[ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class

[Lee Corbin]

More people today are aware of class differences within America than in 1983
when Paul Fussell wrote his immortal book "Class"
http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253
(This hugely informative book is even extremely funny. I even find that it's difficult
to talk about class in the United States who haven't read this wonderful book.)

The United States had been very egalitarian in the 1950s and 1960s, much
more so than before or since. By 1950 the earnings and wealth gap between
the richest 5% and the poorest 5% had greatly diminished. As that gap has
widened ever since, it is possible, though, that it's less visible and has a smaller
effect because people stay inside more and are addicted to their own cable
TV and their own web sites.  Just a conjecture.

Especially thirty or forty years ago, but still very strongly today I propose,
an important class marker is whether you pronounce the "g" in "ing" words.
I'm disappointed that some of the people I knew in high school who spoke
"normally" then have begun saying "walkin'", "talkin'", and "thinkin'". (Now
one of them is a doctor, and I have noticed that a number of doctors, e.g.
Dr. Dean Edell on radio, deliberately drop their "g"s just to come across
as plain folks in the belief, so I suggest, that they think this reduces the distance
between them and their patients or listeners.)

But whether or not the g's are pronounced is probably still the best single
index of whether someone is middle class or lower class, and I wonder
what other people's observations are.

As the middle classes retreat more and more to blogs, surfing, and the
written world, lower class behavior has almost completely taken over
the huge and very public audiences of television and the movies. The
big majority of comedies now feature lower class characters (and
even actors), or so it seems to me.

Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other
linguistic markers of class have people noticed?

Lee