Lexical Choice and Social Class

Two groups of subjects varying in social class background were presented with a questionnaire designed to examine their language usage. It was hypothesized that upper-class subjects would, when given the choice between an American word and a British word, select the British word more often than lower-class subjects given the same choice. The results indicated that there was a significant interaction between social class membership and language usage. The UC subjects used more British words than the LC subjects, who in turn used more American words than the UC subjects. The results were interpreted in terms of the differences in cultural identification between the two groups.