Talk of Class

Abstract

Discourses of social class are an important object of study because how people talk about social class can translate into how they act on the basis of social class. Using data from sixty in-depth interviews with white college students from working- and upper-middle-class backgrounds at two institutions of higher education, I explore college students’ social class awareness, whether they think that social class matters, and how they construct symbolic boundaries. I find that whereas there are some similarities in how working- and upper-middle-class students talk about social class, differences ultimately emerge whereby working-class respondents construct social class as a more salient issue. Moreover, in contrast to earlier research, both upper-middle- and working-class students construct symbolic boundaries vis-à-vis those above them in the stratification system. This pattern suggests some possible implications for processes of social reproduction.