2. Language and Socioeconomic Status
Physical features such as wide bodies of water and high mountain ranges are not the only kind of boundaries that can separate people and promote language variation. Social boundaries can also classify people into groups and create differences in the ways they speak. Among these boundaries is socioeconomic status, which divides speakers on the basis of their social classes. In this section, we will study the effect of socioeconomic status on the speech patterns of speakers in different social classes.
2.1 Standard versus Nonstandard Varieties
In many societies, especially large societies, the population can be stratified according to socioeconomic status. Since communication within a group is usually more intense than communication across groups, speakers of the same socioeconomic classes are likely to develop their distinct from of language. Two language varieties that arise from speakers’ socioeconomic classes are the standard and nonstandard dialects. These two varieties differ from each other in terms of linguistic characteristics and also the group of speakers they are associated with.