English Studies Bachelor’s Thesis 14 Credits
Spring Semester 2021
Supervisor: Petra Ragnerstam
Social Class as Seen through the
Representation of Language in Zadie
Smith’s NW
Abstract
This paper investigates the representation of the working class in Zadie Smith’s novel NW. With the aid of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on different forms of capital, as well as
sociolinguistic theory, the project aims to study the language of the characters as an indicator of their social class belonging. The analysis is divided into three different sections where the characters’ speeches are studied in the context of their age, gender, and ethnicity. This analysis takes a dual approach by first examining what the characters’ language can tell us about their class belonging, and then exploring what effect the use of the representation of working-class speech has on the characters, as well as on the novel at large. The analysis reveals the dissimilarities between the different groups (male and female, old and young, white or non-white), and establishes that through the use of working-class speech, Smith has managed to create a complex and dynamic image of the working class.
Key Words: Zadie Smith, NW, Pierre Bourdieu, Forms of Capital, Sociolinguistics, Working-Class Speech.
Table of Contents
Introduction ... 3
1. Theory and Background ... 7
1.1 Bourdieu – Habitus, Field and the Forms of Capital ... 7
1.2 Language and Class ... 10
1.3 Narratology and Representations of Speech ... 14
2. Class and Gender ... 17
2.1 Grace and Nathan ... 17
3. Class and Age ... 20
3.1 Leah and Pauline Hanwell ... 20
3.2 Felix and Lloyd Cooper ... 21
3.3 Natalie and Marcia Blake ... 23
4. Class and Ethnicity ... 26
4.1 Shar and Nathan... 26
4.2 Natalie and Michel ... 28
Conclusion ... 30
Introduction
London-based author Zadie Smith’s novel NW received both popular and critical acclaim when it was published in the year 2012. The novel is concerned with themes that appear in many of Smith’s works: culture, identity, racism, multiculturalism, and friendship - but NW is also a portrait of the working-class in contemporary London.
NW is a tragicomedy set in Northwest London and it mainly portrays four young locals – Natalie, Leah, Nathan, and Felix. Natalie and Leah have been best friends since childhood, but they have come to lead very different lives. Leah’s degree in philosophy has not lead to the fulfilling and successful career that she wished for, and she and her husband are still caught living in the council estates where Leah grew up. Natalie, on the other hand, has worked hard to leave her Jamaican roots and her childhood in the council estates behind her. Changing her name from Keisha to the more English-sounding Natalie, receiving a law degree, and marrying a man with both economic and cultural capital has led to that Natalie has made an incredible class journey, but also to that she has lost contact with her identity and background. The class differences between the two women have started to tear at their
relationship - while Natalie feels bogus in the company of her friend, Leah has started
building up resentment towards Natalie’s middle-class lifestyle. Felix, on the other hand, has just become clean of his drug addiction and is on a steady path towards a new life when he gets murdered in a robbery gone wrong. In the culmination of the novel Leah and Natalie bond again over accusing Nathan, their old classmate who is now at the bottom of society, of being guilty of the crime.
Many researchers have studied NW previously. The themes of the research of this novel are rather diverse, and vary between the postcolonial and Brexit, cosmopolitan empathy, race and reconnection, and female friendship, for example. In “Neoliberalism and False Consciousness Before and After Brexit In Zadie Smith's NW” James Arnett discusses
class in contemporary London, and its connection to Smith’s novel. This theme John McLeod builds on in “Warning Signs: Postcolonial Writing and the Apprehension of Brexit,” where he argues that the class divides that led to the referendum in Great Britain could be identified beforehand in postcolonial writings such as NW. It was decided that this research project would build on this Marxist perspective on NW, and that it would concentrate on class aspects of the novel. Another study caught my attention: in “‘Anyone over the Age of Thirty Catching a Bus Can Consider Himself a Failure’: Class Mobility and Public Transport in Zadie Smith’s NW”, Lauren Elkin sees the representation of class through public transport. Here, public transport works as a signifier of class, and it allows Elkin to study Smith’s portrait of contemporary, stratified, London and its inhabitants. This specific signifier makes the class perspective in NW extremely tangible, and it made me consider other aspects of class. What about other signifiers of social class in the novel? How is social class made visible in this novel, other than through public transport?
By using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on different forms of capital we can establish that there are many different signifiers of class in NW. We can, for example, consider the
professions of the characters, in what sort of house they reside, how they talk about money – but also their language, their taste, and their social contacts. One clear signifier of class in the novel is language, and that is what this project will lay its focus on.
With the aid of Bourdieu’s concept of forms of capital this project will seek to identify how the novel represents social class through language. This includes, but is not limited to, looking at the characters’ speech, analyzing the representation of their language. This project will analyze how the characters speak, to aim to identify how the novel presents the
characters’ class belonging through language. The analysis will build on Bourdieu’s essay “The Forms of Capital,” but also on sociolinguistic theory which will aid in providing indicators of how social class and language interact. The fact that the representation of
class-marked language is not consistent throughout the novels makes this issue more complex. An analysis of the representation of social dialect and accent of characters, contrasted to
characters with no indicators of how they speak, will concretize this complexity, and I aim to start a discussion of what it might mean that some characters have a speech marked by indicators of working-class dialects, while some do not.
To conduct this study the characters will be divided into groups that sociolinguists often consider when studying language in society: gender, age, and ethnicity. Each section will first contain a small statistical analysis to see what groups (male or female, young or old, white or non-white) are marked most as speaking with working-class dialects. By doing this we can establish how the indicators of working-class dialect have been distributed among the characters, and this will aid in determining which characters to study in a deeper analysis. In each section, different characters will be studied deeper. In the gender section, one male and one female character will work as an example when studying the relationship between gender and language closer. In the age section, generational pairs of characters will be studied to better understand how Smith has depicted working-class language as being transferred through generations, and what this means for the characters. Lastly, in the ethnicity section, we will look at two pairs of characters with different representations of language to better understand the nuances of the distribution of working-class dialect within the non-white characters. This analysis takes a dual approach by first examining what the characters’ language can tell us about their class belonging, and then exploring what effect the use of the representation of working-class speech has on the characters, as well as on the novel at large.
Before moving into the analyzing sections there will be a section presenting the theory this project will be using. The first part of this section will be devoted to Pierre Bourdieu and his theory on habitus, field, and the forms of capital. This will explain Bourdieu’s concepts, as well as make clear the connection between class and language. We will then move on to the
second part, “Language and Class,” where sociolinguistic theory will be presented. Certain sociolinguistic terms will be clarified, but more importantly, indicators of social dialect which will be identified in the novel when conducting the analysis will be presented. Accents will also be discussed, as this project aims to take an intersectional approach to social dialect. Lastly, I will, briefly, present ways of depicting different types of speeches in writing with the aid of narratology and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics.
After the analyzing sections “Class and Gender”, “Class and Age”, and “Class and Ethnicity”, a conclusion will follow. Here I will briefly note what was found in the analysis, but also discuss the limitations of the study, as well as how one might conduct further research based on what was found in this project.
1. Theory and Background 1.1 Bourdieu – Habitus, Field and the Forms of Capital
Using Pierre Bourdieu, this project can read and understand NW through a Marxist lens. Bourdieu’s concepts will aid this project in understanding how class can be portrayed in writing, and specifically how language can work as an indicator of cultural capital.
According to Karl Maton in Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, Bourdieu noted that while humans often feel as though they are free agents, they base their every decision on expectations of other humans’ predicted character, behavior, and attitudes – and that these decisions occur every day in society – it shapes peoples’ lives – without there being any set rules (49). If one looks at class one can, in a simplified manner, say that working-class children often grow up to work working-class jobs, and children of academic parents often grow up to become academics themselves (49). “Social practices are characterized by regularities,” Maton states, and for these “norms” that determine so much of a human’s life, Bourdieu coined the term habitus (49). Habitus regulates our behavior “without being the product of obedience to rules,” and it consists of both the outer social world and our inner selves (49). According to Maton, Bourdieu formally defines habitus as such: “It is ‘structured’ by one’s past and present circumstances... It is ‘structuring’ in that one’s habitus helps to shape one’s present and future practices. It is a ‘structure’ in that it is systematically ordered rather than random or unpatterned” – habitus is thus a “property of actors... that comprises a ‘structured and structuring structure’” (50). The “structure” consists of a system of
dispositions that produce “norms,” both in terms of attitudes and practices, but the “structure” alone does not determine how humans act (50). Habitus does not work in a vacuum, but has an “unconscious relationship” with what Bourdieu calls a field (50). According to Maton, Bourdieu summarizes the relationship with an equation: [(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice (50). In other words, the way one acts results from one’s habitus and one’s position in a field
(capital) within the present situation or boundaries of a social arena (field) (50). Humans’ acting is thus the result of the relationship between their habitus and their present
circumstances (51).
To be more precise, fields are social spaces where agents (be it people or institutions) occupy different positions due to which they can act in certain ways, according to Patricia Thomson in Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts (66-67). These may be the economic field, the education field, political fields, and the field of the arts – they may in turn also be divided into subfields: the field of the arts can contain the literature field and the music field, for example (70). The “game,” as Tomson chooses to call it, that takes place in a field is competitive – agents of the field aim to maintain or improve their position in the field (67). One improves one’s position by acquiring capital, which is “both the process in, and product of a field” (67).
Bourdieu divided capital into four different forms: economic capital which refers to financial assets; cultural capital which refers to knowledge, taste, language, etc.; social capital which refers to affiliations, relationships, and networks; and symbolic capital which refers to “things which stand for all the other forms of capital and can be “exchanged” in other fields” (67). Cultural capital, according to Bourdieu and his “The Forms of Capital,” is to be divided into three sub-categories: embodied, objectified, and institutionalized cultural capital (79). Embodied cultural capital refers to knowledge that one inherits or acquires by socialization to culture and traditions (80-82). This may refer to things such as language and speech,
manners, taste, and other such “knowledge.” Objectified cultural capital refers to objects that one may understand through one’s embodied cultural capital, i.e. books, works of art, or scientific instruments (82-83). Institutionalized cultural capital, simply put, refers to cultural capital which is formally recognized, through official university degrees, for example (83). As one can see the concept of habitus is closely connected to cultural capital, as cultural capital, especially embodied cultural capital, consists to a large degree of one’s actions.
Bourdieu’s theories have been critiqued by sociologists as well as other academics in disciplines such as literary studies, anthropology, and education, according to Tony Schirato and Mary Roberts in Bourdieu: a Critical Introduction (16). The critique is focused on the deterministic approach of Bourdieu’s theory, as well as his over-theorizing of socio-cultural practices (16). It cannot be denied, though, that the theories of Bourdieu have been influential in a variety of disciplines. Savage et al., for example, conducted a sociological study in 2013 in Great Britain that they called “Great British Class Survey,” according to Mooney and Evans in Language, Society and Power: An Introduction, where they established a new British social class model (194-195). The idea originated from Bourdieu’s work on different forms of capital, and their study resulted in a model where economic, cultural, and social capital are included when determining class “categories,” rather than only financial assets and occupation (195). One can also look to sociolinguistics to find Bourdieu’s theories: Penelope Eckert, for example, used Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic capital to suggest that it is of great importance when investigating and understanding displays of identity through language (Mooney and Evans 193-194).
Sociolinguistics and Bourdieu’s cultural capital are closely connected as language is a central part of this form of capital. Language is a form of embodied cultural capital that can be an important factor in determining class belonging, and speaking in a certain way can heavily influence and increase one’s cultural capital (179). Mooney and Evans note that the principle of linguistic subordination states that the language of marginalized groups also will be marginalized, and that when it comes to class there are degrees of marginalization (179). This marginalization of language leads to that marginalized people are denied access to power because of their speech (179). It is important to note though, that different speech will have different degrees of capital depending on the circumstances one is in – depending on one’s field (Mooney and Evans 194). For example, in the English society as a whole, using words
such as “bro” and “ain’t” will likely decrease one’s cultural capital, but in a specific group in society using these words may lead to the opposite. The relationship between social class and language will be explained in detail below.
1.2 Language and Class
Turning to Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller and their work An Introduction to Sociolinguistics one can receive a substantial introduction to language and its societal variations. Wardhaugh and Fuller use the word “variety” as a general term for a way of
speaking; this may simply be a dialect, but also something specific such as lower-middle-class South London speech (27). They point out that the term “dialect” has often been used in the English language in conflicting ways, as it has been used both for local varieties and for more informal variations of speech such as “lower-class” or “rural” (29). This conflicting use of the term, they point out, has caused inferiority to be carried to people who speak dialect, as the term can imply that the speech is nonstandard or even substandard (29). However,
sociolinguists see the term dialect as meaning any variety of a language, including the
“standard” variety, according to Wardhaugh and Fuller, and this project will also be using the term in this way (40). It is also important to note that there are other terms that may cause confusion were they not explained, and therefore this section will aim to clarify any misunderstandings that could occur before moving on.
First of all the term dialect should not be confused with accent. While dialect refers to any variety of a language where one includes variations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, accent refers merely to how speakers pronounce what they say (40). Accents often have a clear regional connection, such as countries or cities – for example, there is something we may refer to as “Indian English” or “Boston accent” (40). The English accent Received Pronunciation (RP) is one that is often considered a “posh” type of English, and by the people who speak it, it is often seen as a type of standard, “unaccented” speech (40). As stated earlier,
for sociolinguists there is no part of any language that could be considered “unaccented” or as being without dialect, and this is also important to clarify in this section. NW often includes representations of a characters’ accents or dialects, for example, but many characters’ speech also does not have such indicators – however, this will not be taken as an indicator that the characters speak a type of “standard English,” instead they will be contrasted with the characters that do have indicators of how they speak, and this may start a discussion of what type of characters are marked off as speaking dialect.
Dialects can be divided into sub-categories, for example ethnic or regional dialects, and this project will look at representations in the novel of a sub-category called social dialect (39-45). Social dialect, or sociolect, refers to dialects spoken by social groups which are formed by different factors such as class and religion (43). This project will focus on what we could call representations of class-based social dialects. Though sociolinguists agree that class has been of very high relevance to the field, there is a general problem of how to define class and how to distinguish different class groups from each other (Wardhaugh and Fuller 153). It seems, based on the chapter on social class memberships in An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics, that many sociolinguistic studies have taken a “Bourdieuian” approach to how to distinguish the different social classes – they have, for example, included variables such as education and occupation, rather than just economic capital (27-61). These various studies, though, show how complicated it can be to distinguish different social classes, and this should therefore be done with great caution. That set aside, we can appreciate the fact that this project will analyze representations of speech, and not actual speech. As stated in the introduction NW includes a number of indicators or signifiers of the characters’ class-belonging, and the representation of speech is just one of them.
There are, naturally, multiple different variations of speech when it comes to social dialect, depending on what language one looks at in what area of the world. Since NW is set in
London, this project will concentrate on the English language, and specifically London dialects. There are, generally, different factors that indicate the speech of different social classes, and these indicators will be guiding in the analysis of the characters’ speech in the novels.
In a study done by Sue Fox and Eivind Torgerson, as presented in “Language Change and Innovation in London: Multicultural London English,” where they take an intersectional approach to their study of working-class speech in Hackney and Havering in London, they paint a substantial picture of what working-class speech looks like in contemporary London (189-205). They state that while the older participants in the study represented a “traditional cockney baseline”, the younger participants were generally very influenced by the speech of what they decided to call “non-anglos” (195). Fox and Torgerson essentially conclude that multiculturalism has affected working-class speech to a high degree. This working-class speech is based on a classic cockney dialect, but a younger, more contemporary working-class speech is also mixed with influences from non-anglos (196-205). One characteristic of this speech that is interesting to my study is leveling and innovation for the past tense of the verb be (201). Speakers prove to level was to use it across person and number, both in positive and negative contexts – for example, “you was a hero” and “I weren’t talking to him” (201). Another interesting characteristic of this speech is the use of the pragmatic marker “innit,” and by some, it is also used “outside of the canonical tag position of negative tags” (202). Looking at studies like this one we can see different characteristics that mark working-class speech, and more will follow below.
A classic study conducted by Peter Trudgill in 1972 in Norwich, England, revealed patterns in how speech is connected to social class (Mooney and Evans 184). Trudgill considered a number of different variations spoken in Norwich: one example is the
lower classes (lower working-class, middle working-class, and upper working-class) to a much larger extent pronounced –in instead of –ing at the end of words than participants of the higher classes (lower middle-class, middle middle-class) – this phenomenon is often referred to as g-dropping (185). Trudgill also concluded that avoiding using initial h-, as in “‘ave” instead of “have”, is an indicator connected to social class (Wardhaugh, Fuller 175). Note that this study is rather old, but that it is still deemed to be of importance by contemporary
scholars (see Mooney and Evans, Wardhaugh and Fuller, Rajend, for example).
One can also look to the London accent Cockney to get a better insight into indicators of working-class speech. Though Cockney is widespread in London, and also in other parts of Great Britain, it is traditionally considered a working-class dialect, according to English Accents and Dialects (Hughes, Trudgill, and Watt 73). While typically consisting of the aforementioned absent initial h-, and –in instead of –ing in word endings, the dialect also includes something called th-fronting (74). Essentially this means that an f-sound or a v-sound often replaces a th-sound, initially, medially as well as finally in words (74). Initial th-sounds may also be replaced with a d-sound (74).
Another characteristic of London speech (but that may not be included in the Cockney accent) is the use of multiple negation. The use of multiple negation is often considered “wrong” and it is often frowned upon, according to Hughes et al., and this is most likely because it is associated with working-class speech (25).
It is not so simple as to say that all working-class speech sounds like what is described above - another important aspect is accented speech. As Ben Rampton describes England in the late twentieth century in “Stylisation and the Dynamics of Migration, Ethnicity and Class” it was, and is, of course, a stratified class society where “post-war employers have relied on a continuing flow of immigrant labor to do low-paid work” (99). Due to immigration and to that immigrants’ are often forced to take low-paying jobs a working-class of great diversity has
been created in cities such as London. Accents and other dialects of immigrants must be taken into account to create an intersectional image of cultural capital and working-class speech.
In his study, Rampton focused on two pairs of contrasting variations of speech to examine stylization and language crossing in larger systems. While the posh and Cockney binary was proven to be closely connected to class, the Creole and Asian English binary was tied to ethnicity and migration – however, the stylization of the latter was “grounded in a shared working-class position” (97). In other words, although ethnicity and migration were of great importance for the stylization, the “structuring processes” connected to social class were more important (97).
In the study, Rampton also discovered that Creole and working-class speech had overlapped, and that this makes it easy to see how Creole is “linked to the low side of the traditional British class semiotic” (114). Others have also concluded that the speech of people of immigrant background has affected the more classical British working-class speech. This can be seen in, for example, Fox and Torgerson’s study mentioned earlier.
This project will take an intersectional approach to working-class speech, and include representations of accents in the analysis. Accents are not as complicated to represent in text as it simply represents how someone sounds when pronouncing words. In the novel, this representation has been made clear by spelling words the way they sound when the characters pronounce them. More on representations of speech in writing will follow below.
1.3 Narratology and Representations of Speech
This project will analyze speech in NW, and this section will therefore look at how speech can be rendered in text, and what types of renderings to look for when one wants to find indicators of how a character speaks. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics provides a basic framework of narratology. According to Rimmon-Kenan, there are many different forms to use when rendering speech acts (112). She lists them as such: diegetic
summary, summary, indirect discourse, mimetic indirect discourse, free indirect discourse, direct discourse, and free direct discourse (112-113). These forms are positioned on a scale that determines how close the rendering is to the actual speech act. While diegetic summary refers to speech being rendered as merely occurring, free direct discourse refers to what is often seen as being closest to what the speech act actually may have sounded like (112-113).
There are two forms of how to render speech that are especially interesting for this project: “direct discourse” and “free direct discourse.” Direct discourse, put simply, is a quotation of a speech act, and this form is perhaps what most of us think of when considering how to render speech in writing (113). Quotation marks are often an indicator of direct discourse, but also the queue “they said” is often present in these circumstances (113). Free direct discourse is very close to the form direct discourse, but when using free direct discourse one also includes indicators of how the speech sounds (113). Dialect or accent is often
rendered when using free direct discourse, but also mispronunciations and words that are typical for a specific character, for example.
In this project, we will look at only direct discourse and free direct discourse. In many instances in NW free direct discourse is being used when rendering speech, indicating how the characters speak, but this is not always the case. Generally, the different characters have different forms of renderings “assigned” to them. While in some cases a character’s speech is only rendered through direct discourse, in others it is only rendered through free direct discourse, and sometimes both forms are used for one character. When looking for dialects and accents in speech the form free direct discourse is naturally of interest, and the characters that have their speech rendered through this form will be the ones that are considered as having dialects or accents. The characters whose speech is only rendered through direct discourse, on the other hand, will be seen as having speech that is “neutral,” without any dialect or accent. This understanding of how to render speech in writing makes it clear what
to look for in the novel when conducting the analysis of this project, and it will aid in distinguishing working-class speech from non-marked speech.
2. Class and Gender
In this section, the characters of the novel have been divided into groups of male and female characters. Looking at which characters are marked as speaking with a working-class dialect, we can establish that there are more male characters in the novel that are marked. If we just look at the four main characters, we can see that while the two of them that are male are marked as having working-class dialects, the two of them that are female are not. This is telling of how the novel represents the working-class dialect as gender-divided, but though we can establish that a bigger portion of the male characters is marked as having working-class dialects, there are also nuances within the groups. There are also female characters that are marked as having working-class dialects, but they seem to be marked to a lesser degree than many of the male characters. An example of this dynamic will be made below, by comparing the characters Grace and Nathan.
2.1 Grace and Nathan
Grace, the girlfriend of Felix, works as a hostess at a restaurant. Grace is a lively young go-getter who always wears high heels and long fake nails. Felix thinks about her: “he didn’t think he had ever known anyone quite so female.” (Smith 101). The couple met at a bus stop outside Felix’s father’s house, and since then Felix has thought of Grace as his life savior.
The character has a rather distinct working-class dialect. Her dialect can be seen in many occurrences – she leaves out h- in an instance, for example: ”Ask ‘im if he can come round and look at that sink” (102). The character also makes use of leveling of the past tense of the verb be: “I weren’t even meant to be there” (119). Here “I wasn’t” is leveled to “I weren’t.” The character makes use of multiple negation too, as in “don’t get in no trouble”, as well as the pragmatic marker “innit” in “She’s on her own now, innit” (103). Though the character has a distinct dialect that makes use of a diverse set of the indicators that were exhibited in the theory section, her speech is not marked with these indicators very often.
Nathan Bogle, a childhood classmate of Leah and Natalie, was once an ambitious youth dreaming of becoming a successful football player, but is now at the bottom of society. Leah thinks of Nathan as both “familiar” and “unknown” when she and her mother meet him in Kilburn Underground Station where he stands near the ticket machine illegally selling tickets at lower prices. Leah describes Nathan as such:
The afro of the man is uneven and has a tiny grey feather in it. The clothes are ragged. One big toe thrusts through the crumby rubber of an ancient red-stripe Nike Air. The face is far older than it should be, even given the nasty way time has with human materials. He has an odd patch of white skin on his neck. (46)
“Long time,” says Nathan to Leah when they meet, and she answers a simple “Yes,” but the narrator continues: “Longer for him. About once a year she sees him on the high road. She ducks into a shop, or crosses, or gets on a bus. Now missing a tooth here and there and there. Devastating eyes. What should be white is yellow. Red veins breaking out all over.” (47). Leah’s mother, Pauline Hanwell, expresses her distress when they have parted from Nathan: “His poor mother! I should stop in on her one of these days. So sad. I’d heard, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” (47). Nathan bogle is something, an it, that needs to be seen to be experienced.
The character Nathan Bogle has a distinct working-class dialect that matches his ill-fated destiny: “She tell you she don’t let me in the house no more? Bet she ain’t. Go on, Smart Keisha. Tell me something smart. You’re a lawyer now, innit.” (311). As can be seen here, Nathan uses both multiple negation and the pragmatic marker “innit.” The character also levels past tense of the verb be: “You was always smart. You deserve it.” (311). Though Nathan does not show great diversity in his use of indicators of working-class dialect, the indicators can be seen in almost every occurrence of his speech.
The big difference in how Nathan’s and Grace’s dialects are portrayed does not lie in what types of indicators of working-class dialect are used, or how diverse the usage of these indicators is, but in how much of the speech is marked. While Grace’s speech is marked as being class speech only a few times, Nathan’s speech is marked as being working-class speech almost every time he makes an utterance. The two characters are here
functioning as mere examples of one male and one female character that are marked as speaking working-class dialect, and this pattern can be seen in other instances in the novel too. The male characters that are marked as speaking a working-class dialect are so more often, simply put, than the female characters that are marked.
Among the characters that are marked as speaking with a working-class dialect, the male characters’ speeches are marked more often, and this fact creates a nuanced image of how the working-class dialect is distributed. By building patterns like this one, Smith has created a dynamic picture of the relationship between gender and speech, while still, though perhaps not in an obvious way, confiding to stereotypical gender roles and norms. This pattern displays that gender and embodied cultural capital is connected, rendering the male characters as generally possessing a lower embodied cultural capital than the female.
3. Class and Age
Looking at the characters in groups of “younger” and “older,” it is made evident that there is no big difference in how working-class dialect is distributed between the two. However, there are other interesting features to the age aspect of the characters. Grouping some of the
characters into generational pairs, one can look at the dynamics of the parent-child
relationship, and how Smith has depicted working-class dialect as being transferred through generations.
3.1 Leah and Pauline Hanwell
Leah Hanwell, one of the main characters of the novel, and the childhood best friend of Natalie Blake, works with distributing lottery earnings to social projects. Leah studied philosophy at the university, but due to her lack of ambition, she has not had the successful career she may have hoped for. Despite this, and the fact that she is still stuck living in the council estates where she grew up, Leah is content – and even afraid of change. Her husband, Michel, desperately wants them to start a family, but Leah, being afraid of disappointing her loved one, takes birth control pills in secret to prevent pregnancy. Pauline Hanwell, the
mother of Leah, is an Irish immigrant. Pauline works as a nurse, and resides in Willesden, just like Leah – formerly with her husband, Leah’s father, who passed away when Leah was sixteen.
The two characters both have languages that are neutral; theirs do not represent a working-class dialect. The fact that they both have the same type of speech shows a
consistency in the generational inheritance of working-class dialect from Smith’s side. That mother and daughter speak the same way seems only natural, and it displays a generational regularity that provides familiarity, and gives an insight into the relationship between a mother and daughter. The consistency is telling of the bond between the parent and the child, as can be seen in this case, where the similar languages of the mother and daughter may
indicate a close relationship. Conversely, it will also be proven in the next sections that deviations in language between generations may indicate that the child is distancing itself from parents and other family. Both consistency and deviation in speech can be seen in the characters Felix and Lloyd, as well as in Natalie and Marcia.
3.2 Felix and Lloyd Cooper
Felix Cooper, one of the main characters of the novel, is a 32 year old man of Jamaican and Ghanaian descent who has recently become clean from his drug addiction. He has newly gotten a job as a car mechanic, but is technically homeless. Felix stays with his girlfriend Grace in Willesden, who he insists is his life savior. Grace’s ambition continuously inspires him to better his conditions, and when he is introduced in the novel he is working on cutting ties with his old life.
Felix has a speech distinctly marked with indicators of working-class dialect. The representation of the character’s speech can be seen in almost every instance he makes an utterance. The speech contains the pragmatic marker “innit”: “Yeah. Probably. Tomorrow. Saturday today, though, innit.” (113). The character also shows use of multiple negation in, for example, “Four fifty, ain’t going no higher than that.”, and “I told you I don’t drink no more” (135,151). The speech also contains “g-dropping”: “You’re dreamin’” (171).
Lloyd, father of Felix, just seventeen years older than his son, is a Jamaican man who lived most of his life in London. Lloyd lived together with Felix’s mother, Jackie, and the rest of their family in the fictional, now famous, Garvey House in Caldwell, a council estate labeled as “a mix of squat, half-way house and commune” in a photobook described as a “photographic account of a fascinating period in London’s history.” (107). The family was relocated when Felix was eight years old, and Lloyd no longer lives with Felix’s mother. There is no mention of an occupation of Lloyd’s, and the character has a complicated
care of after his girlfriend, Sylvia, left him, is described in detail. The kitchen is full of dishes, African masks, and drums, and a “small hill of bed linen ha[s] been stuffed in a corner” (105). “Mould flowers [are blooming] on the ceiling,” and Lloyd ashes on the carpet (106). Lloyd himself is also described shortly when Felix comes to visit: “Lloyd wandered into view, barefoot and bare-chested, idly munching a piece of toast. His locks were secured in a bun, a wooden spoon thrust through them like a geisha’s chopstick.” (104).
Lloyd’s speech is distinctly marked with indicators of a working-class dialect. One indicator is multiple negation, as used in “I don’t need no lessons from that fool. I seen the struggle.” (109). The character also levels the past tense of the verb be: “You was just born there. I lived it, bruv. Nah, I’m joking you.” (106-107). However, Lloyd also uses th-fronting: “Don’t read me shit I already know. I don’t need the man dem telling me what I already know. Who was there, me or he.” (107). Here the character exchanges the th- in “them”, creating “dem.” As is evident, father and son both have indicators of working-class dialect in their speech, and this is another example of the consistency mentioned earlier.
Lloyd also shows signs of speaking with an accent. The narrator describes Lloyd’s speech in a particular sequence as such: “It was a particular tone, enquiring and high – and suddenly Jamaican – coiling up to Felix like a snake rising from its basket.” (111). What follows in the paragraph is Lloyd’s speech where one can see traces of a Jamaican accent: “You’re a big man these days. But let me arks you some ting: why you still chasing after the females like they can save your life? Seriously. Why? Look at Jasmine. You nah learn. . . . The woman is a black hole. Your mudder was a black hole.” (111). As was stated in the theory section of this project accents are an important part of contemporary working-class speech. Taking an intersectional approach to the subject, accents must be considered when discussing class and speech.
While Lloyd shows these traces of a Jamaican accent, Felix does not. While the working-class dialect has been passed on from father to son, the Jamaican accent has not, and this creates generational differences between Lloyd and Felix in their languages. With this alteration, Smith paints a dynamic picture of differences within the language of the working-class, and it creates a complicated image of the relationship between generations of members of the working class, through their languages. Felix’s deviation from his father’s speech can indicate a loss of the Jamaican heritage from his father’s roots, but it may also be telling of their relationship. Felix and Lloyd do not have a close bond – Felix does not call Lloyd “father” – and the difference in Felix’s and Lloyd’s languages is a means of rendering this. 3.3 Natalie and Marcia Blake
Natalie Blake, one of the main characters of the novel, is of Jamaican descent. She grew up in the council estates, just like many of the other characters, with her mother Marcia and her sister Cheryl. Natalie’s ambitus nature, and her drive to distance herself from her Jamaican heritage, and her upbringing in the council estates, soon makes her realize that studying will be to her advantage. Natalie reads, is engaged in church activities, and is eventually admitted to a prestigious university where she studies law. While at university, Natalie becomes “crazy busy with self-intervention” (212). Natalie is determined to rise from her modest background through education and careerism, and she distances herself further from her roots by changing her name, for example, which until now was Keisha. Natalie meets her future husband at university - an Italian, Trinidadian man from a wealthy family, and they later have two children together. Natalie ends up having a successful career as a barrister. Despite
succeeding in accomplishing the goals she set when she was young, Natalie is increasingly feeling alienated from the world she has created for herself, and it seems she belongs in neither her old life, nor in her new one.
Natalie’s mother, Marcia, is a Jamaican woman working as a health visitor. Despite being of the working class, neither Marcia nor Natalie has speeches that are marked by indicators of working-class dialect. Here Smith shows the same consistency throughout – mother and child speak in the same way, just like the other parent-child couples proved, too. In the case of Natalie, however, it is interesting to look at the speech of Natalie’s sister, Cheryl, as well. Cheryl’s speech is rather distinctly marked with indicators of working-class dialect. The character’s speech only makes use of two different indicators of lower-class speech, but this in a short excerpt. The first one is multiple negation which appears twice in the character’s speech: “I’m busy – ain’t really got the time to sit and chat with you neither.” and “We ain’t never been that close, Keisha, come on now.” (263-264). The character also levels past tense of be, and creates “weren’t” out of “wasn’t”: “Nah but it weren’t that, though.” (264).
This difference in how the two sisters speak is an exhibit of how Natalie has deviated from her sister’s, and her family’s, paths. It is evident that Natalie has aimed at putting her Jamaican heritage and her upbringing in the council estate behind her as she grew up, and this has affected her speech as well. Natalie wanted to make sure she did not acquire the working-class dialect her sister acquired. By distancing herself from her family through her language, Natalie also distances herself from the working class. Comparing Natalie and Cheryl’s languages this proves to be a particularly clear example of Natalie’s strive towards a higher cultural capital. This comparison also perfectly highlights the concept of embodied cultural capital and its function in the context of social class.
Smith has made this deviation evidence for Natalie’s class journey, and she has rendered a complex image of this journey, through the character’s language, among other things. Again, Smith has managed to create a complex picture of how generational changes can complicate the distribution of working-class dialect, but more importantly, she has given
the character an agency that leads to the character’s class journey, and to a complex picture of the social classes of contemporary London.
4. Class and Ethnicity
If we look at the characters divided into groups of “white” and “non-white,” we can see that while a vast majority of the non-white characters have speeches marked with indicators of working-class dialect, none of the white characters do. This is an interesting find in itself, but within these groups, there are also nuances to how the use of working-class dialect is
distributed. Some of the non-white characters, for example, seem to be marked to a higher degree than others, and the few non-white characters are not marked as having working-class dialects appear to not only have skin color in common.
4.1 Shar and Nathan
Shar is introduced as she comes to Leah’s door at the beginning of the novel, desperate for help. Shar begs for money to visit her allegedly sick mother, and while Leah calls a taxi for Shar, giving her thirty pounds, Leah’s mother and husband are convinced she was scammed. Shar is a local, with three children and an abusive husband, who turns out to have been in school together with Leah. The narrator describes Shar from Leah’s point of view: “Shar is tiny. Her skin looks papery and dry, with patches of psoriasis on the forehead and on the jaw.” (6). Shar is wearing “rolled down jogging pants” and Leah thinks that “[p]erhaps Shar needs money. Her clothes are not clean. In the back of her right knee there is a wide tear in the nasty fabric. Dirty heels rise up out of disintegrating flip-flops. She smells.” (7). McLeod states that “[f]rom Leah’s slightly more socially elevated point of view, Shar bears the hallmarks of social depravity which are read off terms of pitiable vulgarity” (616). To Leah, Shar’s face is familiar, but unknown: “[she] has seen this face many times in these streets. A peculiarity of London villages: faces without names.” (Smith 7). This familiar unfamiliarity echoes later in Leah’s encounter with Nathan Bogle, as mentioned earlier. Shar is, in other words, at the bottom of the stratified society of London, and her working-class dialect reverberates her position. Shar is one of the characters with the most
indicators of working-class dialect in her speech in the novel. In the excerpt below, we can see that the character’s speech is marked with indicators of working-class dialect in many different ways:
Heart attack! I was asking them is she dyin? Is she dyin? Is the dyin? She goes in the ambulance – don’t get no answer do I! I got three kids that is home innit – I have to get hospital – what they talking about car for? I ain’t got no car! I’m saying help me – no one did a fuckin thing to help me. (7)
In these few sentences alone the character makes use of many of the indicators mentioned in the theory section of this project. Shar is removing the –g in words like “dyin” and “fuckin”, she is making use of multiple negation in “- don’t get no answer do I?” and “I ain’t got no car!,” and she is using the pragmatic marker that is connected to lower-class speech – “innit.”
Shar and Nathan are described in similar ways. From Leah’s point of view, there is an emphasis on their looks – their appearances are described with words such as “ragged,” “crumby,” “nasty,” and “dirty.” The two characters’ faiths are also similar. Both Nathan and Shar attended school together with Leah and Natalie, but while Leah and Natalie’s social class mobility has been upward movements, to different degrees, Nathan and Shar seem to have been moving only downwards in the stratified society. They both have issues with substances, and Shar even mentions that they see each other sometimes. They are also
described in the same way as in that their faces are unknown, but that they are simultaneously a familiar sight on the streets in North West London. The two characters are the same – they work as a type, and this type is contrasted to the other characters through language, among other things. Because even though most of the non-white characters are marked with indicators of working-class dialect, the characters Nathan and Shar are so more than the others. Smith has chosen to distinguish these two characters as being lower in the stratified society than the others, through their language. This has created a dynamic image of the
non-white working class, showing that there are nuances to the distribution of working-class dialect.
4.2 Natalie and Michel
Michel, the husband of Leah, is a French, Algerian hairdresser. He takes his job very seriously, but also spends his evenings buying stocks online. Michel seems to desperately want to change his circumstances by making a fortune on the stock market. As mentioned earlier, Michel also wants to have children with Leah, but Leah insists on keeping things as they are.
Michel and Natalie are two of the very few non-white characters that do not have speeches marked by indicators of working-class dialect. What may explain this is that they have something else in common that the other characters do not: a middle-class mentality. Characters like Shar and Nathan do not even have the possibility of dreaming of a middle-class life, Leah is content with her circumstances, and both Natalie’s and Leah’s mothers deny to “consider themselves solidly of the working class” (179). Michel and Natalie, on the other hand, share a strive towards social upward mobility. Natalie has evidently already made a class journey, now living with her wealthy husband, Frank, in a Victorian townhouse in “the posh bit [of town], on the park” (10). Michel often shows signs of jealousy towards Natalie
and her husband’s circumstances, and he seems eager to change his own. He has invested a moderate sum of money that Leah inherited from her father into stocks, and he frequently wants to discuss the business with Frank, who works in banking: “Actually I am moving into your region, Frank, in a small way,” Michel explains when Frank kindly asks how the
hairdresser-business is going (67). Michel explains that he has bought a guide to day trading, and though Frank shows signs of doubt, Michel is serious about eventually changing his career, and his conditions.
The middle-class mentality of Michel and Natalie diverges them from the rest of the non-white characters, and this can be seen through their language. Michel and Natalie are set apart through their language, and this aspect, like many others brought up earlier, contributes to the complex image of the distribution of working-class dialect. This rendering is also another example of the agency given to the characters, and that they are not victims of their destiny. Another aspect of this is the networks of the characters – Smith plays with networks of characters to display similarities and differences between them. These networks make apparent the class belongings of the different characters. If we look at the contact between Shar and Leah, for example, it is evident that the interaction between them reveals their different class belongings. Language is an important factor that distinguishes the two characters and their social classes. If we, on the other hand, inspect Natalie and Michel, we can establish that their interaction fuels the middle-class mentality they have in common. Michel looks to Natalie and Frank for inspiration for the class journey he is hoping to make, and he gladly takes advice from Frank about his business, as mentioned earlier. The
interaction between Natalie and Michel makes evident their similarities in their middle-class mentality, not least through their shared way of speaking.
Conclusion
Through the representation of language, Smith has managed to draw a complex picture of the working-class characters of NW. This complexity arises out of nuances in the distribution of working-class speech, as well as out of intricate patterns in this distribution.
By marking male characters with indicators of working-class dialect more often than female, the novel displays the complicated relationship between gender and language.
Looking at generational pairs, the consistency and changes in language through generations of characters are made evident. This generational change proved to create agency for some of the characters, as well. The generational structure also made it clear what sort of bond the
characters have to each other, displaying closeness, and deviation, between the children and parents, through the representation of their speeches.
The divide in ethnicity shows that the non-white characters are over-represented as having speeches marked with indicators of working-class dialect, but it also shows that there are nuances within the group of non-white characters. Some of the non-white characters are marked more than others, creating a complex image of the distribution of working-class dialect. Smith also makes networks matter, both within the group of non-white characters and outside it. The interactions between the characters make clear the differences between them, as well as their similarities, when it comes to class and the representation of working-class speech.
The original idea for this project was to compare the representation of working-class speech in NW with that of Smith’s debut novel White Teeth. This idea was, however,
abandoned due to the space limitations of this project. While NW lays its focus on working-class dialects, White Teeth is more attentive to accents, and the novels would therefore have made an interesting comparison. A comparison between NW and White Teeth may have
resulted in a discussion around Smith’s move away from the theme of ethnicity and identity, towards the theme of social class and the stratified, contemporary, London.
While deciding to only study NW to avoid further restrictions, this project still suffered from other limitations. Naturally, the project could have gone into further detail would it not have been for the spatial limitations - and time was also a limiting factor in this aspect. I was, for example, very interested in other factors of class, and without limitations of space and time, I may have explored other indicators of class in the novel. Bourdieu’s theory on the forms of capital offers many entryways to the discussion of social class, and it would indeed have been interesting to explore other forms of cultural capital in the novel. It would also have been interesting to expand on Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus and field in the novel, for example, to get a further understanding of the representation of social class among the
characters. These are also two of many suggestions for further research.
Studying the novel in terms of different Marxist theories may also be beneficial. By studying NW with the aid of other Marxist theories, one could explore different aspects of class. One factor that caught my attention in the novel is the emphasis on housing, and how it indicates the social class of the characters, for example.
This project suggests that by looking at the representation of the speech of the characters, we can study the class aspects of the novel in a detailed manner. Studying the working-class speech of the characters has proved to give a complex image of the stratified society of the novel. The research also further establishes Bourdieu’s applicability to the contemporary novel, providing a fine tool for examining working-class literature trough the idea of cultural capital.
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