlyfather’s occupation and father’s socioeconomic index (a composite of education, occupa-tion, and home value), there is considerable mobility in jock ⁄burnout membership. Ofseven linguistic variables, Eckert finds that only negative concord and the raising of thenucleus of (ay) correlate with any of the parents’ socioeconomic indicators. The newerchanges in progress, (e) and (uh) backing, correlate only with jock ⁄burnout identity, notwith parents’ socioeconomic status. The burnouts, who show higher rates of (e) and (uh)backing than the jocks, embrace and reinforce the backed variants’ urban, working-classmeaning. In doing so, Eckert argues that they symbolically reproduce the broad categoryof ‘working class’. The jock and burnout communities of practice spring from and repro-duce middle- and working-class identities, in Eckert’s argument, but the pattern oflinguistic variation is tied to the local high-school identities, not macro-social classcategories. This finding is consistent with claims to the effect that the early-class studiesfound valid statistical patterns but did not give adequate explanations; linguistic variationis an element in the symbolic construction of class-sensitive local identities.

As in the Milroys’ model, the class identities embodied by local networks are linked toaggregate economic structures, but those structures are mostly undescribed, referred to viathe labels ‘middle class’ and ‘working class’. We can ask, therefore, whether the middleand working classes constitute an aggregate class structure. Or are ‘middle class’ and‘working class’ merely convenient labels for the facts of economic inequality, not compo-nents of a class structure as such? Or – a third option – should we maintain the paradigm



of a structured set of class categories as long as we can define them primarily in socialterms, and secondarily in economic terms, because our objects of study are linguisticpractices that have meaning within social rather than purely economic space? The answeris fundamental to the construction of a sociolinguistic class paradigm that facilitates clearand testable hypotheses.

2.3.4 Relational classMallinson (2007) proposes a ‘relational’ view of class, wherein ‘class is defined by people’srelationships to various income-generating resources or assets’ (153). This approach differsfrom the use of a gradational class scale insofar as it focuses not on locations, or catego-ries, of economic production within a class system but rather on access to resources – inshort, a consumption-centered view. This is in contrast with Labov (1966:138), anexplicitly production-centered class model. Mallinson follows the sociologist Joan Acker’s(2006) framework, in which an analysis of class entails

…first, thinking about social relations and structures as active practices, occurring in specific his-torical and geographic places; second, beginning the exploration of class from the standpoints ofwomen and men located differently from white male class actors; third, clarifying the meaningof gendering and racializing; and fourth, broadening the understanding of the economic rela-tions that constitute class and extending the analysis of gendering and racializing processesbeyond production.

(Acker 2006:45–6, cited in Mallinson 2007:154)

In two respects, class is not confined to economic status. First, class is viewed as inextricablefrom gender and race, which are themselves part of class, and vice versa. Therefore, socialdistinctions having to do with race or gender may be viewed as class distinctions as well.Second, economic status is distinct from the processes that lead to status; class is not a set ofcategories, but rather a set of processes, and class analysis involves the identification andevaluation of those processes, which are both local and extralocal mechanisms of inequality.

Mallinson (2007); see also Mallinson 2006; Mallinson and Childs 2008) investigates theuse of African American English in two female communities of practice in Texana, NorthCarolina: the upright, proper ‘church ladies’ and the more laid-back ‘porch sitters’. Thetwo groups are nearly identical in terms of many economic-class indicators but havemarkedly different lifestyle habits, including hairstyles and religious observance. Further,the two groups favor different types of occupation: the church ladies tend to hold ‘pinkcollar’ service-sector jobs, typically occupied by women, while the porch sitters work inmore industrial jobs such as tool-making. Employing Acker’s terminology, Mallinsonconcludes that the porch sitters’ jobs ‘afford them less access to economic, cultural, andsocial capital’ (158).5 The linguistic differences between the two groups are consistentwith their lifestyle differences: the church ladies show significantly lower rates of fivegrammatical features associated with African American English: preferring standard (non-AAE) linguistic features consistent with their institutional legitimacy as churchgoers andnon-manual laborers, while the porch sitters’ use of AAE features constructs a class ⁄ gen-der identity not dependent on institutional power. In Acker’s framework, Mallinsonargues the social – including linguistic – practices that distinguish the two groups arecomponents of their class identities. Following Acker’s rejection of class positions in favorof class processes and relations to the distribution of resources, Mallinson does not attemptto delineate economic-class categories independent of the local distinction betweenchurch ladies and porch sitters. Class identities are understood as constructed by a rangeof processes including linguistic practices, as in Eckert (2000).



3 Building a Class Paradigm for Sociolinguistics

By attending to local social distinctions that instantiate class, which itself is viewed asinseparable from gender, ethnicity, and other aspects of identity, these alternatives toeconomic scales take us closer to a paradigm within which to construct theories aboutclass. I propose, however, that two key components of the early-class scales must beretained: first, economic (in addition to non-economic) distinctions, and second, relationsand ⁄ or structures that transcend local instantiations of socioeconomic distinctions, i.e.macro-level or ‘abstract’ structures, processes, and ⁄or categories.

Economic distinctions must be represented in a sociolinguistic class paradigm becausethe linguistic significance of economic inequality cannot be ignored any more than thesocietal impact of physical differences between males and females. While physical sex isnot an adequate shorthand for gender ideologies and identities, sex is nevertheless recog-nized as having meaningful consequences for lived experience and is rarely disregarded invariationist sociolinguistic analysis. The same reasoning can be applied to materialinequality. To ignore material inequality would be to claim that sociolinguistic choicesare made in isolation from the consequences of economic inequality, which determine awide range of experiences related to the uses of standard and non-standard linguisticforms. If one of the primary goals of constructing a sociolinguistic class paradigm is tolook for consistent, generalizable relationships between economy and language, then weneed a place for economic facts that have consistent linguistic effects across communities.

Further, many practices and ideologies that do not at first appear to be rooted in eco-nomic relations may on second glance be inextricably bound to the system of exchange.Acker (2006) posits that ‘…economic activities and class relations are not always embed-ded in practices that directly contribute to the accumulation of capital, but may be,nevertheless, practices constrained and influenced by capitalist processes’ (54). If sociolin-guistic analysis is to claim some flexibility in what it considers class-based practices, asindeed it should (and does; cf. Mallinson 2007 in particular), then it needs a paradigmwithin which to explicate the economic relevance of apparently non-economic practices.

Abstracting from local processes and distinctions is important for several reasons. First,we need a far-reaching sociolinguistic class paradigm that allows, even encourages, ques-tions concerning the links between local and global economic and cultural processes. AsMilroy and Milroy (1992:4) observe,

the success, persistence, and precise form of the symbolic opposition enacted by small-scale net-works will depend not upon community-internal linguistic or interactional factors, but uponthe relation of the resisting group to the national economy and to like groups in other cities orstates.

For example, recent and emerging work (e.g. Meyerhoff and Niedzielski 2003) docu-ments quantitative linguistic reactions to the globalization of economic transactions.Proponents of a purely localistic view of class might argue here that large-scale eco-nomic processes and structures never directly influence linguistic variation, being insteadmediated by locally visible economies; therefore, any representation of the extra-localeconomy in a class paradigm would be superfluous. But a class paradigm that only tookinto account local economies would be severely limited in its capacity to account forconsistent patterns of linguistic variation across communities. For example, everyinstance of a stable linguistic variable showing a linear class pattern would have to beconsidered an independent phenomenon, rather than the result (in part) of a unitaryprocess.



Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1998), discussing language and gender, warn that ‘toomuch abstraction is often symptomatic of too little theorizing; abstraction should notsubstitute for theorizing but be informed by and responsive to it’ (484). The same istrue for class, and theorizing must take place at both the interactional and aggregate lev-els of class representation in sociolinguistics. This is one area in which a sociolinguis-tics ⁄ sociology interface may prove useful. There are reasons to doubt the potential, foreither field, of trying to align sociolinguistic class theory with that of sociology. Firstand perhaps foremost, sociological class analysis and modeling on the whole is character-ized by nothing if not disagreement.6 In addition, class analysis in sociology has differentgoals to some extent, asking what kinds of economic distinctions impair or facilitatecross-generational mobility, motivate class action, and foster class consciousness (e.g.Crompton 1993; Hall 1997b; Levine 1998), whereas sociolinguistics usually seeks tomodel the distribution of variable linguistic forms and to identify their meanings andsocial functions. Finally, sociologists are stymied by the problem, critical for sociolinguis-tics, of linking local social distinctions with aggregate economic facts.7 Yet each of theseapparent obstacles, the third in particular, may be seen as an area of opportunity forengagement.

Modern sociological class theory that focuses on aggregate structures offers sociolinguis-tics several well-considered starting points for constructing generalizations about classabove the level of the community. The two central theoretical perspectives stem fromthe original formulations of Marx and Weber respectively, and analysts of both persua-sions continue to argue for revisions. Marxist class structures rely chiefly on production;individuals are located in the structure on the basis of their relationships to the means ofproduction, and class consciousness and action are proposed to result from the materialinequalities stemming from occupation (Marx 1906; Wright 1985, 1989, 1996). Weberianclass structures are not only built solely on occupational or even economic distinctionsbut also on a variety of related cultural distinctions, recognizing the significance of ‘lifechances’, the combination of economic and cultural circumstances, particularly the posses-sion of property and the degree of authority associated with one’s occupation, and recog-nizing consumption in addition to production (Weber 1947, 1978; Goldthorpe andLockwood 1963; Goldthorpe 1980). A quantitative comparison between Wright’s (Marx-ist) and Goldthorpe’s (Weberian) class schemes, part of the Essex Class Project, concludedthat the Weberian scheme better accounted for social mobility and voting data (Marshallet al. 1988). The perpetual debates on the nature of aggregate class structure betweenMarxists and Weberians hold limited relevance for sociolinguistics. Yet both Marxist andWeberian class structures are useful starting points for the further development of socio-linguistic class paradigms because they offer clearly theorized models. Several questionswith clear significance for sociolinguistics, three of which will be discussed here, havearisen from the models’ engagement with socioeconomic facts of late twentieth- and earlytwenty-first-century societies.

First, the distinction between consumption- and production-based class indicators,while not often discussed in variationist sociolinguistics (but see Bucholtz 2008), is animportant element in the Marx ⁄Weber debates. In the Labovian tradition, occupation(production) on one hand, and education and housing (consumption), on the other hand,are combined, implicitly predicted (and sometimes demonstrated) to show parallel corre-lations with linguistic variables. This practice amounts to the assumption that class identity– and linguistic practice, by extension – is the product of, or at least defined by, bothtypes of indicators. Mallinson, discussed above, is one of the few linguists to choose aclass paradigm that theorizes the role of consumption as distinct from production. Further



attention to the production ⁄ consumption dichotomy would inform and structure theexploration of class identity and class practice with respect to linguistic variation.

Second, recent decades have seen what Wacquant (2000, 2007a,b) and others refer toas the marginalization ⁄elimination ⁄desocialization of labor in western societies, wherebythe working class is replaced in the labor market by cheaper immigrant workers and auto-mation. This process forces a reanalysis of the meaning of ‘working class’ as well as theconsideration of what some sociologists have identified as the ‘underclass’, a group that ispermanently unemployed (e.g. Murray 1990, 1994) or represents a stage of cyclicalunemployment (MacDonald and Marsh 2000). One critical implication for variationistsociolinguistics is that the curvilinear hypothesis, which identifies the upper and middleworking classes as leading changes from below, may require an update as the working-class population destabilizes, acquires ethnic diversity, and undergoes a loosening ofnetwork structure.

Third, a theorized aggregate class structure in sociolinguistics would have to contendwith another transformation in the labor market: the growing post-industrial service sec-tor in contemporary capitalist economies. The prominence of service jobs imposes a con-siderable gray area onto the white ⁄blue collar dichotomy that has previously beensupported by fairly clean quantitative linguistic distinctions. The location of service occu-pations in a sociolinguistic class model should depend in part on their associated status,authority, knowledge, and linguistic needs. Even accounting for the wide variety of ser-vice-sector jobs – e.g. fast-food employees vs. assistants at clothing stores, Rothman(1998) and Korczynski (2002), on one hand, and Warhurst and Nickson (2007), on theother hand, offer different views of the status associated with service occupations. Thedynamic, complex, and globalizing labor market generally points to the sociolinguisticneed for a new set of theorized aggregate class categories to replace the standard middle-and working-class positions.

At the interactional level, more intentional interfacing with sociological class analysismay also prove productive in view of several critical shared assumptions with sociolin-guistics. In particular, analysts in both fields hold that class identities, as habitus (Bourdieu1977), cannot be reduced to economic positions. Many sociologists foreground practicesthat both reflect and constitute class identities, also recognizing that individuals maybe faced with multiple conflicting pressures. Hall (1997:21), who constructs a ‘neo-Weberian’ approach to class, argues these points in terms of market participation:

[I]ndividuals are not members of a class; they engage in various class actions – both individuallyand collectively, in everyday life and in relation to extraordinary events, and not just in relationto production and occupations. In these acts, individuals may have multiple, overlapping,sometimes contradictory, sometimes reinforcing interests based on their participation in multi-ple, heterogeneous markets.

As noted, Acker (2006:8) takes a similarly practice-based view of class, contending that‘what is often called ‘‘social structure’’, including class, gender, and race, is emergent inpractices, produced and reproduced in ongoing human activities’.8 Concrete activitieshave class meanings in the contexts of market relations and everyday life.

Another common, though by no means universal, assumption among contemporarysociologists is that class, as a subject of study, is not isolable from ethnicity or gender.Some theorists take the ‘intersectional’ (Collins 1986) view that these social dimensionsoperate together in complex ways, while others, including Acker, cited above, view thesedimensions as constituting one another, such that it is unreasonable to talk about class inthe absence of gender or ethnicity. From a purely methodological perspective, class is



notoriously difficult to isolate in American discourse because US speakers tend to beunwilling or unable to articulate class distinctions directly (Bucholtz 2008). Sociologistsworking at the interactional level take this ‘hiddenness’ of class as given, and search forclass ideologies embedded in discourse about ethnicity, gender, and local social distinc-tions (e.g. Bettie 2003). Ortner (1998:14) argues that the hiddenness of class is in factessential to the creation of merged classed ⁄gendered ⁄ethnic identities. The alternatives toeconomic models of class in sociology depend largely on the analytical goals (i.e. articu-lating class structure, demonstrating class consciousness or mobility, or accounting for classaction); this diversity is promising for sociolinguistics as it offers multiple avenues forinterdisciplinary class analysis.

Short Biography

Robin Dodsworth is an Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University.She specializes in the quantitative study of linguistic variation and change, sociophonetics,and the use of interdisciplinary tools in the analysis of linguistic variation. Recent andforthcoming articles can be found in the Journal of Sociolinguistics and Language Variationand Change.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Robin Dodsworth, Department of English, North Carolina State University, TompkinsHall Box 8105, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

1 Although the Labovian class paradigm has often met with this criticism, none of the early quantitative sociolin-guistic studies explicitly claims ideological consensus across groups, nor do their explanations necessarily rely on it.2 However, as Eckert (2000:32) observes, ‘… the consensual and conflict models of social class are not entirelyincompatible – upward economic mobility and class loyalty frequently go together as well – and the tensionbetween the two may be an important source of complex social meaning’.3 Cf. Macaulay (1977:115) for comments to this effect from a Glasgow personnel manager.4 But see Kerswill and Williams’ (2005) study of working-class residents of a newly formed town for an exampleof the co-occurrence of uniplex network ties and low socioeconomic status.5 Although Mallinson’s approach is theoretically innovative, Mallinson and Dodsworth (2009) note that the churchladies and porch sitters do in fact hold different types of occupations and may therefore be distinguished using a tra-ditional class indicator, in addition to their consumption differences.6 In fact, some sociologists deny the relevance of class for modern society, particularly in the USA; as Cromptonand Scott (2000) put it, ‘While the ‘‘death’’ of class continues to be announced, at fairly regular intervals, by leadingsociologists … even more books are being produced that claim to document the continuing salience of class’ (1).7 Some sociologists respond to this problem by accepting a permanent theoretical gap between aggregate and inter-actional models (Wright 1989), while others, notably Giddens (1973), attempt to bridge the gap.8 However, Mallinson and Dodsworth (2009) argue that the application of Acker’s theory to sociolinguistic data,while beneficial in theory, is not straightforward in practice.

Works Cited

Acker, J. 2006. Class questions: feminist answers. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Ash, S. 2002. Social class. The handbook of language variation and change, ed. by J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill, and

N. Schilling-Estes, 402–22. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Bettie, J. 2003. Women without class: girls, race, and identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.——, and L. Boltanski. 1975. Le fetichisme de la langue. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 4.2–32.Bucholtz, M. 2008. Shop talk: branding, consumption, and gender in American middle-class youth interaction.

Words, worlds, and material girls: language, gender, and globalized economy, ed. by B. McElhinny, 371–402.New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cedergren, H. 1973. The interplay of social and linguistic factors in Panama. Cornell University dissertation.



Collins, P. H. 1986. Learning from the outsider within: the sociological significance of black feminist thought.Social Problems 33.S14–32.

Crompton, R. 1993. Class and stratification: an introduction to current debates. Cambridge: Polity Press.——, and J. Scott. 2000. Introduction: the state of class analysis. Renewing class analysis, ed. by R. Crompton,

F. Devine, M. Savage and J. Scott, 1–15. Oxford: Blackwell.Eckert, P. 1989. The whole woman: sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change

1.245–67.——. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice. Malden, MA: Blackwell.——, and S. McConnell-Ginet. 1998. Communities of practice: where language, gender, and power all live.

Language and gender: a reader, ed. by J. Coates, 484–94. Malden, MA: Blackwell.——, and ——. 1999. New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society

2.185–201.Giddens, A. 1973. The class structure of the advanced societies. New York: Harper & Row.Goldthorpe, J. H. 1980. Social mobility in modern Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.——, and D. Lockwood. 1963. Affluence and the British class structure. Sociological Review 11.133–63.Haeri, N. 1996. The sociolinguistic market of Cairo: gender, class, and education. London: Kegan Paul Interna-

tional.Hall, J. R. 1997. The reworking of class analysis. Reworking class, ed. by J. R. Hall, 1–37. Ithaca: Cornell

University Press.Højrup, T. 1983. The concept of life-mode: a form-specifying mode of analysis applied to contemporary Europe.

Ethnologia Scandinavica, 1–50.Hollingshead, A. 1975. Four factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript, New Haven, CT: Department

of Sociology, Yale University.Kerswill, P. 2007. Social class. The Routledge companion to sociolinguistics, ed. by C. Llamas, L. Mullany, and P.

Stockwell, 51–61. New York: Routledge.——, and A. Williams. 2005. New towns and koineization: linguistic and social correlates. Linguistics 43.1023–48.Kochetov, A. 2006. The role of social factors in the dynamics of sound change: a case study of a Russian dialect.

Language Variation and Change 18.99–119.Korczynski, M. 2002. Human resource management in the service sector. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Labov, W. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied

Linguistics.——. 1972a. Language in the inner city: studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of

Pennsylvania Press.——. 1972b. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Labov, W. 1990. The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and

Change 2.205–54.——. 2001. Principles of linguistic change: social factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Lane, L. A. 1998. Emergence and transformation of a dialect: Thyboronsk (Danish). University of Chicago disserta-

tion.——. 2000. Trajectories of linguistic variation: emergence of a dialect. Language Variation and Change 12.267–94.Levine, R. (ed.) 1998. Social class and stratification: classic statements and theoretical debates. Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield.Macaulay, R. K. S. 1977. Language, social class, and education: a Glasgow study. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press.MacDonald, R. and Marsh, J. 2000. Employment, unemployment and social polarisation: young people and cyclical

transitions. Renewing class analysis, ed. by R Crompton, F. Devine, M. Savage and J. Scott, 120–40. Oxford:Blackwell.

Mallinson, C. 2006. The dynamic construction of race, class, and gender through linguistic practice among womenin a Black Appalachian Community. North Carolina State University dissertation.

——. 2007. Social class, social status, and stratification: revisiting familiar concepts in sociolinguistics. Penn Work-ing Papers in Linguistics 13.149–63.

——, and B. Childs. 2008. Communities of practice in sociolinguistic description: analyzing language and identitypractices among Black women in Appalachia. Gender and Language 1.173–206.

——, and R. Dodsworth. 2009. Revisiting the need for new approaches to social class in variationist sociolinguis-tics. Sociolinguistic Studies 3.2.

Marshall, G., H. Newby, D. Rose, and C. Vogler. 1988. Social class in modern Britain. London: Unwin Hyman.Marx, K. 1906. Capital. Chicago: Kerr.Meyerhoff, M. 2002. Communities of practice. The handbook of language variation and change, ed. by J. K.

Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes, 526–48. Malden, MA: Blackwell.——, and N. Niedzielski. 2003. The globalisation of vernacular variation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7.534–55.Milroy, L. 1980. Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell.



——, and J. Milroy. 1992. Social network and social class: toward an integrated sociolinguistic model. Language inSociety 21.1–26.

Murray, C. 1990. The emerging British underclass. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.——. 1994. Underclass: the crisis deepens. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.Nichols, P. 1983. Linguistic options and choices for Black women in the Rural South. Language, gender, and soci-

ety, ed. by B. Thorne, C. Kramerae and N. Henley, 54–68. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.Ortner, S. 1998. Identities: the hidden life of class. Journal of Anthropological Research 54.1–17.Rickford, J. R. 1986. The need for new approaches to social class analysis in sociolinguistics. Journal of Communi-

cation 6.215–21.Romaine, S. 1984. The status of sociological models and categories in explaining linguistic variation. Linguistische

Berichte 90.25–38.Rothman, R. 1998. Working. London: Prentice Hall.Sankoff, D., H. J. Cedergren, W. Kemp, P. Thibault, and D. Vincent. 1989. Montreal French: language, class, and

ideology. Language change and variation, ed. by R. Fasold and D. Schiffrin, 107–18. Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins.

——, and S. Laberge. 1978. The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. Linguistic variation:models and methods, ed. by D. Sankoff, 239–50. New York: Academic Press.

Santerre, L., and J. Millo. 1978. Diphthongization in Montreal French. Linguistic variation: models and methods,ed. by D. Sankoff, 173–84. New York: Academic Press.

Trudgill, P. 1974. The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Wacquant, L. 2000. Logics of urban polarization: the view from below. Renewing class analysis, ed. by R. Cromp-

ton, F. Devine, M. Savage, and J. Scott, 107–19. Oxford: Blackwell.——. 2007a. Territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality. Thesis Eleven, 91.66–77.——. 2007b. Urban outcasts: a comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press.Warhurst, C., and D. Nickson. 2007. A new labour aristocracy? Aesthetic labour and routine interactive service

Work, Employment & Society 21.785–98.Warner, W. L., and P. S. Lunt. 1942. The social life of a modern community. Yankee City Series, Vol. 1. New

Haven: Yale University Press.——, M. Meeker, and K. Eells. 1949. Social class in America. Chicago: Science Research Associates.Weber, M. 1947. The theory of social and economic organization. Translated by A.M. Henderson and T. Parsons.

New York: The Free Press.——. 1978. Economy and society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Williams, G. 1992. Sociolinguistics: a sociological critique. London: Routledge.Wolfram, W. 1969. A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied

Linguistics.Woolard, K. 1985. Language variation and cultural hegemony. American Ethnologist 12.738–48.Wright, E. O. 1985. Classes. New York: Verso.——. 1989. Rethinking, once again, the concept of class structure. The debate on classes, ed. by E. O. Wright

et al., 269–348. New York: Verso.——. 1996. Class counts. New York: Cambridge University Press.



Documents

Modeling Socioeconomic Class in Variationist Sociolinguistics