Language is one of unique tools to identify you and there are many factors that have a strong relationship with it. Social Class is one of them that have an interesting ways to interact with language in our everyday life. It may not be obviously seen, but when you find one you will find many examples all around you. In this essay, I will mention examples of how language and social class interact together from my personal experience and also from the articles that is related.
From reading my classmates’ discussion boards, I noticed that there are several fellow students feel they are considered as a lower social class than they actually are, because of the language they use. It was surprising to know how many people think their language is associated …show more content…
Interviews were by individuals in secondary schools in the United Kingdom. When reading the article, I noticed that several of them who belongs to lower social classes, but had education with people who are in higher social class were concerned about their language usage. This is because they do not want to sound bossy by using big words to lower social class people, but they do not want higher social classes’ people to think they are uneducated. Nicole’s interview in the article was my favorite because, she said, “as long as we understand each other, that’s all what really matter.” (Spencer, Clegg and Stackhouse 134). This is so true and it is sad that these days, language is one of the tools that people use to label each other. Language is one very beautiful thing to identify you and people does not appreciate enough about it. Also, I noticed that many people who is in lower social class and do not have good education is actually very proud of their own language and using slang words. I found very interesting the relationship between language, social classes and education level because they will affect which language people use and the way of thinking of the language they …show more content…
I realized this when I was watching TV shows. Higher social classes’ characters almost never use curse words to compare to lower classes’ characters using curse words very often. Moreover, I noticed that higher classes’ characters tend to use unique curse words. For example, they mean “holy shit” but they change it to “holy moly” or “holy stars.” In addition, I think upper social class people have more taboo words than the lower social class people. When I noticed these facts, I read an article about taboo language to learn a little more about it. In “A Sociolinguistic Study of English Taboo Language,” Gao talks about various taboos of linguistic. This article surprised me because the definition of taboo language right now and the origin of taboo language was totally different. After learning about taboo language, I was curious about the relationship between social class and taboo language. However, I am planning to do more research so that I can talk about it more in the future
From reading my classmates’ discussion boards, I noticed that there are several fellow students feel they are considered as a lower social class than they actually are, because of the language they use. It was surprising to know how many people think their language is associated …show more content…
Interviews were by individuals in secondary schools in the United Kingdom. When reading the article, I noticed that several of them who belongs to lower social classes, but had education with people who are in higher social class were concerned about their language usage. This is because they do not want to sound bossy by using big words to lower social class people, but they do not want higher social classes’ people to think they are uneducated. Nicole’s interview in the article was my favorite because, she said, “as long as we understand each other, that’s all what really matter.” (Spencer, Clegg and Stackhouse 134). This is so true and it is sad that these days, language is one of the tools that people use to label each other. Language is one very beautiful thing to identify you and people does not appreciate enough about it. Also, I noticed that many people who is in lower social class and do not have good education is actually very proud of their own language and using slang words. I found very interesting the relationship between language, social classes and education level because they will affect which language people use and the way of thinking of the language they …show more content…
I realized this when I was watching TV shows. Higher social classes’ characters almost never use curse words to compare to lower classes’ characters using curse words very often. Moreover, I noticed that higher classes’ characters tend to use unique curse words. For example, they mean “holy shit” but they change it to “holy moly” or “holy stars.” In addition, I think upper social class people have more taboo words than the lower social class people. When I noticed these facts, I read an article about taboo language to learn a little more about it. In “A Sociolinguistic Study of English Taboo Language,” Gao talks about various taboos of linguistic. This article surprised me because the definition of taboo language right now and the origin of taboo language was totally different. After learning about taboo language, I was curious about the relationship between social class and taboo language. However, I am planning to do more research so that I can talk about it more in the future