¹ Two recent review articles on sociological research on social status are: Donald G. MacRae, Social Stratification: A Trend Report, Current Sociology 2 (1953–4), and Harold W. Pfautz, The Current Literature on Social Stratification: Critique and Bibliography, The American Journal of Sociology 58.391–418 (1953). The former is a comprehensive, international survey; the latter focuses on research done in the United States since 1945. Neither lists any study dealing with language as a status related factor; the former does mention ‘vocabulary and speech structure’ as an area to which social psychologists should devote more attention. A recently published article by J. O. Hertzler, Toward a Sociology of Language, Social Forces 32.109–19 (1953) gives a resume of work done in this field by social psychologists, ethnologists, and linguists. Hertzler states that sociologists have ‘merely skirted the edges of the sociology of language.‘ Outlining possible future research for sociologists in this field, Hertzler makes mention of the status-language relationship. Paul Hanly Furfey, The Scope and Method of Sociology (New York, 1953), discusses the neglect of the social significance of language by sociologists as a weakness in their use of the cultural approach to the study of society, citing language as a factor which might prove highly significant in the comparison of class cultures.

² The following studies reflect an acute awareness of the importance of social differentiation as it affects language: Hans Kurath et al., Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England (Providence, 1939); Raven I. McDavid, Dialect Geography and Social Science Problems, Soc. Forces 25.168–72 (1946), and Post-vocalic /-r/ in South Carolina: A Social Analysis, American Speech 23.194–203 (1948); Kurath, A Word Geography of the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor, 1949); Allan F. Hubbell, The Pronunciation of English in New York City (New York, 1950); McDavid, Regional and Social Differences in Southern Pronunciation (A paper read at the Sixth University of Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, April 25, 1953); E. Bagby Atwood, A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor, 1953). A pioneering study which focussed directly on the status-language relationship is, American English Grammar, The Grammatical Structure of Present-Day American English with Especial Reference to Social Differences or Class Dialects (New York, 1940), by Charles C. Fries. A dissertation now in progress at the University of Minnesota by Virginia McDavid, Regional and Social Differences in the Grammar of American English, is also concerned with grammatical differences among people of different social status; her study is based on spoken language whereas Fries' is based on written language. Another work as yet unpublished, directed by Stanley M. Sapon, and described by him in A Methodology for the Study of Socio-Economic Differentials in Linguistic Phenomena, Studies in Linguistics 11.57–68 (1953), will describe the speech patterns of the several social classes of a Spanish-speaking city. The present study differs from Sapon's in that it describes the language of one low status group in an American-English speaking city. (Dr. Sapon very kindly made his paper available to the authors in February, 1953; it was especially valuable for its suggestions for eliciting data for the tape-recorded interview.)

³ All proper names which might serve to identify the study group or particular informants are disguised.

⁴ Gladys Sellew, A Deviant Social Situation A Court (Washington, 1938); Mary Elizabeth Walsh, Cultural Disorganization of the Negro Family in an Area of Economic Blight, American Catholic Sociological Review 7.96–106 (1946), and, Profiles of the Negro Family in an Area of Economic Blight, Amer. Cath. sociol. Rev. 7.154–62 (1946); Marion M. Ratigan, A Sociological Survey of Disease in Four Alleys in the National Capital (Washington, 1946), are four studies which give valuable insight into the culture of Washington's inhabited alleys. In an M. A. thesis written at the Catholic University of America, The Inhabited Alleys of Washington and Early Social History of One Alley (Washington, 1953), Daniel O'Connell gives a comprehensive review of the literature concerning the alleys, from 1900 to date: Jacob Riis mentioned the alleys in 1904 in The Housing Problem Facing Congress; President Theodore Roosevelt's Homes Commission report recommended that alleys be abolished as habitations in 1908; in 1909, Charles Weller wrote with deep concern for the social and moral standards of alley life in Neglected Neighbors, and his study was the more valuable since he gathered his information through living in the alleys. O'Connell cites as particularly valuable the report of the District of Columbia Public Utilities Commission, Rent and Housing Conditions in the District of Columbia, 1934, and the Report of the National Capital Housing Authority for the Ten-Year Period, 1934–44.

⁵ In 1950 only 1.1% urban dwellings in the United States were without electricity. (U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1950 Census of Housing, Preliminary Report, Series HC-5, No. 2, June 10, 1951).

⁶ Fries, American English Grammar, 13, describes Standard English in the following-words: ‘On the whole, however, if we ignore the special differences that separate the speech of New England, the South, and the Middle West, we do have in the United States a set of language habits, broadly conceived, in which the major matters of the … life of this country are carried on … it is “standard” not because it is any more correct or more beautiful or more capable than other varieties of English; it is “standard” solely because it is the particular type of English which is used in the conduct of the important affairs of our people.‘

⁷ Broadly speaking, Father Putnam was responsible for the instrumental analysis, and Miss O'Hern for the aural analysis; but both co-operated closely throughout the study.

⁸ It is conventional to symbolize the diphthong phonemes /e/ and /o/ with only one element although in Standard English, both of these phonemes commonly contain two elements.

⁹ The use of diagnonals to indicate phonemic symbols is adopted from G. L. Trager and B. Bloch, Syllabic Phonemes of English, Language 17.229 (1941).

¹⁰ Linguists do not agree among themselves as to the exact nature of this phone. It is most commonly described as a d-like sound, and it is thought to be growing more common in American usage. See John S. Kenyon, American Pronunciation¹⁰ (Ann Arbor, 1951), 126–7, and R-M. S. Heffner, General Phonetics (Madison, 1949), 130.

¹¹ Hubbell, The Pronunciation of English, 33, notes that in New York speech the use of [d] as an allophone of /Ð/ appeared to be more common in the speech of men and boys than in that of women and girls. In the study dialect, this usage may have been connected with age rather than sex. The informant who used [d] most commonly was an elderly woman; her middle-aged son also used [d], but [Ð] was his commoner usage.

¹² C. K. Thomas, An Introduction to the Phonetics of American English (New York, 1947), 45, speaks of the tendency of native speakers to replace final z with voiceless s; Hubbell, op. cit., 39, states that this phenomenon is fairly common though sporadic in New York City particularly ‘on the less cultivated levels.‘

¹³ Daniel Jones, An Outline of English Phonetics⁶ (New York, 1940), 162.

¹⁴ Furfey, An Outline of Phonemics (Washington, 1952), an unpublished manuscript, 39–41. The present study of suprasegmental phonemes leans heavily on this manuscript for analysis and description of work done to date in this area. Furfey's discussion of juncture includes the research of Bloch and Trager, Outlines of Linguistic Analysis (Baltimore, L.S.A., 1942), 47, and Heffner, General Phonetics, 165–73; he concludes that ‘the phonetic phenomena that characterize juncture have never been thoroughly investigated.‘

¹⁵ Kenneth L. Pike, The Intonation of American English (Ann Arbor, 1947), 34–36.

¹⁶ Cf. R. R. Riesz and L. Schott, Visible Speech Cathode-Ray Translator, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 18.60–1 (1946).

¹⁷ Kurath, A Word Geography, chap. 3. Coal oil is common in parts of Pennsylvania; greens is used in Maryland west of the Chesapeake Bay, and in the Coastal sections of North and South Carolina and in the South Midland; pallet is common in the Midland and South; to carry in the sense of ‘escort’ is heard from Annapolis, Maryland, southward, and in parts of Virginia and the Carolinas. In this connection it is interesting to note that of the 39 informants whose place of birth was known, 15 were born in Washington (3 in Columbus Court), 7 in North Carolina, 6 in Virginia, 5 in South Carolina, 4 in Maryland, 1 in Louisiana, 1 in Georgia. Of the 62 informants whose length of residence in Columbus Court was known, 7 had lived there for less than 1 year; 9 from 2–5 years; 12 from 6–10 years; 14 from 11–15 years; 15 from 16–20 years; 3 from 21–25 years, 2 from 26–30 years.

¹⁸ Atwood, A Survey of Verb Forms, 1, writes, ‘It has long been clear that some of the most striking differences between cultivated and popular speech are to be found in the conjugation of verbs… .‘ He supports this statement with thorough documentation. The authors found certain of their grammatical data to be comparable with Atwood's findings for poorly educated informants, in the Southern states. Considering the personal forms of the present indicative, he found the following forms to occur at least sporadically: I has, I works, we works, he do, he don't, he look like, what make, and she rinse. He also found the verbs come, give, and run sometimes uninflected in the past tense. He did not find the use of be as the present indicative of to be, but he did find that I is had considerable currency. In the past tense of to be, he found that we was and you was were predominant usages. Atwood also found the idiomatic use of It's where Standard English uses There in the expression It's many people in West Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay area.

¹⁹ The study was limited to Negroes for two reasons. It is not known whether speech differences exist between whites and Negroes of comparable class status and regional influence. Although stereotypes assign well-known traits to Negro speech, linguists doubt whether such differences exist. This area is a fruitful one for further research. However, to avoid any confusion on this point, the control of race was imposed on the study. A more important reason is the fact that most sociologists agree that separate class systems exist for white and Negro in the United States; many describe this social phenomenon as a caste or quasicaste system. See especially W. Lloyd Warner, American Class and Caste, American Journal of Sociology, 42.234–7 (1936).

²⁰ Furfey, Scope and Method, 373.

²¹ W. Lloyd Warner, Marchia Meeker, and Kenneth Eels, Social Class in America (Chicago, 1949). See especially Chapter 8. The Index of Status Characteristics will hereafter be referred to as I.S.C.

²² Ibid., 149–54, gives criteria for judging house type and dwelling area. The investigators used the descriptions given as guides in classifying these two factors, keeping in mind the fact that the study was limited to members of the Negro community in Washington, D.C.

²³ Other research problems readily come to mind at this point of the study. That of race differentials has already been suggested. The analysis revealed that the two persons judged higher than their I.S.C. scores warranted were women, and that in no instance was a woman judged beneath her actual status; sex differentiation in speech as a status related factor needs to be further studied. The judges themselves furnish another possible area of research: who can best judge speech and why?