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BRITISH IDENTITY:

CLASS

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WHAT IS CLASS?

Social class involves grouping people together and according

them status within society according to the groups they belong to.

WHAT DETERMINES SOCIAL CLASS?

-ACCENT-WHERE THE PERSON LIVES

-OCCUPATION-INCOME-EDUCATION

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OTHER FACTORS THAT DETERMINE SOCIAL CLASS

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CLASS IN BRITAIN

There were originally three social classes:

UPPER , MIDDLE AND LOWER

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NEW CLASSES IN BRITAIN

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LANGUAGE AND CLASS

Language most shows a man Speak that I maysee thee Bernard Shaw

All English people, whether they admit it or not, are fitted with a sort of social Global

Positioning Satellite computer that tells us a persons position on the class map as soonas he or she begins to speak.

There are two main factors involved in the calculation of this position: terminology and

pronunciation the words you use and how you say them.

Pronunciation is a more reliable indicator.

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STANDARD BRITISH ENGLISH

-The variety of the English language that is generally used in

professional writing in Britain (or, more narrowly defined, in

England or in southeast England) and taught in British schools.

-Standard English is what is seen as, the 'educated norm'.

-It's the language of formal written English - of newspapers, letters, reports

It's also, to some extent, spoken, by what could be described as an

'educated elite'.

-Sometime seen as POSH English

http://grammar.about.com/od/e/g/englishlanguageterm.htmhttp://grammar.about.com/od/e/g/englishlanguageterm.htm

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NON STANDARD BRITISH ENGLISH

-Non-standard English is everything else - the accents,the dialects, the vocabulary that vary according towhere you live, or what social group you're in.

-Non-standard forms were just as expressive andwonderful as standard - they have their own rules andwere in no way inferior.

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ACCENTS

RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION

-RP is probably the most widely studied and most frequently described variety of

spoken English in the world, yet recent estimates suggest only 2% of the UK

population speak it.

-It is the accent on which phonemic transcriptions in dictionaries are based, and it is

widely used (in competition with General American) for teaching English as a foreign

language.

-It's identified not so much with a particular region as with a particular social group,

although it has connections with the accent of Southern England.-RP is associated with educated speakers and formal speech.

-It has connotations of prestige and authority, but also of privilege and arrogance.

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COCKNEY

-The term Cockney has geographical, social, and linguistic

associations.

-Traditionally, it refers to people born within

a certain area of London covered by the sound of Bowbells , that is St Mary-Le-Bow Church in Cheapside,

London.

-The word is often erroneously used to refer to

working-class Londoners in the East End , in the district

known as Bow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_bellshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_bellshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_End_of_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow,_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow,_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_End_of_Londonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_bellshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_bellshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_bells

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OTHER ACCENTS

-Estuary English (Southeast British)-West Country (Southwest British)-Midlands English-Northern England English-Geordie-Welsh English-Scottish English

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LINGUISTIC DISCRIMINATION

-It is the unfair treatment of an individual basedsolely on their use of language.-This use of language may include the individual'snative language or other characteristics of the

person's speech, such as an accent , the size ofvocabulary (whether the person uses complexand varied words ),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accent_%28dialect%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabularyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabularyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accent_%28dialect%29