Social and Ethnic Dialects (Lecture Notes) From Wolfram, Chapter
Six  In contrast to regional dialects, our society often
perceives social and ethnic dialects negatively. While we may
have a positive sense of nostalgia about quaint folk expressions
or words from regional speech, our society often makes more
severe judgments about other people if the speech differences
are viewed as social or ethnic. These may include judgments
about:  SOCIAL DIALECTOLOGY is a relatively new area of
linguistic study that emerges in the 1960s at a time that our
society was becoming increasingly aware of cultural and ethnic
differences.  Instead of simply being interested in the
preservation of different dialects or their historical
development, it expands the study of language differences and
begins to focus on how the study of language can perhaps
contribute to resolving certain social problems.  I. DEFINING
SOCIAL CLASS-- We are all aware of social differences, but
identifying the specific characteristics that correlate with