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Social Class And Socio-Economic Class

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Socio-economic class has an extensive social influence on language variation (Meyerhoff and Schleef, 2010 pg. 392). Individuals of higher socio-economic class typically have a greater income in which can be further invested in higher education. Consecutively, those who are educated tend to use more of the standard form of language and in contrast, speakers with lower educational levels tend to use more of the non-standard language (Meyerhoff and Schleef, 2010 pg. 415). Among the various social classes of the socio-economic hierarchy, the use of standard and non-standard forms of language can vary greatly. The data from Trudgill (1995) demonstrates the percentage of appearances of three non-standard variants ((ng): [n], (t): [?], (h): [0]) in 5 socio-economic classes in the UK. What is defined as a social class depends on many different factors. Occupation, home value, personal wealth, aspirations to social mobility and various other factors need to be considered when determining one’s social class. The levels in the hierarchy of social class are also affected depending on the region. In the adapted Trudgill study (1995) that took place in the UK, the socio-economic classes that they observed were the middle middle class (MMC), lower middle class (LMC), upper working class (UWC), middle working class (MWC) and LWC (LWC). The Trudgill study (1995) demonstrates the usage of non-standard variants in the UK that differ significantly across the social classes. The current analysis of data adapted from Trudgill (1995) investigates the differences between the social classes and their varying association with the usage of the three non-standard variants in the UK.
Trudgill’s hierarchy of social classes in the UK include 5 social classes: MMC, LMC, UWC, MWC and LWC. Within these social classes there are many differences. According to Trudgill (1995), the MMC highly value education and culture and is politically and socially engaged. Individuals within this class typically are employed as doctors, accountants, social workers or managers. The LMC tend to live in the suburbs and are employed in service industry jobs or in regional government. Among the working class, the UWC may be tradesmen or work in industrial jobs. The

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