ABSTRACT
If Johnson had signalled the developing demarcation of different classes by the language they use, we can see in the texts of many of the late eighteenth-century elocution masters a sensitivity to language which is clearly related to the emerging stratification of social life which was so rapid in the period. Of course such sensitivity was not restricted to the elocutionists' texts and appears frequently in the literature of the period. In Joseph Andrews for example the character of Mrs Slipslop is positioned both socially and morally not just by her name but by her verbal infelicities. Railing against Joseph for his lack of attention to her she says: 'Do you intend to result my passion? Is it not enough, ungrateful as you are, to make no return to all the favours I have done you: but you must treat me with ironing?' And this technique is perfected later in Richard Sheridan's Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals. However, it is in the work of Thomas Sheridan, the playwright's father, that we find a theoretical account of the role of language, and pronunciation in particular, in the construction of social identity.
