Ms. 374 for K. Brown (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Ed.

, Oxford:

Elsevier.

Class Language

Allan Luke

Nanyang Technological University

National Institute of Education

1 Nanyang Walk

Singapore 637616

Phil Graham

University of Waterloo

&

University of Queensland

Brisbane, Queensland

Australia 4064

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 Abstract

How social class factors in linguistic practices, language change, and loss has been a

major theme in postwar sociolinguistics and ethnography of communication, language

planning, and sociology of language. Key foci of linguistic and sociological research

include the study of social class in everyday language use, media and institutional texts. A

further concern is to understand the relationship between social class stratification,

intergenerational social reproduction, and language variation. Bourdieu’s model of

linguistic habitus and cultural capital offers a broad theoretical template for examining

these relations, even as they are complicated by forces of economic and cultural

globalization, new media and identity formations.

***

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 Class Language

Allan Luke & Phillip Graham

The relationship between language and social class is a key theoretical and empirical

issue in critical discourse studies, ethnography of communication, and sociolinguistic

research. It has been a focal point for postwar and current policy in language planning,

and language and literacy education. The central questions of a class analysis of language

are stated in Mey’s (1985) proposal for a Marxian pragmatics: “Whose language”

counts? With what material and social consequences? For which communities and social

groups? Central concerns are how language factors into the intergenerational

reproduction of dominant ideology and discourse, of social and economic stratification,

and how communities, families, schools, mass media, and governments contribute to

“linguistic inequality” (Hymes, 1996). Current research continues to table and debate

contending definitions of language and social class as social and economic phenomena.

Marx viewed language as an intrinsic characteristic of human species being, as a form of

mental and material labor. The “language of real life”, he argued, is “directly interwoven”

with “material activity and …mental intercourse” (Marx & Engels, 1846/1972: p. 118).

This “mental production” is “expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality,

religion, metaphysics etc. of a people”. “Sense experience”, the work of the eye and ear,

the hand and mouth, are the basis not only of science and philosophy, but of communal

and social life (Marx, 1844/1960: pp. 160-166). At the same time, Marx’s (Marx &

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Engels, 1846/1972: p. 37) classical definition of ideology as a “camera obscura” that

presents an inverted reality helped to explain and establish the centrality of language in

the distortion and misrepresentation of social and economic reality in social class

interests.

Marxist theory establishes three critical traditions in the analysis of language and class.

These are: the analysis of language as a form of class-based social action and ideological

consciousness; the analysis of social class and linguistic variation; and the analysis of

language as the medium for power and control, ideology and truth in specific linguistic

and capital markets.

LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL ACTION AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

The prototypical class analysis of language was undertaken by Voloshinov (1973).

Language was conceptualized as a marker of dominant ideology, class consciousness and

a medium of class struggle. According to models of heteroglossia and “polyvocality”,

each utterance and text is a revoicing of previous historical speaker and writers. The

ideological content and social functions of each speech act or speech genre bear their own

material historical origins. That is, they are produced and reproduced by and though

social and economic “conditions of production” (Fairclough, 1992). By this account,

face-to-face language exchanges are instances of class conflict and ideological difference,

where class-located social actors bring to bear distinctive material interests and discourse

positions. The point of such analysis is to extend the notion of the situated speaking and

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writing subject to a closer sociological and economic analysis of structural position.

Contemporary work in critical discourse analysis supplements class analysis with

attention to the linguistic construction of gender, race, sexual preference, and other forms

of social identity, ideology and position (e.g., Lemke, 1995).

If utterances and their use are indexical of social class consciousness, what might this

mean for differing cultural groups, communities and their historical practices? Following

Vygotsky, Luria (1982) argued the cognitive uses of the “tool” of language were mediated

by one’s social relations, cultural practices, and material conditions. Luria’s studies of the

Uzbecs made the claim that particular forms of cognition and consciousness, what Marx

referred to as capacity at the “production of ideas”, were linked to cultural practices and

material conditions of tool use. The cognitive and ideological affordances of language

and literacy are mediated by material economic and social conditions, including class

location and cultural history.

In contemporary literacy theory, Paulo Freire also argued for the direct links between

language and social class consciousness. Freire’s (1972) prototypical work was

concerned with the effects of literacy education upon the language and consciousness of

the indigenous population and peasantry of postwar Brazil. Bringing together Marxist

dialectics with liberation theology, he argued that autocratic governments and education

systems constituted “cultures of silence” where marginalized populations were educated

in ways that mis-named and misrecognised the world. Freire’s work views ideologically

distorted language as a mode of class-based false consciousness.

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For Freire, critique of class consciousness was achieved through an educational process

of ‘renaming’ the world in ways that demystified power, consciousness and life, a similar

agenda to that of Mey (1985), Chouliaraki and Fairclough (2001), and other

contemporary critical linguists. Current agendas for the teaching of “critical literacy” and

critical discourse analysis stand in this Marxist tradition, focusing on the demystification,

critique, and reconstruction of language that supports dominant class interests (Luke,

2003).

LINGUISTIC VARIATION AND SOCIAL CLASS

A further concern in the analysis of language and social class is how language variation

acts as a marker and instrument of social class, racial and other forms of social

stratification. A principal concern of sociolinguists in the postwar period has been over

the effects of the differential and inequitable spread of economic and social capital on the

language minority, postcolonial and economically marginal communities (Hymes, 1996).

The postwar origins of language planning reflect the impact of colonization,

decolonization, migration and geopolitical conflict upon linguistic retention and stability.

Flows of global, regional and national capital have visible impacts upon language loss,

use and retention (Pennycook, 1998). In the postwar period, sociolinguistic and language

planning research has engaged with the effects of the unequal spread and distribution of

economic capital upon language loss. Yet attempts to theorise and empirically describe

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the complex reproductive relationships of language and social class continued to be

debated and contested.

The sociological and sociolinguistic studies of UK children by Basil Bernstein and

colleagues (e.g., Bernstein, 1975) took up this challenge. This work provided an account

of the role of language in the institutional production of stratified levels of educational

achievement. Bernstein’s argument was that working class students spoke a “restricted

code”, characterized by embedded and literal meanings, limited command of deixis, and

thresholds in technical complexity. Middle class children, he argued, mastered an

“elaborated code” which was fitted for educational success and mastery of academic and

scientific discourses. These, he argued, were tied to particular forms of early childhood

language socialization and family structure (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1992). Bernstein’s

work was the object of several decades of controversy. Labov’s (2001) studies of urban

African-American language registers and non-standard dialects, and Heath’s (1983)

studies of early class-based language socialization, made the case against models of

linguistic deficit. Bernstein’s model has been defended by systemic functional linguists,

who argue that there are indeed elaborated technical registers and contents, specific

language domains affiliated with power, some of which particular social classes make

explicitly available in early language socialization and educational training (Hasan &

Williams, 1996).

As distinctive sociodemographic speech communities, particular social classes may

indeed have different speech patterns, varying in lingua franca, register, dialect, accent

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and diglossia. These, further, are affiliated with class-based social consciousness and

cultural practices (Fishman, 1992). Ethnographic studies have shown how that these

variations are made to count in local social networks and institutions (Milroy, 1988). But

the social and cultural bases and material consequences of such differences remain

localized and contentious. To move past descriptive claims requires a broader

sociological theory of social class, of “linguistic markets” (Mey, 1985; Bourdieu, 1992),

and of changing media environments, modes of meaning making, and information

structures.

LANGUAGE AS CAPITAL IN LINGUISTIC MARKETS

Classical sociological definitions of social class begin from conceptions of structural

economic location and material position. They attempt to define position and power vis a

vis dominant relations of production. The tendency of Marxist models is to further

affiliate social class with particular ‘class consciousness’, of which language, its use and

expression is a constitutive speech marker. Bourdieu’s (1992) sociology begins from a

view that class position is at least in part structurally determined. But it is also embodied

by human subjects in their “habitus”, the sum total of socially acquired dispositions.

By this account, the bodily performance of linguistic competence is an element of

cultural capital. This capital, and affiliated forms of embodied taste, style and ideology,

constitutes a key marker of one’s social class position and mobility. Linguistic capital is

deployed in specific social fields, which constitute “linguistic markets”. Each market,

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each institutional context, in turn has variable rules and conventions of exchange,

whereby linguistic competence and literate proficiency in specific languages is valued or

not. There language use – as class marker and tool – has exchange value and power only

in relation to other forms of capital, including social capital (e.g., networks, institutional

access), economic capital, formal institutional credentials, artifacts and so forth.

This is a more complex and delicate view of the relationships between language and

social class. Language matters, as a primary marker of class, gender and culture, training,

education, social networks, traditions, and ideological consciousness. Yet like

poststructuralist theories of discourse, Bourdieu’s model views language not just an index

or marker of class position, but as reflexively constituting position and identity, power

and categorical social status. In this way, how language marks class, capital, and power

is sociologically contingent, rather than determined by the characteristics of linguistic

code or class position per se, or the ostensive power of any given utterance, genre or text

(Luke, 1996). This contingency is dependent on the availability of other forms of capital,

and the variable, historically shifting norms, rules and conventions of particular social

institutions, fields of knowledge and linguistic markets.

CURRENT ISSUES

One of the principal critiques of postwar sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication

and functional linguistics was that it lacked a sufficient analysis of power, capital, and

conflict. Indeed, sociolinguistic models of “social context”, “context of situation”, and

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“social network” are often based on structural functionalist models of society and culture.

The study of language and social class requires the rigorous analysis of social and

economic relations within and between speech communities. Current work on language

and social class continues to examine how language represents class consciousness, how

it is implicated in ongoing issues of class conflict and cohesion, and how its acquisition

and use are central to intergenerational production of social stratification of material and

discourse resources.

Language variation, diversity, change and language ideologies can be systematically

linked to social class. Linguistic performance, text and discourse production, does indeed

have both symbolic and material exchange value, particularly in service and information

based economies. But these values depend upon the complex local economic and

institutional formations of particular speech communities. Bourdieu offers a stronger

analytic frame for analyzing how language ‘counts’ in specific institutional fields,

disciplinary and knowledge fields, and everyday social contexts. It suggests that issues

around ‘whose language’ counts, which classes have power, require a rigorous

socioeconomic analysis. Particularly under conditions of late capitalism and

globalisation, these sociological and sociolinguistic contexts and conditions are under

considerable historical transition and challenge.

As the medium of consciousness and labor, language is implicated in the production of

ideology and discourse, material goods, and social relations. The move in globalized

economies towards information and discourse-based forms of labor raises a number of

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key challenges to linguistic and ethnographic studies. First, linguistic, semiotic, and

discourse competence will have increased significance in productive labor and

consumption, shifting the basis of social class relations—language—to the staus of means

of production (Graham, 2000). Second, social class location and membership is

determined by relations to dominant modes of communication, semiosis and information

(Castells, 2003) as much as it might be defined in classical Marxist terms. Finally, the

formation of social class identity, ideology and speech community have become more

complex. They are now strongly influenced by forces of mass culture, mass media, and

globalized information flows.

One of the principal claims of poststructuralist and postmodern theory of the past decade

has been a breakdown of essential relationships between discourse and social class as a

primary analytic category. It is increasingly difficult to analyze social class formation

without due consideration of the complexity of cultural and racial, gender and religious

identity and position. Any analysis of language and social class must engage with this

complexity. But perhaps more than ever, any contemporary sociological analysis that

includes class and intersecting categories must engage with the constitutive place of

language, text, and discourse in the constitution and reproduction of ideology, class

relations and material conditions.

References

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Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies towards Sociology of

Language. London: Routledge.

Bourdieu, P. (1992) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.C. (1992) Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society. 2nd

Ed. Beverley Hills: Sage.

Castells, M. The Rise of the Network Society. (2000) 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell

Publishers.

Chouliaraki, L. & Fairclough, N. (2001) Discourse in Late Modernity. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press.

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity.

Fishman, J.A. (1991) Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Graham, P. (2000). Hypercapitalism: A political economy of informational idealism. New

Media and Society, 2 (2): 131-156.

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Hasan, R. & Williams, G. (eds.) (1996) Literacy in Society. London: Longman.

Heath, S.B. (1982). Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hymes, D. (1996). Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality. London: Taylor &

Francis.

Labov, W. (2002) Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors. Vol. 2. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Lemke. J. (1996) Textual Politics. London: Taylor & Francis.

Luria, A.R. (1982) Language and Cognition. New York: John Wiley.

Luke, A. (1996) Genres of power? In R. Hasan & G. Williams, (eds.) Literacy in Society

(pp. 303-338). London: Longman.

Luke, A. (2004) Two takes on the critical. In B. Norton & K. Toohey, (eds.) Critical

Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 21-29). Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Marx, K. (1845/1972) Early Writings. Trans. T.B. Bottomore. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1846/1972) The German Ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Mey, J. (1985) Whose Language: A Study in Linguistic Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.

Milroy, L. (1987) Social Networks. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pennycook, A. (1998). English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge.

Voloshinov. V.I. (1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar

Press.

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Keywords: social class, power, capital, equality, globalisation, social networks,

sociology of language, Bourdieu, Marx, codes, education, reproduction, language loss,

language change, language retention, gender, identity, habitus

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Possible cross-references: ideology, poststructuralism, language planning, critical

discourse analysis, cultural capital, sociology

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Biographical Notes:

Allan Luke is Dean of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National

Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His most recent

books include: Struggles over Difference (State University of New York Press) and

Bourdieu and Literacy Education (Lawrence Erlbaum). He is coeditor of the journal

Pedagogy: An International Journal (Erlbaum). His research interests are in language

and literacy education, educational policy and sociology, and critical discourse analysis.

He is currently working on studies of pedagogy in Asia.

Phillip Graham holds a Canada Research Chair in Communication and Technology at the

University of Waterloo, Ontario and is Reader in Communication at the University of

Queensland, Australia. He is coeditor of the journal Critical Discourse Studies

(Routledge). His research interests include political economy of communication, new

media and discourse analysis.

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