Should you stay within the UK or are acquainted with its wide selection of accents and dialects, you possibly can most likely inform the distinction between a complicated or upper-class accent, (suppose the “King’s English”) and yet another related to the working class (corresponding to Cockney).
Apart from accents, it’s a in style view, bolstered in media and popular culture, that sure phrases are used particularly by folks of sure lessons. For instance, within the e book Watching the English, social anthropologist Kate Fox feedback that the phrase “couch” is utilized by upper-middle-class audio system or above.
Within the Nineteen Fifties, Alan Ross, a professor of linguistics on the College of Birmingham, claimed to determine behaviour that distinguished England’s higher lessons from the remainder of society. These included, amongst different issues, not taking part in tennis in braces and an aversion to excessive tea.
He additionally recognized options of pronunciation, grammar and use of particular phrases which he thought differed. This was not primarily based on empirical analysis, however solely on his personal perceptions (“armchair linguistics”). Whereas Ross’s claims are sometimes referenced within the media, there has not been a lot analysis to see if these views maintain up immediately.
By means of two research carried out with our colleagues George Bailey and Eddie O’Hara Brown, we tried to seek out out. We investigated using phrases that Ross and others have recognized as indicators of sophistication: the supposedly upper-class phrases bathroom, serviette and couch, with their supposedly non-upper-class counterparts, bathroom, napkin and sofa.
Within the first examine, we used spot-the-difference duties to immediate 80 individuals of various ages, genders and social lessons to say these phrases. For instance, “the couch is a distinct color in that image” or “the bathroom is inexperienced within the left image and white in the fitting one”. This meant that individuals had been targeted extra on the duty than the precise phrases, so we had been in a position to look at their pure utilization.
Learn extra:
When did class cease predicting who folks vote for in Britain? Know Your Place podcast
Whereas the supposedly upper-class serviette and couch had been extra frequent than napkin or sofa, the supposedly non-upper-class bathroom was extra frequent than bathroom. For instance, the place serviette was utilized by 72 individuals, solely 18 used napkin (some audio system used a number of phrases). This challenges Ross’s claims that phrases distinguish the higher class from the remainder of society. If most individuals use a phrase, that phrase can’t be a dependable indicator of higher classness.
When it comes to social variation, we discovered that the utilization of those phrases diversified, however not in a method related to social class. For instance, there have been some attention-grabbing outcomes regarding age. Whereas, on the one hand, the reportedly upper-class bathroom is used extra by older audio system, the supposedly non-upper-class napkin and sofa are additionally extra generally utilized by older audio system.
Notion of phrases and sophistication
We additionally wished to look at the notion of those phrases, as in whether or not folks suppose sure phrases are related to social traits, corresponding to training degree, professionalism, formality and poshness, that are traits related to class.
So, in a second experiment, we requested 100 individuals to guage a number of social media posts, asking them to evaluate the writers. Half of the individuals learn the “upper-class phrase” and half learn the “non-upper-class” phrase inside an in any other case equivalent phrase, tailored from real posts on social media.
For instance, one message was: “My flatmate went to a marriage and I introduced takeaway, was virtually performed consuming earlier than I noticed one thing that appears like a fried egg, put it in my mouth and it was a serviette/napkin. God why me!?”
From this experiment, we discovered that the notion of those phrases just isn’t uniform throughout social teams. For instance, the upper socioeconomic group thought couch to be extra posh, whereas the decrease socioeconomic group perceived sofa as extra posh.
There have been no perceptual variations between bathroom/bathroom. And napkin was perceived as extra posh than serviette, regardless of being recognized by Ross and others because the non-upper-class kind.
Shutterstock
Each of our research, in addition to complementary evaluation of the spoken British Nationwide Corpus (a ten million phrase database of spoken English), present that there’s little consistency in the way in which that every of the investigated variables are used and perceived.
After all, this isn’t to say that there aren’t any class-based vocabulary markers in up to date British English, or that the results of such perceptions do not need an impact. As a lot different linguistic analysis exhibits, class-based accent and dialect discrimination are sadly nonetheless alive and nicely.
Whereas the view that some phrases are posher than others has endured, our findings present that the claims popularised by Ross within the Nineteen Fifties aren’t mirrored within the actuality of England immediately.
