Another Linguist, Another Murder, Part I →

The Looking-Glass vs. Mirror War: Language and Class

February 9, 2012, 12:01 am

Quick: are these "false teeth" or "dentures"?

In 1954, the British linguist Alan Ross published “Linguistic class-indicators in present-day English” in a Finnish journal called Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. It was an unlikely starting place for such an influential article. It led to a flurry of pieces in the British press, many of them collected in a 1956 volume called Noblesse Oblige, edited by Nancy Mitford. But the truly influential thing was Ross’s terminology, specifically U (which he used “to designate usages of the upper class) and Non-U (“usages which are not upper class”). For a couple of decades, these epithets were favorites of high-end journalism on both sides of the Atlantic. Even at this late date, they turn up now and again.

Late date that it is, one can’t easily tell exactly how much of Ross’s tongue was in his cheek. But without a doubt, he accurately discerned the way vocabulary and pronunciation can be a telltale marker of class, self-definition, and aspiration.

The selection below of the words and phrases he highlighted shows, first, how much language changes in 58 years. But looking closely, you can discern some themes, especially the way the upper classes favor (or see themselves as favoring) plain speaking, while the lower classes and the strivers gravitate to euphemism and/or pretension. (Quite a few of the words Ross ascribed to them—perfume, pardon, toilet, etc.—came directly from French.)

U	Non-U
Knave	Jack (cards)
Vegetables	Greens
Ice	Ice Cream
Scent	Perfume
Ill (in bed)	Sick (in bed)
I was sick on the boat.	I was ill on the boat.
Looking-glass	Mirror
Graveyard	Cemetery
Spectacles	Glasses
False Teeth	Dentures
Die	Pass on
Mad	Mental
Lavatory, Loo	Toilet
Rich	Wealthy
Wireless	Radio
What?	Pardon?
Good health	Cheers
Pudding	Sweet
How d’you do	Pleased to meet you
(response to How d’you do):
How d’you do	Quite well, thank you.

As I say, things change in three score years, and it’s a surprise to learn that such seemingly innocuous and neutral terms as radio, dentures, glasses, cemetery, mirror, ice cream, and perfume were once looked down on. The U folk seem to have triumphed, on the other hand, in the matter of vegetables. Good on them.

The U.S. and the U.K. are famously different in matters of class, and and the nature of social stratification on these shores is endlessly discussed and debated. But there’s no doubt that an upper class exists here, whether you call them preppies or the 1 percent, or that they have a distinct way of talking. Here’s a start at a lexicon:

U.S. U	U.S. Non-U
Boat	Yacht
(a female speaking of another female):
My friend	My girlfriend
Resources	Money
Grandchildren	Grandkids
My mother	My mom
Boarding school	Prep School
Nice to see you	Nice to meet you
House	Home
Gal	Lady, woman
Fellow	Gentleman, guy
Trip	Honeymoon
Drink	Cocktail
Secretary	Assistant
(student addressing college professor Robert Jackson):
Mr. Jackson, Bob	Dr. Jackson
Thanks much	Thanks very much

That’s my list of U.S U and non-U. You?

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picky

The fact that British English hasn’t changed quite that much over the intervening years is indicated by my knowing immediately that you have “loo” in the wrong column.

elsieboy

Are you certain about that?

picky

Ooops – how hamfisted! I’ve replied to you, elsieboy, but incompetence has shoved my reply way down on 14 Feb

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7600006 Mary Davenport Davis

I have to say that this list does not map well onto my own experience growing up around but not of the 1%. Prep school vs. Boarding school–maybe, but I tend to think of the terms as lexically distinct. A boarding school is where you board your children; a prep school is designed to get them into a good college. Most boarding schools are also prep schools, but only some prep schools are boarding schools.
With boat vs. yacht, my experience has been that speech context has a lot to do with it. I tend to think of “boat” as general-purpose, and “yacht” as a technical term. You call up a friend to say you’re taking the boat out tomorrow and would she like to come; you tell an acquaintance at a party that you like to take trips out on your boat, and, when she asks, you specify that it’s a 40 foot yacht. This seems to me to apply to most people with boats, regardless of class.

Could this be a regional thing? Most of my experience comes from the South and Mid-Atlantic.

jffoster

Yacht is also a technical term with regard to registration. Boats of or over a certain size can be registered with the Federal Government as a Yacht and entitled to wear the U S Yacht Ensign instead of the usual Merchant/Naval Ensign ~ National Flag. And they have a registered name but do not have State registration or bow numbers. But I doubt if that’s general to most Americans.

dank48

Our class differences seem to me to be marked at least as sharply by grammar and pronunciation (“accent”) as by vocabulary. In every region, there’s stratification by how we say it as well as by what we say. Novice novelists trying for “backwoods” markers often fall into the trap of pegging characters by word choice, assisted by phonetic spelling, and the choices are generally the same: “likker,” “britches,” “vittles.” One wonders how they think “liquor,” “breeches,” and “victuals” are supposed to be pronounced.
The overuse of “ladies” and “gentlemen” for “women” and “men,” however, is definitely a tell.

Guest

Raven McDavid and Hans Kurath called the peculiar spellings “eye dialect.”

dank48

What a great term for something I didn’t even know there was a term for.

davidfromdarkestpa

Saying “boat” displays a clear lack of sophistication–there are many kinds of vessels and someone wealthy enough to own one would never confuse his/her 3-master with their cigarette boat.

theart

On the contrary. In some circles, any description other than just “boat” is considered a vulgar attempt by the speaker to impress the listener. Someone wealthy enough to own a 3-master either doesn’t care if you know it or hasn’t been wealthy very long.

jpminnc

There’s also an element of willful modesty in using “boat” for “yacht,” the way classical violinists occasionally say “I fiddle for the xyz orchestra,” when “fiddle music” (such as Bluegrass) is the last thing they would ever be interested in. Such usages are closely bound to social class, but precisely because of that, people carefully modulate how they use their vocabulary. It’s impossible to just make a simple equation a=U: b=non-U.

manoflamancha

The British uppers have so many silly “inversions” in language. When you asked how they like the soup, they may reply :”Quite good.” Which translated means “bloody awfull”

jffoster

Withe respect to how students address professors, I suggest the regional variation here may override the class one. While it is apparently common among some East Coast universities and the NY Times, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the CHE to use the title Dr. only for people with medical degrees, (reverse snobbery??, deliberate put down of nonmedical doctorates??,…), in the Middle West and South, it is usual to use the title Dr. as an address, even in relatively or very selective private colleges and “public ivies”.

sibyl

I think this is more institutional than regional.

(I know some institutions where “Mr.” and “Ms.” are flaunted in a show of egalitarianism, and others that insist on the use of the term “Dean” when addressing anyone entitled to it, even if that person is the most junior assistant dean. Institutional customs are idiosyncratic.)

I know many Northeastern institutions where “Dr.” is used, although they tend to be among the less prestigious. Perhaps the general rule is that it is more frequently used at institutions where it cannot be assumed that a faculty member holds the Ph.D.

http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com Richard Grayson

In Burma/Myanmar:

U: U Thant
Non-U: George Orwell
andremayer

I’d suggest that how professors are addressed is determined by the status of the institution, not of the student. I agree with Ms Davis about “boarding school” – a descriptive term with, if anything, slight punitive overtones. On the other hand,I can report that those of us who attended elite residential secondary schools do refer to them as “prep schools,” but are reluctant to extend that term to even the most prestigious school with no residential component.

winonaww

Students’ habits, aside, those professors who insist on being called “Dr.” are certainly non-U speakers. Those institutions who encourage this are often schools who are associated with specific, often marginalized, identity groups, such as church-related schools or those who preferentially serve one cultural group or another.
zenprof

Usually we just say “school” (implying secondary school), simply assuming it was One Of Those, either boarding or day; “college” means university. It is the assumptions underneath to listen for, yes?

winonaww

“Among” and “amongst”; “divan” or “sofa” and “couch.” And a good share of our health conditions: “woman problems,” for example, rather than “ovarian” or “menstrual.” Yes, some of how we identify language rests in regional allowances; however, the influx of Anglo-phone speakers from other countries have complicated this: almost without exception these new Americans speak a definitely non-U English thinking that they are doing just the opposite, and their mixtures of registers and regionalisms are sometimes head-spinning.
latico

I grew up in Vermont, and “thanks much” was a feature of the local dialect, associated with “real Vermonters” and not with preppy interlopers with summer houses (“flatlanders”). So I have a hard time hearing it as an elite locution when it is so strongly associated with non-elite speakers in my experience. I would think that the U usage would be simply “Thanks” or “Thank you,” without embellishment.
elidger

A very useful piece of information for us, foreigners.We can hardly find anything of the sort from what’s available here. Thank you very much.
picky

Well, elsieboy, I was certain about that, and resumably Mr Yagoda was, because he has corrected his post, although without publishing a note drawing attention to his correction, and without adding a footnote to my comment. I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider that best journalistic practice, do you?

elsieboy

Ah yes I must have been looking at the corrected one, which looks perfectly right to me.
hlandecker

Picky: Sorry, and thanks so much for your eagle eye. I did correct “loo” because of your note–you were exactly right. And I should have noted that and thanked you when I did it, but I forgot. Mea culpa, No excuses, except too many tasks, too small a brain.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1098825632 Marie Kelleher

Two thoughts struck me while reading this piece, TR:

1. Part of the reason that academics sometimes *manufacture* competition is that academia contains a large proportion of people who need external validation: prestigious grants, publishing with the “best” press, keeping your publications just a nose ahead of your grad cohort (like you and Jackson) — these are things that can quiet the constant self-questioning, if only for a week or so.

2. At the underfunded state school I work with (and, I would assume, others of this ilk), there is also sort of an oppression olympics: who works more hours? Who has more independent studies? Who has gone the longest without a raise? Only lately have I realized how destructive this type of competition is to my morale. Yet it’s the most common one I hear around here.
11144703

Claire, except for the silly pun, beautifully written piece.

I guess you chose that wonderful Eakins painting (which I don’t recall seeing previously) to accompany your excellent column? If so, you have great taste too.
http://twitter.com/robgee18 Rob Gee

To echo others, I like both your point here and the illustration you’ve drawn to make it. I think on the whole a great deal more emphasis needs to be placed on building department cultures that foster the “right” kinds of competition. The culture of a department not only shapes the experience of its faculty members, it shapes the notions of collegiality and professionalism that its graduate students adopt and, ultimately, take with them into the wider world. When grad students see their mentors engaged in pettiness and conflicts born of their own insecurities they will model that–and create an environment ten times more poisonous within the community of grad students around them. I’ve seen it. And what is most frustrating about it is just how incredibly avoidable it is. Hopefully some department chairs read your post and build five minutes into an upcoming faculty meeting to discuss the state of their own scholarly community and how it could be more supportive and healthy.

historiann

Great point, Rob. It’s really easy to screw up a good working environment, but devilishly difficult to un-screw the pooch. (You fill in with the more obscene variant, as you prefer.)

I’ve thought a great deal about dysfunctional work environments over the past 15 years or so of my working life, but I have never considered the role that graduate education and modeling might play in all of this, so thanks.

11179102

I’ve heard of “road rage,” but never “scull rage.” Next time swamp his boat!
susanda

I hope the plane was several miles up in the air….

Tenured_Radical

Who knows. It’s all magic anyway.

physioprof

When I read nasty reviews of successful shitte–whether books, music, restaurants, etc–that blame the fans for being stupid or deluded, my baseline assumption is that the critic is some combination of envious of the success and angry that her “refined tastes” do not dominate the public sphere.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1098825632 Marie Kelleher

Yeah, but we cyclists also wave and smile at each other for no good reason. Or maybe it’s just me.
theart

To the point where I can’t wear my racing kit on recovery days because the Camelbak wearing Freds will pull the most dangerous maneuvers imaginable just to tell their friends the “dropped” someone.