Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

S. KULKARNI
100
mean % std. score
90
80
70
60
50
Sched Back Maratha Brah
working
middle
Fig 5. Mean percent standard (Lex) by caste and social class
4.3.1 Discussion of the results for (Lex)
Gumperz (1958) found in his study of dialect differences in the north Indian
village of Khalapur that, while phonological differences correlate with larger
groupings of castes, lexical differences occur between individual castes (p.
45). Similarly, in Kupwar (Gumperz and Wilson 1971), although the
syntactic differences among the three languages spoken here – Marathi,
Urdu and Kannada – tended to be suppressed, vocabulary distinctions
symbolized caste differences. McCormack (1960) in south Indian Dharwar
and Pandit (1963) in west Indian Gujarat reported that standard lexical use
may most clearly reflect education rather than caste partly because education
provides access to standard sources. Bernsten (1978: 247) in her Marathi
data from semi-urban Phaltan discovered high correlations between lexical
variation and caste and education of the speakers.
Although caste influence predominates in the lexical choices of the
Pune adolescents, I have not found any definite lexical isoglosses coinciding
with caste boundaries of the nature reported by Gumperz for north India.
The differences in the Pune data lay mainly in the frequency of use of
standard lexical variants. Parents’ education did not figure as an important
influence on the children’s lexical choices though parents’ social class did.
The impact of social class across individual caste groups within the non-
114