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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 423

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

The only way is /s/: Doing gender and constructing class in the southeast of England

Authors: Levon, Erez (1); Holmes-Elliott, Sophie (2)
Submitted by: Levon, Erez (Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom)

In this paper, we revisit the impact of gender and social class on language (e.g., Eckert 1989, 2000; Labov 1990; Milroy et al 1994; Dubois & Horvath 1998) by investigating how speakers use gendered linguistic patterns as a way of constructing class-based identities (cf. Stuart-Smith 2007). Specifically,we consider the ways in which gendered indexicality interacts with the enactment of social class and argue for the need to treat gender and class as interdependent sociolinguistic constructs.

We focus on observed variation in the phonetic realisation of the voiceless alveolar fricative by speakers in two British television programmes: Made in Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex. In particular, we examine variation between a more fronted articulation of /s/ and a more backed variant that can at times perceptually resemble [ʃ]. The television programmes from which our data are drawn are both "scripted reality" shows that follow a group of young friends in the greater London area. The class stratified sample – upper-class Chelsea and working-class Essex – provide an ideal test site for examining how gender and social class are imagined and linguistically constructed by the relevant communities of speakers (e.g., Schilling-Estes 1998; Coupland 2001).

Results of a multivariate analysis of 1200 tokens of /s/ produced by 16 speakers in our sample demonstrate a systematic pattern of sex-differentiation across all speakers: women have significantly higher centres of gravity (CoG) and spectral peak frequencies in their /s/ productions than the men, as consistent with previous work on this feature (e.g., Munson et al 2006; Stuart-Smith 2007). Further analysis reveals that this differentiation is quantitatively much more extreme in Essex than it is in Chelsea. In Chelsea, women’s CoG and peak frequency levels are only slightly higher than the men’s, and there is substantial overlap in the distributions. By contrast, the Essex women’s CoGs and peak frequencies are on average nearly twice those of the Essex men’s, and there is little overlap in the distributions. In addition, cross-group comparisons reveal significant differences within the sexes: the Essex women’s CoG and peak frequency values are significantly higher than those of the Chelsea women, while the Essex men’s values are significantly lower than those of the Chelsea men. Overall then, Essex women are shown to have the most fronted realisations of /s/, Essex men the most backed, and Chelsea speakers lie in between.

While sex-linked differences are evident in both groups of speakers, we suggest that Essex speakers exaggerate these differences so as to create hyper-gendered articulations of /s/ as part of their construction of a distinctive class-based identity. We support this interpretation with information regarding other social practices in which Essex speakers engage. We also discuss the ramifications of our analysis for sociolinguistic treatments of gender and social class more broadly.