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3 L a n G U aG e , c L a s s , a n D c o D e s Language is a particularly effective mechanism for maintaining distinctions among social classes because it functions both to communicate and signal identity, with one function frequently disguised as the other. Teachers, for example, may correct working-class students’ deviations from the conventions of middle-class English, telling the students that the errors make their writing difficult to understand when in fact the teachers are correcting social class behavior manifested through language codes. Behind this masking lies the clear message that the social groups speaking through these “incorrect” language codes are incorrect social groups. Wo rki n G -cL ass enGLi sh Although working-class English is one of the more insistently devalued dialects, it hasn’t received much press because it’s not interpreted as a dialect. Beyond Bernstein’s (1971) research of working-class English at the level of codes, we have to date no systematic study of working-class English as a dialect. Although we are surrounded by it, working-class English hasn’t been considered an object worthy of study. But middle-class speakers recognize working-class English when they hear it. I have recorded snippets of language from working-class speakers in my family. They will say, for example, “you done good” for “you did well.” We might guess that working-class speakers don’t distinguish between adjectival and adverbial forms if the distinction carries no additional meaning other than social class membership. This rule would be a linguistic expression of Bourdieu’s (1984) thesis that the working classes, because of their close relationship to necessity, privilege function over form. Within the dominant classes, where class membership is signaled by one’s distance from necessity, the obverse is true. Form is privileged because through it, speakers signal their social class membership. A working-class speaker will use “done” rather than the middle-class form, “did.” It seems that when there is a spelling change between the Language, Class, and Codes 29 present and past tenses (a strong verb), working-class speakers will substitute the past participle (done) for the past tense (did). My father, for instance, said the following when referring to the setting sun: “I seen her set,” and this, when referring to the temperature: “It was fifty-two last I seen.” Similarly, he said, “two more of ‘em [eagles] come from over there.” Perhaps the working-class rule is this: if you’re uncertain, use the past participle for both past and perfect tenses. When using it for the perfect tense, drop the auxiliary. In any case, use the most common form of the verb. People will understand what you mean. My father uses “has got” for “has” (“That’s got milk in it”), the pronoun “them” for both “them” and the demonstrative “those” (“Well, I hope them groups can make a go of it”). Working-class speakers freely use the verboten double negative (“Oh, he didn’t have no money”) and double verbs for emphasis (“I went and pulled him [a fish] in the net and the bottom opened and he got right out”). As many linguists have noted, the working-class “ain’t” is a useful contraction for “am not,” “is not,” or “are not” (“He ain’t going”) or for “has not” and “have not” (“We ain’t got no room for that”). “There is” works perfectly well for “there are” (“There’s some nests [the eagles again] down along the road. She taking them down there inside someplace”). Notice that by saying “She taking,” my father feels free to dispense with the auxiliary in the progressive tense. Phrases are perfectly functional (“Warm today”). And the object forms of personal pronouns work equally as well in the nominative case (“Me and Gordon used to do it like that”). In these and many other examples of working-class English, a middle -class interlocutor would clearly understand what the speaker meant. The middle-class speaker might, however, imagine that the working-class English is inferior because it is less precise, not having the more variable forms available for different shades of meaning. But the difference is largely one of codes that signal social class membership. For example, a few years ago I had a graduate student teaching assistant (I think she came from an upper-middle class background) give me a sample of her student’s in-class writing and complain that she...

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