Social Dialects in America: Some General Observations
 

•  All languages contain social or class differences in dialects, including America.  It is important to recognize that to some extent one can be wealthy (or even powerful) and not belong to the upper class. Social class involves more than the amount of money one makes; it includes a variety of overt and often more subtle cultural behaviors, including language.

• Class differences are not the same in every culture or country. For example, in England members of the British upper class generally speak what is called Received Pronunciation or RP, even if they come from different regions of the country.  This variety of British speech is heard in upper class homes and reinforced through specific educational institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge.

•  In America, class differences are influenced by a variety of social and economic factors including such things as income, education, family background, ethnicity, region, and ethnicity.  It might be more appropriate to say that American does not have one upper class but many different upper classes that are related hierarchically to each other based on a variety of factors.  The same thing can be said for lower socio-economic classes.  Therefore, different regions will construct social classes in different ways.

• Social classes always exist within different ethnic groups, even as these groups as a whole (or as individuals) struggle to fit into the larger patterns of social class in America.

• Media celebrities, athletes, and politicians function in our country as a variant of upper class "royalty." But they do not constitute a social group in terms of language.

• While General (Standard) American Pronunciation (or TV newspeak) functions as a sort of language standard for the country, its prestige is not directly associated with social class. If anything, it exists as the standard because it appears to contain no traces of socially or regionally stigmatized dialect markers.