Language, Cognition and Social Class: A Correlational Study of Social Class and Syntactic Development of Pakistani EFL Learners

This study aims to find out correlation between social class and the cognitive development of syntax among EFL learners of three Pakistani universities. It focuses on the debate of language being a cognitive or social phenomenon and explores the nature of relationship between the social class of the learners and their cognitive development of syntax. In doing so, it explains how language is not only a cognitive process, but also has something to do with social background of the learners. The research uses a socio-economic index to measure social class of the learners and a test to measure syntactic skills of the learners. Both are assigned equal marks. Correlational study of the scores obtained by the participant in the index and the test reveal moderately significant positive correlation between social class of the participants and their cognitive development of syntax.