Social Class and Grammatical Development: a Comparison of the Speech of Five Year Olds From Middle and Working Class Backgrounds

Abstract

A picture-strip task was used to elicit speech from 36 middle and working class children; this speech was later transcribed and analysed according to traditional grammar. It was found that the working class children made greater use of verbs and pronouns, whereas the middle class children made greater use of subordinate clauses. When further analysis was carried out into the choice made between nouns and pronouns in the subject position of sentences, working class children were found to make greater use of pronouns in this position, while middle class children made greater use of nouns. It was suggested that this preference may arise from social class differences in the functional use of language by young children, and the communication demands made of them in their social environment.