Introducing Sociolinguistics by Meyerhoff Miriam

Author:Meyerhoff, Miriam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Like the notion of the speech community, class can be seen as being inherently about division or it can be seen as a construct that emphasises consensuality. The divisions inherent in Marx’s theory of social class were fundamental to his ideas about class conflict. Weber’s theory, on the other hand, allowed for class identity to be shaped by perceived similarity as well as difference. In the next chapter, we’ll look at approaches to social class that also pay attention to patterns of association – what we do and who we interact with in doing it.

As we will see, the notion of contrast (and sometimes conflict) has been influential in shaping how some sociolinguists interpret linguistic variation that is stratified by social class, and it colours the explanation for some patterns of variability within a larger speech community. In this work, the term ‘class’ is used more in the sense of Weber’s notion of class as being based on a series of social actions. When we come to discuss the concept of communities of practice later in this chapter, we will see that this takes Weber’s notion of participation in shared social actions to an even more refined level of analysis.

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