A social marker is a discernible sign that gives a clue to a

group identity Collective identity or group identity is a shared sense of belonging to a group. This concept appears within a few social science fields. National identity is a simple example, though myriad groups exist which share a sense of identity. Like ma ...

of the person with the marker. It is frequently used by members of

elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (, from , to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the ...

to indicate their dominant position through appearance, speech, dress, choice of food, and rituals of socializing, so called class markers. The markers delimit the boundaries between the

social groups In the social sciences, a social group is defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties. Fo ...

, connecting a person to "

in-group In social psychology and sociology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example ...

" people like them and at the same time separating from the " out-group" ones (unlike others).

Language and speech

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

, a social marker is a cue to the social position of the speaker provided through both linguistic (choice of language or languages, language style, accent, dialect,

code-switching In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. These alternations are generally intended to ...

) and

paralinguistic Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using suprasegmental techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes def ...

( voice pitch and

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

) means. These clues might indicate the

context In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a ''focal event'', in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind. Context is "a frame that surrounds the event ...

of the speech, the well-known ones define the social group of the speaker: age, sex and gender,

social class A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for exam ...

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

. For example, an average Briton would have no problem identifying an American or Australian, and, quite likely, a native of

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

through their patterns of speech. High social status is typically associated with the

prestige Prestige may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Films *Prestige (film), ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnett: woman travels to French Indochina to meet up with husband *The Prestige (film), ''The Prestige'' (fi ...

of the

standard language A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification in its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features and that stands ...

variety (for example, of the

received pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...

in Britain). The social markers associated with the speech, along with other forms of

social capital Social capital is a concept used in sociology and economics to define networks of relationships which are productive towards advancing the goals of individuals and groups. It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interper ...

, are among the hardest to acquire while moving up the

social ladder Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members who tre ...

. Using non-standard variety of language sometimes carries societal benefits as well, this phenomenon is called the "

covert prestige In sociolinguistics, covert prestige is the high social prestige with which certain nonstandard languages or dialects are regarded within a speech community, though usually only by their own speakers. This is in contrast to the typical case of ...

Dress

Dress is probably the most easily observable social marker, in the 21st century it manifests itself as "really expensive"

brand names A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

Timothy Reuter Timothy Alan Reuter (25 January 1947 – 14 October 2002), grandson of the former mayor of Berlin Ernst Reuter, was a German-British historian who specialized in the study of medieval Germany, particularly the social, military and ecclesiastical ...

points to the crucial importance of the dress as a marker in the Middle Ages: aristocrats "were willing to risk ..immortal souls for the sake of a sable coat" (

Adam of Bremen Adam of Bremen (; ; before 1050 – 12 October 1081/1085) was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. Adam is most famous for his chronicle '' Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum'' ('' ...

, 11th century) while limiting the availability of expensive materials (furs, bright-colored fabric) to the rest of the population (cf. the

sumptuary laws Sumptuary laws (from Latin ) are laws that regulate consumption. '' Black's Law Dictionary'' defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furnitu ...

spreading in the 12th century).

Appearance

In the medieval Europe nobles were easy to recognize by their appearance alone: they ate more (and better) food and were physically larger (the modern humans are much taller than medieval commoners, but about the same height as the nobles of the same times), and the sick members of nobility were mostly hidden from view (for example, in monasteries), giving an appearance of lack of physical and mental problems among them. Teeth and (later) access to dentistry have been used as a social marker since the

Neolithic age The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wid ...

Food

The food represents a demarcation line for the elites (caviar, champagne, goat cheese), this class marker was commented upon since the

Classical Antiquity Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural History of Europe, European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the inter ...

(cf. works by

Mozi Mozi, personal name Mo Di, was a Chinese philosopher, logician, and founder of the Mohist school of thought, making him one of the most important figures of the Warring States period (221 BCE). Alongside Confucianism, Mohism became the ...

for the ancient Chinese perspective). Upwardly mobile group imitates the elites, so in the past the sumptuary laws were used to restrict the elite food (like

porpoises Porpoises () are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins. There are eight extant speci ...

sturgeons Sturgeon (from Old English ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''str̥(Hx)yón''-) is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the ...

in the medieval England) consumption by the masses.

Use of tobacco

Use of

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

and similar substances have been employed as social marker many times to delimit various groups: * in the 1990s, smoking among adolescents was a social marker of " being cool"; * tobacco sniffing originally was an elite ritual that, unlike many other forms of ingestion, allowed for social interaction between the two sexes. By the beginning of the 19th century, however, it lost popularity and gradually got associated with the rural population and lower classes; *

cigars A cigar is a rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binde ...

displaced the snuff as a sign of (relatively) higher classes (the poor continued the use of

smoking pipe A smoking pipe, often simply referred to as a pipe, is used to inhale (or taste) the smoke of a burning substance, typically (though not exclusively) used to consume a Psychoactive drug, psychoactive substance; this most commonly refers to a to ...

) and manliness (females were excluded), the use of cigars was emulated by the less-wealthy groups; * tobacco chewing briefly became a class marker of rural landowners during the

Jacksonian democracy Jacksonian democracy, also known as Jacksonianism, was a 19th-century political ideology in the United States that restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson and his supporters, i ...

of the 1830s. The decidedly impolite action of public chewing and spitting carried prestige as a sign of assertive rural man that "was as good ... as any so-called gentleman".

References

Sources

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