Socioeconomic Status and Class Perception

Socioeconomic status has been a pivotal element of interaction in any society. Literature witnesses many research on different aspects of social classes and their interactions from this perspective. Nevertheless, what can actually be observed is the mere numerical study of social and economic accounts of people. At the same time, perceptual dimension of interlocutors has received very little attention in the field. Among the imperative aspects of social affairs, one might mention the sort of perception that different socioeconomic classes, i.e. Lower Class (LC), Middle Class (MC), Upper Class (UC) exhibit in regard to each other. The fact that people can distinguish speakers from another socioeconomic class, being exposed to their speech is interestingly ignored in the field. Thus, this study was conducted to fill this gap. Therefore, based on the previous research and considering the current social and economic situation, five criteria were assigned to a pool of 50 participants out of which 9 were selected, 3 for each class. All 9 participants were interviewed exercising the similar topics of interest to elicit their typical manners of speaking. Recording of the interviews resulted in 50 minutes speech. In the next phase, 30 new participants were asked to listen to the recordings and answer related items on a class attitude questionnaire. The results revealed that there is a kind of ‘upward assimilation’ between each two adjacent groups in the society.