What japes! Poshness is back in the headlines thanks to Rivals, the wildly entertaining Jilly Cooper series on Disney+. The bonkbuster adaptation depicts a fictional Cotswolds set jostling for position on the social ladder, Concorde bathroom sex and naked tennis matches included. So how do middle-class strivers like Lord Tony Baddingham and nouveau riche businessman Freddie Jones get put in their place by the toffs, besides trying to shag their wives and daughters?
Language, darling. The premise is that you can determine someone’s class from vocabulary and let them know, through a series of pointed asides, that you are fully aware they are the cuckoo in the nest. It’s an idea that runs through the show and British culture itself, thanks to English class chronicler Nancy Mitford’s popularisation of linguistics professor Alan Ross’s paper about U and non-U vocabulary.
“Loo”, for instance, is meant to be a sign that the speaker is U (upper class), while “toilet” indicates they are non-U (non-upper class). “Napkin” and “sofa” are posh, but “serviette” and “settee” aren’t. You get the gist. The idea is that you might determine a date’s social standing by taking them to Ikea and asking them to describe various soft furnishings.
Well, no longer. University of Sussex researchers recently found that these class markers are crumbling faster than a country pile in West Berkshire. After surveying 80 participants, they found that these words weren’t reliable signposts of someone’s background. Most people used the word “toilet” and supposedly posher choices like “napkin” and “sofa” won out over their non-U counterparts. In other words, the upper-class words have now become common – shock horror! “Ultimately,” the authors of the study conclude, “our findings challenge the belief that U words are shibboleths of upper-classness.”
Class in England is an odd thing – and I specify England, because so much of class in Britain appears to be solely determined by a tiny sliver of people who grew up within kissing distance of the M25.
Before I moved here, “class” was what I attended at school and “common” just referred to something that happened a lot. Over the years, I’ve assimilated into British society in ways that would make a GB News presenter proud. That doesn’t mean that I’ve acquired a radiant love of King and Country or have strong opinions on imperial measurements. It simply means that I’ve finally grasped the meaning of class and have come to understand that you’re all tormented by a centuries-old fantasy that was invented by land-owning rich people and some minor European royals who moved here and never left.
There is absolutely no other way to explain it. I once listened to a conversation in which people earnestly debated whether or not Emma Bridgewater mugs were a sign of poshness or just middle-class striving (the latter, it was decided). I was confidently told that posh people’s houses had a specific smell: a fusty, mildew-y funk acquired from centuries of ancestors gallivanting around the world and nicking stuff.
One of the most British traditions I know is the yearly run-up to Christmas, where people anticipate seeing their friends and mutuals “outed” as posh because they start posting pictures of the turkey with their parents’ Aga in the background.
That’s before you even get to accents. You could be the privately-educated child of university professors, but if you sound northern enough to blunt your “A”s while taking a bath or having a laugh, some southerners will act like you’ve just emerged from a mine in the 70s.
Do you all know how insane this sounds? We’ve jerry-rigged a system of nonsense symbols and signs (and scents) that shifts every few decades or so anyway, if this new research is to be believed. It’s like if America’s founding fathers agreed to create a permanent class hierarchy based solely off the vibes people brought with them on the Mayflower. None of it is even based on factual evidence or truth – in fact, Alan Ross’s paper isn’t even based on empirical data, just his own personal observations (or, as the University of Sussex researchers put it: “armchair linguistics”).
Obviously, this doesn’t mean the effects of being perceived as U or non-U don’t exist. Accent-based bias and discrimination is alive and well. There are plenty of people in the creative industries who are desperately trying to be as non-U as you can (Fred Again, the DJ whose blue-blooded “early life” Wiki section goes viral every few months or so, comes to mind.) But the idea that you can tell someone’s background or economic class purely from the way they speak or their consumer choices is like believing in horoscopes. I can see how it holds a comforting appeal, but it’s no way to run a country. Though then again, I would say that – I’m a justice-seeking Libra.
Zing Tsjeng is a journalist, non-fiction author, and podcaster.
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