Without going into much detail, I have a coworker from the UK who is quite successful in his current position, but seems quite sensitive about his accent (fretting that he never picked up a proper educated way of speaking), the school he went to, and even the fact that he wasn’t actually born in London but a small town somewhere north of there. He says he never lets others’ attitudes get to him, and then goes on for twenty minutes about a manager at another company, who had gone to Oxford, had belittled his class background and called him things like “cheap seats.” To me that’s kind of an alien attitude, so just curious what you guys have observed.
ETA: Or maybe most of the world is this way, and as an American I’m just clueless?
Your observations are correct, at least in my experience. I’ve lived in Spain, Sweden and the UK over the past decade. In Sweden and to a lesser extent Spain, a person’s class origin is largely irrelevant. Christ, after two years in the country I still can’t tell an upper-class Swede from a working-class one, and at times I wonder if such concepts even exist here!
But in the UK? Class origins are extremely important (although probably less so than 50 years ago). Accents are a great example: the UK has many regional variations, but people’s accents will also depend greatly on their social background. Someone from the southern third of the country educated at public (ie private) schools and who got to study at Oxford/Cambridge/one of the London universities will be expected to speak with Received Pronunciation. A working-class Mancunian, on the other hand, will have a lot of trouble hiding his/her background. This is a very strong division that has existed for many decades, and people still feel strongly about it
If I may add something: I think a similar phenomenon applies to voting patterns. As an objective observer, I’ve noticed that some British political parties appeal strongly to the working classes (traditionally Labour, UKIP more recently). Others are stronger among the bourgeoisie and educated professionals (the Lib Dems are a great example). This is of course a generalisation, but I’ve noticed that these class cleavages run deeper in the UK than in other European countries
Heh. Funny that my post is coming right after Batistuta’s and we have completely different views.
The OP could be about my mother, except Mom is a 70yo Spaniard. Or my sister in law, a 40yo Spaniard. Or a Cuban-American neighbor I had in Miami, or that Jamaican-American from Philly, or that idiot from Marseilles that I suffered near Calais.
It’s a matter of personal idiocy, not something that’s actually cultural.
I personally don’t think so. I work across many industries at pretty high levels of responsibility and come into contact with many very senior people and can’t think offhand of any sensitivity regarding background, social or educational. Often the reverse is true. People of humble origins rising to the top are proud of that fact and are happy to refer to said humble origins.
There may be very narrow areas of life where people care about it but they aren’t ones that affect me or the powerful people I know.
In the UK, demeaning someone for being working class when you are not would be unspeakably rude. The division exists and is always apparent, but to refer to it explicitly is rare and awkward and possibly grounds for never seeing someone again. You can yourself say you are proud of your working class roots, but you can’t even say you are proud of being middle class, you can only make self-deprecating jokes about what kind of wine you are drinking. Don’t forget that in England, having money is so shameful that we are forced to hide it by patching the elbows of our old jerseys, and by wearing Hunter wellies as the height of fashion. Being upper-middle class or being rich is not something to be proud of.
Your coworker’s explicit attitude is quite odd, but the manager from Oxford doesn’t even sound like he is English at all. No true Englishman…
Attitudes about accent have changed a lot, with all accents now represented on the BBC, for example. While it is almost always very easy to tell someone’s social class, there is little judgement there now. It’s just a fact about them, like what part of the country you come from. It gives you some information about them, like what they might mean when they say “tea”. It’s not gone, but it’s also not embarrassing to be working class.
As an immigrant to England, I have noticed that many people who self-identify as working class are often very scornful of anything they perceive as middle class. This seems to be part of demonstrating pride in their class (because to think positively of middle class things is to betray your working class roots).
People who I would identify as middle class do not openly identify themselves as such, and don’t really talk about class that much (hence me saying I identify them as middle class, rather than them openly identifying themselves as such).
So whilst I’d hear a working class person say, scornfully, ‘That’s so middle class’, I’ve not heard a middle class person say, scornfully, ‘That’s so working class.’ The middle class person is more likely to poke fun at themselves, saying ‘Oh my god, I sound so middle class’.
Ditto this. I have spent 10 years in the UK but was born overseas. My view is that British people are acutely class aware - i.e. they have a strong understanding of the social roots of their peers - but are largely very relaxed about their own social standing. As gracer and Novelty Bobble note, working class roots as a source of pride for many. I haven’t met anyone who was explicitly ashamed of their birthplace or accent.
I’d agree with this. The person in the OP sounds highly unusual to me in that it stresses him. I’ve never actually met anyone that is worried about their accent, although a friend of a friend was sent to elocution lessons as a kid to get rid of his Sunderland accent, something that we all joke about because the concept is so weird. Well that and all it has achieved is to give him a weirdly unplaceable accent.
Worried about not being born in London? Hell, you were either born there or you are fiercely proud that you’re not from there. Anything else is just weird.
/amanset
(who went to a private school run by Irish priests. Friends call me posho, I call them prole scum, we all have a laugh and a beer)
Maybe someone who is a fraud. Someone from a lower class background who has both acquired a lot of money and taken on a fake veneer of upper class accent and mannerisms (which someone who went to Oxford would be particularly well placed to do.) If he feels himself to be a fraud in the class he is trying to pass as, he might well lash defensively by belittling people of undisguised lower class origins doing high-status, well rewarded work.
But I agree, this attitude, and that of the OP’s co-worker, are not at all typical of modern Britain, where people are mostly cool about their and other people’s class origins, even though they may be well aware of them. If anyone is likely to be embarrassed about their class origins in modern Britain (and even then, the embarrassment is usually superficial and slight), it is likely to be the middle class, especially middle class people of left or liberal political views. The upper classes (who are small in number and have lost much of the power they once had) are generally very comfortable with their class, as are the more conservative members of the middle class. People of working class origin, as has been said, are often fiercely proud of it, whether they are now still poor or have risen into the wealthy elite.
It’s a simple story: a BAFTA-Award winning examination of UK class distinctions through analysis of working-class, middle-class and upper-class taste signifiers, conducted by a Turner Prize-winning transvestite artist famous for his work in the medium of pottery, who in the documentary summaries his experiences with the people he interviews by constructing three huge and colourful tapestries depicting British taste that allude to Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress by picturing the rise (and fall) of a character through the British class system.
Wait, come back!
Truthfully, it really is the most charming, warm and insightful look at British class differences.
I think that the fact that we’re aware of class in this country just means that it’s one more thing for arseholes to be arseholes about, like the Oxonian in the OP. (Although I’d expect nothing else of that toilet of a university, to engage in another English division ;))
I’m sure it’s lovely; sadly, not available in my area (which I take to mean, outside the UK).
… is there any party whose platform includes “EU-wide copyright licenses”? We really need to get that…
ETA: that was to Echo Charlie. My posting was interrupted by a string of phone calls.
Speaking as a Brit who has spent several years living abroad, I have observed that the British middle- (and upper-) classes are in many ways very reticent to overtly laud their socio-economic benefits/advantages over others - certainly compared to some other cultures out there. Anecdotally, I would note that those from working-class backgrounds would be far more likely to ridicule middle-class people for their accent and mannerisms than vice-versa.
That doesn’t mean to say that the latter doesn’t occur, but it is very unlikely to happen publicly. Naturally, snobbery exists - but in a different form to the stereotypical Dickensian/Victorian picture of noble lords ridiculing the common oiks. I have never known anyone from Oxbridge (and I am a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge) speak as if they look down upon the working classes as socially inferior, and would be astonished to hear anything like it - certainly in the circles I keep. The OP sounds like something of an odd exception…
I don’t notice people fretting too much about being perceived as insufficiently posh, in England; very much more the opposite. People often emphasise or exaggerate their gritty, poverty-stricken upbringings, presumably because it endows them with ‘authenticity’ and demonstrates how far they’ve come from their humble roots. Successful people are always doing it - I seem to remember Lily Allen trying it and missing the mark, by saying how her parents had really struggled to afford her school fees…
So to me, ‘reverse snobbery’ is much more apparent, though normal snobbery no doubt carries on too.
Contempt for chavs is alive and well; although I would not call this a like-for-like contempt for the working classes per se (indeed, many ‘chavs’ are economically-speaking middle class). That said, some do - a media commentator did a documentaryon it a while ago where she argued exactly that.
‘Chav’ refers to a quite specific social subgroup, members of which dress, speak and behave in ways deemed by many to be anti-social and uncivil. Is ‘chav-hatred’ snobbery? Perhaps, but I would argue against it being a simple matter of class division. Most working-class people are not chavs, and those who are in contempt of chavs are not only middle- and upper-class.
Interestingly, when I first heard of the word and asked him about it, my coworker seemed to acknowledge himself as a “chav,” for whatever that’s worth.
There’s a lot more “reverse snobbery” than real snobbery. Openly looking down on a “lower” class is an offence to society on almost the same level as racism. Looking down on a “higher” class is how people feel they belong to something and vent their frustrations. In my personal experience, young males especially are more likely to try to enhance their working class credentials than disguise them.
As for chavs, many people consider scorn of them to be a form of classism. I don’t, personally, because I measure “chaviness” by behaviour (anti-social) and certainly not by what jobs they do (or don’t) have.
Hey, you don’t have to be from the southern third of the country, and educated at a private school to study at Oxford/Cambridge/one of the London universities.
Though I do speak with RP
