Loudness and class

This morning, as I left my apartment, I paused at the sound of raised voices downstairs. Three of my neighbors were yelling at each other. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they certainly seemed angry. I was afraid that they would get violent and the police would be called (as has happened before) and I didn’t want to get in the middle of things, so I lingered for a few seconds before going downstairs.

...Then, getting bored, I figured it would probably be okay and went downstairs anyway. As I got closer, I could hear what they were saying. The phrase “home fries and cheese eggs” was used. I realized that, far from arguing with each other, they were actually just making friendly small talk about breakfast foods and the weather and such. I had completely misinterpreted the feeling tone of their conversation–because the tone of voice they considered appropriate for friendly small talk was so loud that I would never use it unless in a state of extreme anger or fear.

Now, I am an unusually quiet person. It’s difficult for me to raise my voice even when I have a good reason to do so. So this is an introversion/extroversion thing, but I also think there’s a class difference here. In general, upper-class people perceive clearer differences between the private and public spheres; they can afford to buy a great deal of privacy. Lower-class people have less spacious and comfortable homes and are less able to afford third places such as bars, restaurants or coffee shops; their private conversations are forced out into the public sphere. Hence the hanging out on the street corner/front porch/sidewalk behavior that upper-class people find hard to understand. Hence also, I would hypothesize, louder voices, even when close proximity makes loudness unnecessary.
                                   
This must lead to lesser understanding between classes (or races). If I can misunderstand people of a different class without even hearing a word, what do I fail to understand in a real conversation? And they must be misunderstanding me too–for instance, I’ve known several people who assume that a confident person will naturally be loud, so a quiet person must be sad or intimidated. Every word an upper-class person says may come out as slightly less aggressive than intended.