The Rhubarbarian’s Redress: Tony Harrison and the Politics of Speech

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-232
Author(s):  
William Fogarty
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
New Music ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Class Separation ◽  
English Dialect ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
Verse Forms

Taking up the persistent question of poetry’s sociopolitical capacities by considering how Harrison’s poems depend on the power of local speech, this article examines how they cast his working-class northern English dialect in meter and rhyme as a way to scrutinize social hierarchies. Marshaling various forms of speech, including his own vernacular, into traditional patterns of poetry, Harrison interrogates classist notions about nonstandard speech and its relation to that tradition while exploring the disturbances produced by class separation. Where poetry scholarship in general and Harrison scholarship in particular often place demotic registers in opposition to traditional verse forms, this article argues that it is precisely the working relationships Harrison finds between verse forms and speech forms that upend hierarchies in his poetry, making new music out of local parlance.

“I Am Not a Hijra”: Class, Respectability, and the Emergence of the “New” Transgender Woman in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 620-647
Author(s):  
Liz Mount
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Transgender Women ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Trans Women

This article examines the mutual imbrication of gender and class that shapes how some transgender women seek incorporation into social hierarchies in postcolonial India. Existing literature demonstrates an association between transgender and middle-class-status in the global South. Through an 18-month ethnographic study in Bangalore from 2009 through 2016 with transgender women, NGO (nongovernmental organization) workers and activists, as well as textual analyses of media representations, I draw on “new woman” archetypes to argue that the discourses of empowerment and respectability that impacted middle-class cisgender women in late colonial, postcolonial and liberalized India also impact how trans women narrate their struggles and newfound opportunities. Trans woman identities are often juxtaposed to the identities of hijras, a recognized (yet socially marginal) group of working-class male-assigned gender-nonconforming people. Instead of challenging stereotypes of gender nonconformity most evident in the marginalization of hijras, some transgender women are at pains to highlight their difference from hijras. These trans women are from working-class backgrounds. It is partly their similarities in class location that propel trans women’s efforts to distinguish themselves from hijras. They employ the figure of the disreputable hijra to contain negative stereotypes associated with gender nonconformity, thus positioning their identities in proximity with middle-class respectable womanhood.

Music Hall, ‘Mashers’ and the ‘Unco Guid’: Competing Masculinities in Victorian Glasgow

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Cheadle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
Power Play

This chapter examines an intra-gender competition between three masculine identities in Victorian Glasgow. In 1875, sexually risqué performances at a music hall prompted a group of men from the ‘unco guid’, or rigidly respectable middle class, to launch a morality campaign against the halls. Their efforts were largely unsuccessful due to the formation of a cross-class alliance between young, working-class men, known as ‘mashers’, and bourgeois hedonists, who together defended their male right to sexual pleasure. The analysis of this masculine power play is suggestive in three ways: it demonstrates the existence in Presbyterian Scotland of an unrespectable masculinity; it emphasizes the importance of considering alternative forms of masculine identity in their own right, and not in relation to a hegemonic norm; and it suggests that the preservation of music-hall style into the Edwardian period was the result as much of a gendered as a class-inflected contest of social hierarchies for control.

scholarly journals Activism and the Academy in Ireland: A Bridge for Social Justice

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-69
Author(s):  
Micheal O'Flynn ◽  
Aggelos Panayiotopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Reading Groups ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The World ◽  
Collective Strategy

This article is concerned with the working relationships between progressive academics, students, left activists, and trade unionists in Ireland, and with the apparent division between theory-led and action-led perspectives. We reflect on our efforts to draw progressive forces in Ireland together through a number of initiatives: reading groups, conferences, educational seminars, workshops, the publication of a quarterly paper, and the organization of precarious workers in higher education. We argue that although activism and academia are sometimes treated as separate spheres, there are spaces for academia in activism and for activism in academia. Finding and filling those spaces means resisting efforts to limit academia to interpreting the world, and finding ways to demonstrate the emancipatory potential of education among activists whose time is taken up with struggling against immediate structural inequalities and attempting to mobilize people into a political force. We argue that scholar-activists should play an important role helping to assemble the collective resources of the working class, as well as organising for longer-term social transformation. We call on scholar-activists to collaborate in constructing a counter-hegemonic narrative and developing a collective strategy for social justice.

Variation in the use of ain't in an urban British English dialect

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Cheshire
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
British English ◽  
Semantic Function ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
Tag Questions ◽  
English Dialect ◽  
The Town

ABSTRACTAin't occurs as a sociolinguistic variable in working class speech in the town of Reading, England. The phonetic realizations of ain't in Reading English do not accord with traditional etymologies, depending more on the syntactic environment in which ain't occurs than on the standard English forms from which they are usually assumed to derive. The phonetic variants are also marked for semantic function in tag questions. Variation in the use of ain't can be explained as reflecting an ongoing linguistic change (sociolinguistics, dialectology, language change, theoretical linguistics).

Popular Song and Working-Class Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 408-434
Author(s):  
Gillian M. Rodger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Sheet Music ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
American Popular Song

This chapter considers the ways that popular songs, circulated via inexpensive sheet music and as printed song sheets that contained only lyrics, reflect the worldview and aspirations of working-class populations in the United States. It shows that when read against theatrical trade newspapers, men’s sporting newspapers, and daily newspapers catering to working men, a richer and more complex view of working-class culture emerges from these songs. Songs reinforced a sense of class cohesion, and articulated class values and working-class gender construction. They also reflected the integration of ethnic groups such as Germans and Irish into American culture, and reinforced social hierarchies based on race, gender, immigrant status, and proficiency with language. While the characters depicted in American popular song were often unique to the United States, the fact that they came from a shared tradition of English humor allowed them to travel globally.

scholarly journals Social Inequality and Sociocultures

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-21
Author(s):  
Boike Rehbein
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Social Hierarchies

Inequality is usually studied with a focus on economic factors, such as income and wealth, and with reference to a brief period of time, basically the period of data collection. This article argues that this approach is misleading and does not allow us to understand inequality, let alone society at large. Inequalities and social hierarchies comprise more than economic factors but also cultural factors, as Pierre Bourdieu has shown. Bourdieu, however, neglected the historical dimension. Classes and habitus types are rooted in long traditions, which have to be studied over centuries, not months or years. Capitalist societies develop hierarchies of social classes, which are shaped by pre-capitalist hierarchies. These earlier hierarchies tend to persist for decades or even centuries after the capitalist transformation. I refer to these earlier hierarchies as sociocultures, since they form not only hierarchies but also cultures, which reproduce from one generation to the next. Edward P. Thompson has demonstrated this with regard to the English working class. In the article, I will introduce the concept of socioculture as it is used in studies of social inequality.

Interaction of social and linguistic constraints on two vowel changes in northern England

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Haddican ◽  
Paul Foulkes ◽  
Vincent Hughes ◽  
Hazel Richards
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Local Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Trajectories Of Change ◽  
English Dialect ◽  
Vowel Change

AbstractThis paper focuses on the way that local social indexicality interacts with principles of vowel change. A combination of real and apparent time data from the northern English dialect of York indicate fronting of tense back vowels in thegoatandgooselexical sets, and diphthongization of traditionally monophthongal mid-vowels in thefaceandgoatlexical sets. The latter process of change, a northward diffusion of more prestigious southern forms, has been noted for some other northern English dialects, but has not been described acoustically in published work. We show that these two vowel changes have different social meanings in the community. As is the case in previous studies,goatandgoosefronting is not strongly associated with different speaker groups in the community. Monophthongal realizations offaceandgoat, on the other hand, are strongly associated with the speech of the local community, especially working-class speech. The results align with predictions of Labov's (1994) principle III of vowel change in that they show thatgoosefronting precedesgoatfronting. However, we argue that a full understanding of the trajectories of change requires attention to social indexical properties of these variants as well. In particular, the scarcity of fronted variants of monophthongalgoatis explained as a consequence of local indexing of such forms.

"Fantastic Charities": The Transformation of Waqf Practice in Colonial Zanzibar

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Oberauer
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Economic Base ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
Client Relationships ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe present study examines the impact of British colonial rule on waqf practice in Zanzibar. I argue that colonial policy towards waqf did not aim at the dismantlement of waqf as such. Nonetheless, it disrupted traditional patterns of waqf practice. Traditionally, waqf was controlled by wealthy patron families who used endowments to foster bonds of dependence and loyalty with manifold clientele and to maintain mosques representing the patron's social status. This practice was antithetical to British political and economic ideas, which were modern and capitalist. British officials insisted that patrons must use their wealth as a business resource and that the maintenance of mosques was a responsibility of the state. Accordingly, the British controlled waqf administration classified endowments as either "family waqf" or "mosque waqf". The first was fully exploited in favour of the founder's family, while the latter was turned into revenue for public mosque upkeep. As a result, waqf ceased to be an economic base for patron-client relationships and clients were transformed into a modern working class entirely dependent on wage labour.

Speech-Language Pathologists' Perceptions of School-Based Services for Children With Hearing Loss

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 469-478
Author(s):  
Sarah Allen ◽  
Robert Mayo
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
School Based ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Positive Feelings ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss ◽  
Perceptions Of School

Purpose School-aged children with hearing loss are best served by a multidisciplinary team of professionals. The purpose of this research was to assess school-based speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) perceptions of their access to, involvement of, and working relationships with educational audiologists in their current work setting. Method An online survey was developed and distributed to school-based SLPs in North Carolina. Results A significant difference in access to and involvement of educational audiologists across the state was found. Conclusions This research contributes to professional knowledge by providing information about current perceptions in the field about interprofessional practice in a school-based setting. Overall, SLPs reported positive feelings about their working relationship with educational audiologists and feel the workload is distributed fairly.

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