DISCOURS Digest - 3 Jun 1999 to 4 Jun 1999

[Steve J. Albert]

Burce McComiskey wrote:

>	We are particularly interested in articles/books that examine
>social class
>through linguistic, discourse analysis, and, especially, critical discourse
>analysis perspectives.
>	We are not, however, interested in ESL or sociolinguistic
>approaches that
>look at dialect as a marker of the producer's social class.  What we want
>are sources that look at how we use language to "class-ify" other people,
>to place others in social classes relative to our perceptions of our own
>class.

Roger Hewitt's "White Talk Black Talk:  Inter-racial Friendship and
Communication Amongst Adolescents" (Cambridge 1986) is more specifically
focused on race, but social class plays an important role in the analysis,
which is very well handled. The book also includes a critical discussion of
Bernstein's work in relation to the topic at hand, so you might find it
interesting on that score as well.

Steve J. Albert
Department of Anthropology
New York University