Prestige varieties

Standard English (often shortened to S.E. within linguistic circles) is a term generally applied to a form of the English language that is thought to be normative for educated native speakers. It encompasses grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and to some degree pronunciation. Let u remember the ways in which linguistic variables are correlated with social class. These variables can also be used in the same sort of way to illustrate gender differentiation. Consider the following data. In Detroit, higher-class speakers use fewer instances of non-standard multiple negation (e.g. I don't want none) than lower-class speakers. Within this social class, however, women on average use fewer such forms than men do. Women are far more sensitive to the nature of this grammatical feature than men. In the speech of Detroit Blacks, for instance, women use a far higher percentage of non-prevocalic [r] (a prestige feature here in New York) than men. Some writers have attempted to explain this sort of pattern in the black community by pointing out that the lower-class black ghetto family is typically matriarchal and that it is the mother of the family who conducts business with the outside world and who has job contacts with speakers of prestige varieties.

This explanation is not adequate, however, since exactly the same pattern is found in the white community and in British English. In Norwich English, for example, the same sort of pattern emerges with the [- ing] variable (whether speakers say walking or walkin'). The table below gives the percentage of non-RP [- ing ] forms used by the speakers in different class and sex groups:

MMC LMC UWC MWC LWC

Male 4 27 81 91 100

Female 0 3 68 81 97

Once again, women use a higher percentage of 'better' forms than men do. In London English, too, men are more likely than women to use glottal stops in words like butter and but. And this phenomenon is not confined only to British and American English. In South Africa, for example, research has been carried out in the Transvaal, comparing the speech of English-speaking male and female high-school pupils of the same age in the same town. A study was made of the pronunciation of four vowels:

1. The vowel of gate, which in South Africa ranges from high-prestige RP [geit] to low-prestige South African [ge:it], with a lower and more central first element to the diphthong, as in RP bird.

2. The vowel of can't, which ranges fromRP [ka:nt] to South African [ko:nt], with a vowel close in quality to that found in RP on - a low back rounded vowel.

3. The vowel of out, which ranges from RP[aut] to South African [æut], with a higher front first element resembling the vowel in RP cat.

4. The vowel in boy, which ranges from RP [boi] to a variant with a high back rounded first element [bui] as in RP school.

The results, giving the percentage of boys and girls using each variant in each case is rather interesting. The boys are much more likely than the girls to use non-standard local pronunciations.

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