Social Class and Linguistic Choice

Abstract

The speech of eleven-year old children, in socially contrasted groups, was analysed across a range of communicative tasks. The analysis was directed by three questions. What social class indicators appeared in their speech? How did these relate to social class differences found in comparable research, and to those expected on the basis of Bernstein's theory of socio-linguistic codes?

Given the wide social range within the sample, consistent group differences might have been expected. On most of the `traditional' measures, these did not appear. There were differences on the measures most directly related to the `planning principles' said to underly restricted and elaborated codes. A main conclusion of the research is the extreme difficulty of defining linguistic `realizations' of social difference, and so `translating a sociological language into a linguistic language'.