Dialect In Social Class

Sociolects and dialects in England’s Social classes

The social structure of England has been highly influenced by the different social classes. The Great British Class Survey divided the social system into 7 classes:

1. The Elite

2. Established middle class

3. Technical middle class

4. New affluent workers

5. Traditional working class

6. Emergent service worker

7. Precariat

Every social class has a different variety of the English language. This means that someone from the Underclass can or will use different words than someone from the Upper class, articulates the words in another way or uses different rules regarding to grammar.

In almost every social class you have different ‘sociolects’.

Lower and Working class

Here are some of the accents most commonly used in the Lower and Working class: The Scouse accent, is the accent and dialect of Liverpool, it’s commonly used by the working class people in the Merseyside area. Cockney is the accent commonly used by the working class people in East London. Multicultural London English is a dialect which is mainly spoken by younger people of the working class in London.

Now to give you a better insight on how the Scouse accent is spoken:

1. The CK or K sound is often replaced by a kind of Dutch G sound. You would say pig, gan of goge, lige. Instead of pick, can of coke, like.

2. The T sound at the end of a word is sometimes replaced with a weak H sound, for example that.

3. The word book can be pronounced differently, for example as bewk, while other words like took or look are often pronounced as tuck and luck;

To give you an insight on how the Cockney accent is spoken:

1. The TH sound is often replaced by a F sound, For example, if you would count it will go like one, two, free. Think will become Fink

The clipped phrases and lengthened vowels characterise the posh social dialect. This archaic type of speaking can lead to embarrassing situations where the speaker is simply not understood.

What is it that makes the speech patterns of the upper class distinct from other speakers of RP? Every syllable is sounded but some letters are clipped, ‘I’, ‘e’ and ‘a’ coming in for some particularly rough treatment.

Received Pronunciation, also known as RP, is considered to be the standard English in the United Kingdom, but only 3% of the people in Britain actually speak Received Pronunciation. The most famous speakers of Received Pronunciation are: The Royal British Family and David Cameron, The old Prime Minister of the UK.

Posh

Posh is an accent only spoken by people in the Upper class.

To give you an insight, here are some words only people with a posh accent will use:

Pip Pip, which is a posh way of saying goodbye;

Poppycock, means nonsense;

Spiffing, is a posh way of saying excellent;

Beastly, is a posh way of saying that something is very unpleasant;

Jolly, is a word to make things sound more British English, for example: We’re having a jolly good