LINGUISTIC CLASS CODES
One cannot talk about English conversation codes without talking about class. And one cannot talk at all without immediately revealing one's own social class. This may, to some extent, apply internationally, but the most frequently quoted comments on the issue are English – from Ben Jonson's 'Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee' to George Bernard Shaw's rather more explicitly class-related 'It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate him or despise him.' We may like to think that we have become less class-obsessed in recent times, but Shaw's observation is as pertinent now as it ever was. All English people, whether they admit it or not, are fitted with a sort of social Global Positioning Satellite computer that tells us a person's position on the class map as soon as he or she begins to speak.
There are two main factors involved in the calculation of this position: terminology and pronunciation – the words you use and how you say them. Pronunciation is a more reliable indicator (it is relatively easy to learn the terminology of a different class), so I'll start with that.
THE VOWELS VS CONSONANTS RULE
Perhaps the most significant class indicator concerns which type of letter you favour in your pronunciation – or, rather, which type you fail to pronounce. Those at the top of the social scale like to think that their way of speaking is 'correct', as it is clear and intelligible and accurate, while lower-class speech is 'incorrect', a 'lazy' way of talking – unclear, often unintelligible, and just plain wrong. Exhibit A in this argument is the lower-class failure to pronounce consonants, in particular the glottal stop – the omission (swallowing, dropping) of t – and the dropping of h. But this is a case of the pot calling the kettle (or ke'le, if you prefer) black. The lower ranks may drop their consonants, but the upper class are often equally guilty of dropping their vowels. If you ask them the time, for example, the lower classes may tell you it is ''alf past ten' (which may even come out sounding like 'ah pass ten'), but the upper class will say 'hpstn'. A handkerchief in working-class speech is ''ankercheef', but in upper-class pronunciation becomes 'hnkrchf'.
Upper-class vowel-dropping may be frightfully smart, but it still sounds like a mobile-phone text message, and unless you are used to this clipped, abbreviated way of talking, it is no more intelligible than lower-class consonant-dropping. The only advantage of this SMS-speak is that it can be done without moving the mouth very much, allowing the speaker to maintain an aloof, deadpan expression and a stiff upper lip.
The upper classes at least pronounce their consonants correctly – well, you'd better, if you're going to leave out half of your vowels – whereas the lower classes often pronounce th as f (‘teeth' becomes 'teef', 'thing' becomes 'fing') or sometimes as v (‘that' becomes 'vat'; 'Worthing' is 'Worving'). A final g can become k, as in 'somefink' and 'nuffink'.
Pronunciation of vowels is also a helpful class indicator. The upper class only 'drop' some of their vowels: others are drawled, such that, for example, the upper-class o becomes or, as in 'naff orf', and the a in, say, 'plastic', becomes aah (plaahstic). The upper class a may also become a short e, so that 'actually' sounds like 'ectually' (or the even more vowel-economical 'eckshly'). The lower-class a is often pronounced as a long i – 'Dive' for Dave, 'Tricey' for Tracey. (Working-class northerners tend to elongate the a, and might also reveal their class by saying 'Our Daaave' and 'Our Traaacey'.) The very upper-class i may become a long a, such that 'I am' sounds like 'Ay am'.
But the upper class don't say 'I' at all if they can help it: one prefers to refer to oneself as 'one'. In fact, they are not too keen on pronouns in general, omitting them, along with articles and conjunctions, wherever possible – as though they were sending a frightfully expensive telegram. Despite all these peculiarities, the upper classes remain convinced that their way of speaking is the only proper way: their speech is the norm, everyone else's is 'an accent' – and when the upper classes say that someone speaks with 'an accent', what they mean is a working-class accent.
Although upper-class speech as a whole is not necessarily any more intelligible than lower-class speech, it must be said that mispronunciation of certain words is often a lower-class signal, indicating a less-educated speaker. For example: saying 'nucular' instead of 'nuclear', and 'prostrate' for 'prostate', are common mistakes, in both senses of the word 'common'. There is, however, a distinction between upper-class speech and 'educated' speech – they are not necessarily the same thing. What you may hear referred to as 'BBC English' or 'Oxford English' is a kind of 'educated' speech – but it is more upper-middle than upper: it lacks the haw-haw tones, vowel swallowing/drawling and pronoun-phobia of upper-class speech, and is certainly more intelligible to the uninitiated. The younger members of the Royal Family, including Princes William and Harry, and Princess Anne's daughter Zara, have deliberately toned down their speech to something much closer to BBC English, with the result that they now sound more upper-middle than upper class. Even the Queen's speech has gradually morphed into a more 'educated' than gratingly upper-class accent.
Most working-class people, however, and many lower middles, still regard 'BBC English' – and often the BBC itself and all its output – as 'posh'. As one of my (unemployed, working-class) interviewees put it, 'There's this posh girl in the flats where I live [she lived on a very run-down council estate] – single mum, struggling like the rest of us, but she's dead posh. Minute she opens her mouth, you know! Proper BBC accent – nobody round here talks like that!'
Another interviewee (working class, third-generation British Asian) told me, 'I worked in a call centre – shittiest job ever, but there were this couple of posh kids on the training day with me...'
‘How did you know they were posh?' I asked.
‘How do you think?' he replied. 'Only had to listen to them – sounded like the bloody Shipping Forecast!'
Incidentally, these comments illustrate the futility of using either income or occupation as a guide to a person's social class.
While mispronunciations are generally seen as lower-class indicators, and this includes mispronunciation of foreign words and names, attempts at overly foreign pronunciation of frequently used foreign expressions and place-names are a different matter. Trying to do a throaty French r in 'en route', for example, or saying 'Barthelona' with a lispy Spanish c, or telling everyone that you are going to Firenze rather than Florence – even if you pronounce them correctly – is affected and pretentious, which almost invariably betrays lower-middle or middle-middle origins. The upper-middle, upper and working classes usually do not feel the need to show off in this way. If you are a fluent speaker of the language in question, you might just, perhaps, be forgiven for lapsing into correct foreign pronunciation of these words – although it would be far more English and modest of you to avoid exhibiting your skill.
We are frequently told that regional accents have become much more acceptable nowadays – even desirable, if you want a career in broadcasting – and that a person with, say, a Yorkshire, Scouse, Geordie or West Country accent is no longer looked down upon as automatically lower class. Yes, well, maybe. I am not convinced. The fact that many presenters of popular television and radio programmes now have regional accents may well indicate that people find these accents attractive, but it does not prove that the class associations have somehow disappeared. We may like a regional accent, and even find it delightful, melodious and charming, while still recognising it as clearly working class. If what is really meant is that being working class has become more acceptable in many formerly snobby occupations, then that is what should be said, rather than a lot of mealy-mouthed polite euphemisms about regional accents.
Speaking of 'regional' accents, it is worth mentioning (particularly in the context of my remarks about the influence of immigrants in the Introduction) that many young working-class people in London and surrounding areas now speak a hybrid dialect known as Multicultural London English (MLE), which incorporates elements of Caribbean, South Asian and African American speech patterns and vocabulary. Variants of MLE are also emerging in other 'multicultural' cities such as Birmingham and Manchester. In MLE, the h is no longer dropped, 'like' (a word used extensively) becomes 'lahke', 'that' can become 'dat' and virtually every sentence, interrogative or not, ends in 'innit?' or 'y'get me?'
TERMINOLOGY RULES – U AND NON-U REVISITED
Nancy Mitford coined the phrase 'U and Non-U' – referring to upper-class and non-upper-class words – in an article in Encounter in 1955, and although some of her class-indicator words are now outdated, the principle remains. Some of the shibboleths may have changed, but there are still plenty of them, and we still judge your class on whether, for example, you call the midday meal 'lunch' or 'dinner'.
Mitford's simple binary model is not, however, quite subtle enough for my purposes: some shibboleths may simply separate the upper class from the rest, but others more specifically separate the working class from the lower-middle, or the middle-middle from the upper-middle. In a few cases, working-class and upper-class usage is remarkably similar, and differs significantly from the classes in between.
The Seven Deadly Sins
There are, however, seven words that the English uppers and upper-middles regard as infallible shibboleths. Utter any one of these 'seven deadly sins' in the presence of these higher classes, and their on-board class-radar devices will start bleeping and flashing: you will immediately be demoted to middle-middle class, at best, probably lower – and in some cases automatically classified as working class.
Pardon
This word is the most notorious pet hate of the upper and upper-middle classes. Jilly Cooper recalls overhearing her son telling a friend 'Mummy says that “pardon” is a much worse word than “fuck”.' He was quite right: to the uppers and upper-middles, using such an unmistakably lower-class term is worse than swearing. Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as 'Pardonia'. Here is a good class-test you can try: when talking to an English person, deliberately say something too quietly for them to hear you properly. A lower-middle or middle-middle person will say, 'Pardon?'; an upper-middle will say 'Sorry?' (or perhaps 'Sorry – what?' or 'What – sorry?'); but an upper-class and a working-class person will both just say, 'What?' The working-class person may drop the t – 'Wha'?' – but this will be the only difference. Some upper-working-class people with middle-class aspirations might say 'pardon', in a misguided attempt to sound 'posh'.
Toilet
‘Toilet' is another word that makes the higher classes flinch – or exchange knowing looks, if it is uttered by a would-be social-climber. The correct upper-middle/upper term is 'loo' or 'lavatory' (pronounced 'lavuhtry', with the accent on the first syllable). 'Bog' is occasionally acceptable, but only if it is said in an obviously ironic-jocular manner, as though in quotes. The working classes all say 'toilet', as do most lower-middles and middle-middles, the only difference being the working-class omission of the final t. (The working classes may also sometimes say 'bog', but without the ironic quotation marks.) Those lower- and middle-middles with pretensions or aspirations, however, may eschew 'toilet' in favour of suburban-genteel euphemisms such as 'Gents', 'Ladies', 'bathroom', 'powder room', 'facilities' and 'convenience', or jokey euphemisms such as 'latrines', 'heads' and 'privy' (females tend to use the former, males the latter).
Anyone who thinks that I'm exaggerating about the higher classes' extreme aversion to the terms 'pardon' and 'toilet' (or indeed about the general English obsession with class) should look back at the scathing press reports on Carole Middleton's use of these two words – described thus in a BBC News Online summary:
Negative stories about the Middleton family appeared in the press. These included allegations that Kate's mother... had used the words 'toilet' and 'pardon' in front of the Queen.
It is the BBC's use of the term 'allegations' that particularly amuses me here, as we normally only use this word in relation to the commission of a crime – or a sin.
Serviette
A 'serviette' is what the inhabitants of Pardonia call a napkin. This is another example of a 'genteelism', in this case a misguided attempt to enhance one's status by using a fancy French word rather than a plain old English one. It has been suggested that 'serviette' was taken up by squeamish lower-middles who found 'napkin' a bit too close to 'nappy', and wanted something that sounded a bit more refined. Whatever its origins, 'serviette' is now regarded as irredeemably lower class. Upper-middle and upper-class mothers get very upset when their children learn to say 'serviette' from well-meaning lower-class nannies, and have to be painstakingly retrained to say 'napkin'.
Dinner
There is nothing wrong with the word 'dinner' in itself: it is only a working-class hallmark if you use it to refer to the midday meal, which should be called 'lunch'. I've had fun at a few public lectures with a 'party trick' whereby I ascertain the social class of English audiences simply by asking those who call their midday meal 'dinner' to raise their hands, followed by those who call it 'lunch' (and then assess the degree of social mobility by asking the latter group to raise their hands if their parents called this meal 'dinner'). A very crude measure, obviously, but everyone immediately grasps the importance of linguistic 'cultural capital' in the English class system. And it never fails to get a laugh.
Calling your evening meal 'tea' is also a working-class indicator: the higher echelons call this meal 'dinner' or 'supper'. Technically, dinner is a somewhat grander meal than supper: if you are invited to 'supper', this is likely to be an informal family meal, often eaten in the kitchen – sometimes this is made explicit, as in 'family supper' or 'kitchen supper', although these are regarded as a bit twee. The uppers and upper-middles use the term 'supper' much more than the middles and lower-middles, rarely describing an evening meal as 'dinner' unless it is a particularly formal occasion – and never, ever using the term 'dinner party'.
The class connotations of 'supper' were the subject of much amusement – and many front-page headlines – in 2012, thanks to a text message revealed at the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics. The messsage was from a national newspaper editor, Rebekah Brooks, to the prime minister, David Cameron, and contained the sentence 'Let's discuss over country supper soon.' Although the message included far more embarrassing indicators of inappropriate collaboration and collusion (such as, 'professionally, we're definitely in this together'), it was the 'posh' term 'country supper' that sparked the most outrage, mockery, bafflement and mock-bafflement. Technically, 'country supper' is a pretty innocuous term, just meaning supper (i.e. an informal evening meal) at one's house in the country (where the prime minister and Rebekah Brooks are neighbours). But the media gleefully pounced on it as prime evidence of the elitism and upper-class chumminess of their relationship. The irony, which escaped almost all of the reporters, is that a truly upper-class person would not have used the term 'country supper' because it would be seen, like 'kitchen supper', as rather precious, simpering and cutesy (which are seen as lower-middle/middle-middle qualities).
‘Tea', for the higher classes, is taken at around four o'clock, and consists of tea and cakes or scones (which they pronounce with a short o), and perhaps little sandwiches (pronounced 'sanwidges', not 'sand-witches'). The lower classes, for whom 'tea' means the evening meal, call this 'afternoon tea'. All this can pose a few problems for foreign visitors: if you are invited to 'dinner', should you turn up at midday or in the evening? Does 'come for tea' mean four o'clock or seven o'clock? To be safe, you will have to ask what time you are expected. The answer will help you to place your hosts on the social scale.
Settee
Or you could ask your hosts what they call their furniture. If an upholstered seat for two or more people is called a settee or a couch, they are no higher than middle-middle. If it is a sofa, they are upper-middle or above. There are occasional exceptions to this rule, which is not quite as accurate a class indicator as 'pardon', 'dinner' or 'toilet'. Some younger upper-middles, influenced by American films and television programmes, might say 'couch' – although they are unlikely to say 'settee', except as a joke or to annoy their class-anxious parents. If you like, you can amuse yourself by making predictions based on correlations with other class indicators such as those covered later in Home Rules (page 185). For example, if the item in question is part of a brand-new matching three-piece suite, which also matches the curtains, its owners are likely to call it a settee.
Lounge
And what do they call the room in which the settee/sofa is to be found? Settees are found in 'lounges' or 'living rooms', sofas in 'sitting rooms' or 'drawing rooms'. 'Drawing room' (short for 'withdrawing room') used to be the only 'correct' term, but many upper-middles and uppers feel it is bit silly and pretentious to call, say, a small room in an ordinary terraced house the 'drawing room', so 'sitting room' has become acceptable. You may occasionally hear an upper-middle-class person say 'living room', although this is frowned upon, but only middle-middles and below say 'lounge'. This is a particularly useful word for spotting middle-middle social-climbers trying to pass as upper-middle: they may have learnt not to say 'pardon' and 'toilet', but they are often not aware that 'lounge' is also a deadly sin.
Sweet
Like 'dinner', this word is not in itself a class indicator, but it becomes one when misapplied. The upper-middle and upper classes insist that the sweet course at the end of a meal is called the 'pudding' – never the 'sweet', or 'afters', or 'dessert', all of which are déclassé, unacceptable words. 'Sweet' can be used freely as an adjective, but as a noun it is piece of confectionary – what the Americans call 'candy' – and nothing else. The course at the end of the meal is always 'pudding', whatever it consists of: a slice of apple tart is 'pudding', so is a lemon sorbet. Asking 'Does anyone want a sweet?' at the end of a meal will get you immediately classified as middle-middle or below. 'Afters' will also activate the class-radar and get you demoted. Some American-influenced young upper-middles are starting to say 'dessert', and this is therefore the least offensive of the three – and the least reliable as a class indicator. It can also cause confusion as, to the upper classes, 'dessert' traditionally means a selection of fresh fruit, served right at the end of a dinner, after the pudding, and eaten with a knife and fork.
‘Smart' and 'Common' Rules
The 'seven deadly sins' are the most obvious and reliable class indicators, but a number of other terms will also register on our highly sensitive class-radar devices. If you want to 'talk posh', you will have to stop using the term 'posh', for a start: the correct upper-class word is 'smart'. In upper-middle and upper-class circles, 'posh' can only be used ironically, in a jokey tone to show that you know it is a low-class word.
The opposite of 'smart' is 'common' – a snobbish euphemism for 'working class'. But beware: using this term too often is a sure sign of class-anxiety. Calling things and people 'common' all the time is protesting too much, trying too hard to distance yourself from the lower classes. Only the insecure wear their snobbery on their sleeve in this way. 'Naff' is a better option, as it is a more ambiguous term, which can mean the same as 'common' but can also just mean 'tacky' or 'in bad taste'.
If you prefer, you can now use the term 'chav' (which started out as a noun, but can now also be used as an adjective, although 'chavvy' is the more widely used adjectival form). Officially, 'chav' refers only to a particular section of the working class – essentially the British version of what in the US would be called 'white trash', 'trailer trash' or just 'trash' (‘bogan' is probably the closest equivalent in Australia and New Zealand). 'Respectable' working-class people are at pains to distinguish themselves from the brash, tacky, work-shy 'chavs'. For many members of the middle and upper classes, however, 'chav' has become yet another euphemism, yet another way of saying 'working class' without using the C-word, yet another way of sneering at working-class tastes without being branded a snob – although many articles and even whole books have been written about how offensive the term is.
‘Chav' may eventually become unacceptable, at which point the middle and upper classes will simply find another snobby pejorative euphemism, as they always do. I would recommend reviving 'lumpenproletariat'. Marx coined it (to describe the late-nineteenth-century equivalent of 'chavs'), which makes it a bit harder for class-warriors to object, and as a bonus its inevitable misuse would infuriate quite a few sociologists. It could be shortened to 'lumps' for catchiness. (Actually, I would recommend that the higher classes stop being such ghastly hypocritical snobs and learn some respect, but that won't happen.)
If they are 'common', young people will call their parents 'Mum' and 'Dad'; 'smart' children say 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' (some used to say 'Ma' and 'Pa', but these are now seen as very old-fashioned). When talking about their parents, common children refer to them as 'my mum' and 'my dad' (or 'me mam' and 'me dad'), while smart children say 'my mother' and 'my father'. These are not infallible indicators, as some higher-class children now say 'Mum' and 'Dad', and some very young working-class children might say 'Mummy' and 'Daddy'; but if the child is over the age of ten, maybe twelve to be safe, still calling his or her mother 'Mummy' is a fairly reliable higher-class indicator. Grown-ups who still say 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' are almost certainly upper-middle or above.
Prince Charles provided an example of this at the age of sixty-four, by addressing the Queen as 'Mummy' in his speech at her Diamond Jubilee celebrations. His use of this informal term was obviously intended to be humorous, but 'Mum' would have been equally informal and equally amusing.
Mothers who are called 'Mum' carry a 'handbag'; mothers called 'Mummy' just call it a 'bag'. Mums wear 'perfume'; mummies call it 'scent'. Parents called 'Mum' and 'Dad' go 'horseracing'; smart mummies and daddies call it 'racing'. Common people go to a 'do'; middle-middles might call it a 'function'; smart people just call it a party. 'Refreshments' are served at middle-class 'functions'; the higher echelons' parties just have food and drink. Lower- and middle-middles eat their food in 'portions'; upper-middles and above have 'helpings'. Common people have a 'starter'; smart people have a 'first course' – although this one is rather less reliable. Referring to the main course (in, say, a three-course meal) as the 'main meal' is decidedly common.
Lower- and middle-middles talk about their 'home' or 'property'; upper-middles and above say 'house'. Common people's homes have 'patios'; smart people's houses have 'terraces'. Working-class people say 'indoors' when they mean 'at home' (as in 'Oh no, I've left it indoors' when they find they have forgotten something, and ''er indoors' meaning 'my wife'). This is by no means an exhaustive list: class pervades every aspect of English life, and you will find yet more verbal class indicators in almost every chapter of this book – as well as dozens of non-verbal class signals.
Class-denial Rules
We are clearly as acutely class-conscious as we have ever been, but in these 'politically correct' times, many of us are increasingly embarrassed about our class-consciousness, and do our best to deny or disguise it. The middle classes are particularly uncomfortable about class, and well-meaning upper-middles are the most squeamish of all. They will go to great lengths to avoid calling anyone or anything 'working class' – resorting to polite euphemisms such as 'low-income groups', 'less privileged', 'ordinary people', 'less educated', 'the man in the street', 'tabloid readers', 'blue collar', 'state school', 'council estate' and 'popular'.
These over-tactful upper-middles may even try to avoid using the word 'class' at all, carefully talking about someone's 'background' instead – which always makes me imagine the person emerging from either a Lowry street scene or a Gainsborough or Reynolds country-manor portrait, depending on the class to which 'background' is intended to refer. (This is always obvious from the context:'Well, with that sort of background, you have to make allowances...' is Lowry; 'We prefer Saskia and Fiona to mix with girls from the same background . . .' is Gainsborough/Reynolds.)
All this diplomatic euphemising is quite unnecessary, though, as working-class English people generally do not have a problem with the C-word and, until very recently, were nearly all quite happy to call themselves working class. Upper-class English people are also often rather blunt and no-nonsense about class. It is not that these top and bottom classes are any less class-conscious than the middle ranks: they just tend to be less angst-ridden and embarrassed about it. Their class-consciousness is also, in many cases, rather less subtle and complex than that of the middle classes: they tend not to perceive as many layers or delicate distinctions. Their class-radar recognises at the most three classes: working, middle and upper; and sometimes only two, with the working class dividing the world into 'us and the posh' – with little or no distinction between levels of 'poshness', apart from actual aristocracy/royalty – and the upper class seeing only 'us and the plebs' (or 'ordinary people', if they are being polite).
Nancy Mitford is a good example, with her simple binary division of society into 'U and non-U', which takes no account of the fine gradations between lower-middle, middle-middle and upper-middle, let alone the even more microscopic nuances distinguishing, say, 'secure, established upper-middle' from 'anxious, borderline upper-middle' that are only of interest to the tortured middle classes – and to nosy anthropologists.
Having said that, it is worth noting that both the upper and working class do perceive finer distinctions and layers within their own classes – distinctions that may be unnoticed by the rest of the population. Only the upper classes notice or care about the distinctions between 'old family', 'landed gentry' and peerage, for example, or the arcane ranks (dukes, marquesses, earls and so on) within the peerage. And the working classes are far more sensitive to – and about – the important distinction between 'respectable working class' and the despised 'chavs' or 'pikeys', and the factors distinguishing vulgar 'new money' from admirable 'working class made good' (the main difference being that the latter 'remember where they've come from' and don't become 'stuck up' or 'think they're better than us'). The English working class contains at least as many complex divisions and distinctions as the upper and middle classes.
The tendency of the middle and upper classes to ignore these distinctions and lump all these working-class grades together and, even more shamefully, to tar them all with the same 'chav' brush is one of the causes of the recent 'identity shift' whereby more and more working-class people are defining themselves as middle class (in surveys, about half of those who used to call themselves 'working class' no longer do so – a very significant shift). 'Working class' has become a more pejorative term, associated with, ironically, people who do not work, so-called 'benefit scroungers', 'chavs', etc. There has always been a huge perceived gulf between the 'respectable', hard-working working class and the unemployed 'underclass' (well, perceived by the respectable working classes, at least). These are not entirely unlike the old sixteenth-century categories of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor. But now the demonisation of 'chavs', and the blurring of these categories, is adversely affecting the whole working class.
Other causes of the working-class 'identity shift' are the 'aspirational' ideologies promoted by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and then by Tony Blair's New Labour, which have for many people eroded any sense of pride in being working class. The focus of governments for many years has been on promoting social mobility (which has remained stubbornly static at best), rather than improving conditions and life for the working class. Given the relentless message that being working class is a condition one should aim to escape from, it is hardly surprising that many working-class people now choose to call themselves 'middle class', a term that, for some, has been radically redefined. In response to my chatter about some research I was doing on class, for example, a working-class hairdresser told me, 'I'd like to say I'm middle class.'
‘What does that mean to you, ' I asked, 'that you're middle class, rather than working class?'
She answered: 'That I've got some class, I suppose – like, I dress nicely, I've got some ambition in life... I'm not just some lazy chav!'
With the decline of the manufacturing industry, many of the lowest-paid working-class jobs are now in service industries (call centres are the new coal mines) and can be seen as 'white collar', or 'pink collar', rather than traditional blue-collar manual labour. Those working in these occupations, however menial, undignified and poorly paid their jobs may be, can more easily define themselves as middle class – especially when they are being fobbed off with the illusion that they are middle class, as opposed to being paid a decent wage.
It is worth noting that, until very recently, things were the other way round: many people in what are classified as 'middle-class' occupations would identify themselves (correctly, and often proudly) as 'working class' when asked to state their social class in surveys. This discrepancy always caused much confusion and puzzled debate among those who believe that occupation is a reliable guide to social class – they would scratch their heads and wonder why all these ABC1s were insisting on calling themselves working class. Now they are wondering why all these C2DEs are calling themselves middle class.
LINGUISTIC CLASS CODES AND ENGLISHNESS
So, what do these linguistic class codes tell us about Englishness? All cultures have a social hierarchy and methods of signalling social status: what, apart from our perhaps disproportionate class-consciousness, is distinctive about the English class system and its signals?
For a start, the linguistic codes we have identified indicate that class in England has nothing to do with income or occupation. 'Cultural capital' is a more helpful concept, but the only form of cultural capital that functions as a near-infallible class indicator in real life (as opposed to surveys) is 'linguistic capital'. Speech is all-important. A person with an upper-class accent, using upper-class terminology, will be recognised as upper class even if he or she is earning poverty-line wages, doing grubby menial work and living on a grotty council estate. Or even unemployed, destitute and homeless. Equally, a person with working-class pronunciation, who calls his sofa a 'settee', and his midday meal 'dinner', will be identified as working class even if he is a multi-millionaire business tycoon living in a grand country house. There are other class indicators – such as one's taste in clothes, furniture, decoration, cars, pets, books, hobbies, food and drink – but speech is the most immediate and most obvious.
The importance of speech in this context may point to another English characteristic: our love of words. It has often been said that the English are very much a verbal rather than a visual culture, considerably more noted for our literature than for our art. We are also not particularly 'tactile' or physically expressive, not given to much touching or gesticulating. Words are our preferred medium, so it is perhaps significant that they should be our primary means of signalling and recognising social status.
This reliance on linguistic signals, and the irrelevance of wealth and occupation as class indicators, also reminds us that our culture is not a meritocracy. Your accent and terminology reveal the class you were born into and raised in, not anything you have achieved through your own talents or efforts. And whatever you do accomplish, your position on the class scale will always be identifiable by your speech, unless you painstakingly train yourself to use the pronunciation and vocabulary of a different class.
The sheer complexity of the linguistic rules reveals something of the intricate, convoluted nature of the English class system – all those layers, all those fine distinctions; the snakes-and-ladders game of social climbing. And the class-denial rules give us a hint of a peculiarly English squeamishness about class. This unease may be more pronounced among the middle classes, but most of us suffer from it to some degree – we would rather pretend that class differences do not exist, or are no longer important, or at least that we personally have no class-related prejudices.
Which brings me to another English characteristic: hypocrisy. Not that our pious denial of our class-obsession is specifically intended to mislead – it often seems to be more a matter of self-deception than any deliberate deception of others, a kind of collective self-deception, perhaps? I have a hunch that this distinctively English brand of hypocrisy will come up again and might even turn out to be one of the 'defining characteristics' we are looking for.