IN the NAME of ALLAH, the MOST

BENIFICIENT, the MOST MERCIFIL

Linguistic and Social Inequality

By:
Waseem Azhar Gilany
 Linguistic and Social Inequality
 Introduction
 Use of different linguistic items by a speaker for
communicating the same message with in different
social situation gave birth to the idea of linguistic and
social inequality. When a speaker makes a choice with
in the vast range of linguistic choices, the selection
made by the speaker shows a degree of preference for
any choice. All this depends on the social and
educational status of the speaker.
 Means to say people have different levels of linguistic
competence and linguistic performance which provide
basis for the notion of linguistic inequality.
 In the same way people with different social
and cultural background shows the levels of
social inequality as well as different social
status.

 In the twentieth century, linguistic

commonalities have been given more
importance than the linguistic differences. The
linguists have been trying to find similarities
among all the languages of the world. Inspite
these notions based on linguistic equality, it is
acknowledged that linguistic and social
inequality affects the language and its use to a
great extent.
Types of Linguistic Inequality

Linguistic
Inequality

Subjective Linguistic Communicative

Inequality Inequality Inequality
 1. Subjective Inequality
 It concerns what people think about each
other’s speech. Linguistic Prejudice is a product
of subjective inequality.
 It is a very common notion that people are
thought more or less intelligent or friendly
according to the way they speak. This is a
common thinking that right way of speaking
conveys that the speaker is much valuable than
the one who uses wrong way of speaking. So
language is a source of social inequality.
 2. Linguistic Inequality
 It is typically a different concept than which
runs through the whole chapter as general idea
of the linguistic inequality. It relates to the
linguistic items that a person knows. The linguistic
items one knows show the experience of the person.
Vocabulary is the field where this experience can be
most obvious where some individual has a rich set of
technical terminology for a particular field of life e.g.
agriculture, fishing, linguistics etc. In different social
situation the people perform differently because of the
linguistic items they know.
 3. Communicative Inequality
 It is concerned with knowledge of how to use
linguistic items to communicate successfully rather
than simply with knowledge of linguistic items. In the
past the importance of linguistic inequality has been
over exaggerated. But communicative inequality refers
to the kind of knowledge or skill that is needed when
using speech to interact with other people.

 Linguistic prejudice is the phenomenon that is the

major cause of linguistic inequality and social
inequality. It is going to be dealt in detail in the next
coming discussion
 Linguistic Prejudice
 A speaker uses speech as a source of social
distinction. He always communicates to let the other
people know about his position. On the other hand
listener is also keen to make value judgments about
the speaker’s social status.
 A speaker sent social signals to show his
position in the multidimensional social space.
The habit of using signals as a source of
information about the speaker is called linguistic
prejudice.
 The judgments based on speech can be called
instances of prejudice. These judgments
can be better called value-judgments based on speech.
 Types of Linguistic
Prejudice
Cognitive
Uncertainty

Linguistic
Prejudice

Linguistic Prestige
Insecurity
 1. Cognitive Uncertainty
 People use speech as a source of information
about he speaker in order to plan their
behavior. Speech gives us information about
speaker’s value, reactions, morals etc. this
basic need for information about the other
person has been called Cognitive Uncertainty
(Berger Calabrese 1975, Berger 1979).
 This theory can be explained on the base of the
basic concept of prototype.
 Example 1
 When a person is given a plate of food to eat,
he is in the state of cognitive uncertainty, then
he made guesses on the base of his experience
of prototypes among the eatable. Then he
could conclude what kind of dish, he is going to
eat.
 Example 2
 Toughness in speech can be valued negatively
as well as positively in different societies. (for
roughness/ bravery)
 A person’s speech pattern is a permanent
aspect of his social identity. Multidimensional
nature of linguist variants can place an
individual to some extent with a number of
different groups at the same time.
 Example 1

Keeping a working class accent while adopting

middle class syntax and vocabulary.
 Example 2

If parents tell children that their own way of

speaking is the ‘Right One’ then they will
automatically follow that other groups speak
less well.
 2. Linguistic Insecurity

 Some groups of people in Britain and Untied

States do not believe that they speak better
than others but on the contrary think that they
speak badly. This phenomenon is known as
Linguistic Insecurity (Labov 1972). Schools
and the media can be channels for creating
such kind of linguistic prejudices.
 3. Prestige
 Degree of preference for any set of linguistic items
determines the prestige given to any language.
 Example
A child who adopts the language of the upper class may
lose the respect and affection of his friend’s respect and
even that of his family. So he cannot give up all the
forms of his local group. He will use a mixture of both
the forms of language. He will select positive images of
both the classes. But he gives preferences to upper-
class (it is known as overt prestige) and the use of
selected local forms (covert prestige).

Another factor involved in determing the notion of

social inequality is the study of Stereo Types which we
are going to discuss here
 Stereo Types
 For people speech is a clue to non-linguistic information
about the speaker’s social background and personality
traits like toughness or intelligence etc. People use
informations in term of prototype.
 There is a characteristic of speech A
 And a characteristic of personality B
 A will be used both as a characteristic of speech
through which the characteristic of personality B can be
identified.

 A (speech) B (Personally)
 A define (A)  and b
 A (stereotype) performs two functions at a time
 For the analysis of stereotype, we can assume that here
A can be referred as ling variable and B  non-linguistic
variable.
 Subjective Reaction Test is the method for the analysis
 Subjective Reaction Test
 We will use Subjective Reaction Test (Lambert
Montreal) to analyze the stereotypes.
 Here the investigator prepares a tape-recording
(recording of a series of people reading the same
content or passage). Listener whose stereotypes are
going to be investigated might be asked to make ten
to twenty judgments about the owner of the speech
and to fill a questionnaire. His judgments can then be
compared from one voice to another. The listener for
example would be asked to locate the speaker
somewhere on a particular scale such as toughness,
intelligence, friendliness or geographical area. Seven
point scale can be used for this purpose let say:
 ii. very tough
iii. tough
iv. somewhat tough
v. neutral
vi. somewhat gentle
vii. gentle
viii. very gentle

Different voices evoke different stereotype

in the mind of the same persons, whilst the
same voice may suggest different
stereotypes to different people. To conclude
we can say that Stereotypes (speech) are
sources to identify stereotypes (personality).
 Linguistic Prejudice Working in
Educational System

 Now again we will explore the notion of

linguistic prejudice in order to have better view
about linguistic and social inequality. Here
linguistic prejudices on the behalf of members
of educational institutions are going to be
discussed.
 Prejudice of Teachers:
 Prejudice of Pupils
 Prejudice of Teachers

 Through educational system upper class

prejudices prevail in society. School teachers
and their pupils both have fixed speech
stereotypes and we can identify a number of
ways in which teacher’s prejudice may present
problems for their pupils.
 Concluded by (Giles & Powerland 1925) there
can be certain evidences that most of the
teacher base their impressions of pupils on
speech forms in preference to other sources of
information
 Example 1
 Giles and Powerland compare three types

of information; a photograph, a recorded

example of speech and an example of
school work and found that speech is given
more weightage.
 Example 2

 It is also significant that, intelligence test

and formal tests of ability used by the

educational system put much emphasis on
language.
 Assuming that teachers form their first
impressions of a pupil on the base of their
speech there is a problem for a child whose
speech leads to a negative impressions in
teachers mind. The negative expectations by the
teacher will lead to negative performance by the
pupils.
 . Even the teachers especially at primacy level do
not speak standard British English, then how can
teacher expect the student to speak standard
British English.
 If teacher because of linguistic prejudice is not
ready to speak standard British English, how can
we expect a child to overlook his linguist
prejudices in order to speak Standard British
English.
 Prejudice of Pupils
 First of all the questions arise whether linguistic
prejudice exists in school children or not.
Different researches as Howard Giles (1925)
show that;

 The children below secondary school would be

unaware of difference between the local accent
and accent of teacher.
 In the secondary school career they were found
aware of difference of accent and dialects.
 Perhaps the children paid more attention to the
message when it was in their accent a Perhaps
they were more inclined to trust the opinion of
someone who sounded like one of themselves.
 It seems that the lingguistic prejudice of both
teachers and pupils are potential sources of
serious problem in Education process. Here
Hudson suggests no solution to these
problems. His only purpose is to prove that
linguistic prejudice can create Educational
Problems on the behalf of both teachers and
pupils.
 Reasons for Linguistic Prejudice
 Linguistic Incompetence
 Competence, defined by Chomsky, is person’s specific
linguistic knowledge, and the notion of linguistic
incompetence concerns the lack of linguistic
knowledge of any language. Ling incompetence can
be a feature of language of babies and L2 learners
and if some one forgot his/her L1. Deficit Theory
 The claim that linguistic incompetence is found in the
children from lower-class houses is known as Deficit
Theory. This theory can be a dangerous nonsense
that many school systems put the blame of their
educational failure on the inadequacies of the child.
 Some children rarely give anything more than a
single word in his answer to a teacher and some
teachers conclude that the child is incompetent. But
it is possible that fault lies not in child’s linguistic
competence but in the situation. He might be a very
good speaker in his family or friends. The student
underestimated in this way faces a lot of problems
during his educational career.
 Bernsten (1960’s) claimed that there are two ways
of using language.
 1. Elaborated Code
 It is a kind of speech which is relatively explicit and
is a kind of speech required to be used in a formal
context or situarion.
 2. Restricted Code
 This is a kind of speech used between the people
who know each other well.
 It is claimed that people from lower working
class use only restricted code. Whereas most of
the members of higher class use both restricted
and elaborated ode according to circumstances.

 The Scale of Vocabulary

 On the scale of vocabulary we can say that there are
no significant differences in overall size of vocabulary
of lower and upper class children. The above
statement is about quantity of vocabulary. But when
we come to the quality we can say there is remarkable
difference in the use of vocabulary between the
working class children with low proficiency and upper
class with high proficiency in language use.
 Communicative Incompetence

 Communicative Competence is knowledge of

language needed by a speaker or hearer to
grasp the message effectively. It includes our
knowledge or ability to use linguistic forms
appropriately.
 Example
When to speak? and when not?
What to talk? with whom, when, where and
in what manner?
 There is a clear difference between who have been to
school and those who not been to school. Non-
schooled uses non-logical thinking. While Schooled
are taught logical thinking to solve Traditional
Syllogism in order to create communicative
competence.
 Example
 All people who own houses pay a house tax.
 Bioma does not pay a have tax.
 Does Bioma, own a house?
 Some children do not want to learn the school’s
schemata because of Subtractive Bilingualism. It
creates a difficulty for school in persuading some
children to accept some of schemata of school.
 Some children do not want to learn the school’s schemata
because of Subtractive Bilingualism. It creates a difficulty for
school in persuading some children to accept some of schemata
of school.

 The Communicative Competence of Lower-class

Children
 Having seen what lower-class children do badly, it is only fair to
look at some of the things they often do well.
 Example 1
 Picture: A man standing by a broken window and shouting on a
boy.
Described by Middle class (Implicitly)
Working class (Explicitly)
 Example 2
Making up a Bed-Time story.
Lower class girl: More fluent
Lower class boy: Least fluent
Middle class children: In between both of them.
 Conclusion
 The main problem of lower-class children at school is a culture-
clash between middle-class culture, which controls the teacher’s
behavior, and lower-class culture, to which the children are
accustomed.
 It can be suggested that in order to achieve the objectives of the
educational system we should make use of communicative
competence within the child’s own culture which he brings to
school,.
 In the multidimensional social space, speaker always
communicate to let the other people know about his position in
it.
 On the other hand listener also tries to draw conclusions about
the speaker’s position in this multidimensional social space.
 A speaker sent social signals to show his position in this
multidimensional social space in the form of the choice of
linguistic items while communicating in society.
 It seems very right to say ‘Linguistic inequality breeds social
inequality and social inequality breeds linguistic inequality.’
 The End

ALLAH HAFIZ

Thanks