[ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 27, 2007, at 11:35 AM, gts wrote:

> On Sun, 27 May 2007 12:34:57 -0400, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other
>> linguistic markers of class have people noticed?
>
> Though born and raised in the suburbs of the SF Bay Area, I left Ca  
> long
> ago and never looked back. Since then I have lived all over this great
> land, among the rich and the poor from North to South to East and  
> West.
> I've noticed many different dialects and ways of speaking, and I  
> have to
> say it's a bit disturbing to me to think of them as linguistic  
> markers of
> "class". Am I being too PC, Lee? Maybe.
>

It isn't a matter of dialect particularly at all.  I find that soft- 
spoken, slow southern drawl very charming but then I grew up with  
it.   It is more a matter of attitudes and lifestyle.   As I have  
joked (but it was no joke) except for the books we kids owned (almost  
all mine) the only books in my childhood home were the Bible, the  
Sears catalog and Guidepost magazine.    I never saw my father so  
angry in public (privately was a very different matter) than when  
someone referred to me as an intellectual when I was 13.  What really  
burned him was that they meant it as a complement.   To him that was  
a very pejorative remark.   The biggest reason that I left the South  
is there were to many people who cared about hunting, fishing, maybe  
their church and their kids and that was it.  Anything else was too  
"controversial".    Not that I didn't know some fine minds there.   
They were just too far in between.


- samantha