2007-04-29 23:16:06globalist
從威廉王子和女友分子到階級問題─有趣喔
威廉王子與女朋友分手了，扯出一大段英國的階級意識。據說，威廉王子的女友之母親使用”toilet”而不是”bathroom,” 來說廁所，被視為沒有教養。英國雖然已是平等自由的國家，但是處處可見階級，尤其是從用字遺詞來看一個人的階級仍相當普遍。非常有趣的一篇文章，值得一讀。
Between the lines of Britain’s class warfare
By Sarah Lyall
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 LONDON: Did a ”toilet” come between them?
We will probably never know. But the reports last week that Prince William and his girlfriend, Kate Middleton, broke up in part because of her mother’s so-called middle-class behavior, including using the word ”toilet” for ”bathroom,” were a vivid reminder that class issues still bubble vexingly beneath the surface of British life.
Mrs. Middleton’s other missteps, apparently, included having once worked as a flight attendant, a fact that caused some of William’s friends to cattily mutter ”doors to manual” whenever Kate came into the room.
But it does not really matter what she did or did not do. What is significant is that even in new, egalitarian Britain, everyone seemed so mesmerized by accounts of it, so ready to believe in the return of the class war that had supposedly ended in a truce years ago.
British society is certainly no longer as rigid or stratified as it was when George Bernard Shaw said in ”Pygmalion” that ”it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”
Money, social mobility and access to higher education have changed all that.
John Major was talking about a ”classless society” back in 1990. ”We are all middle class now,” Tony Blair declared soon after becoming prime minister. Last week, the columnist Alice Thomson wrote in The Daily Telegraph that ”it doesn’t matter any more where you come from, but how much you are worth.”
The House of Lords is now filled not with men with inherited titles, but with trade unionists, self-made millionaires and political apparatchiks of both sexes appointed by the prime minister. The BBC announcers no longer read the news in dinner jackets, and they are as likely to speak in Mancunian or Scottish accents as to use classic BBC English.
Meanwhile, it is not easy being posh. The Tory leader, David Cameron, has worked hard to present himself as Regular Dave, playing down his privileged, Etonian, black-tie wearing background.
But while overtly caring about class is considered déclassé, many people still do care, or at least notice, their conflicted feelings buried in a millefeuille of denial, evasion, embarrassment, double-bluffing humor and fake insouciance. Even laughing at class snobbery can be a fine excuse for revisiting, and reinforcing, the divide between the classes.
Thus, the populist Daily Mail tabloid last week printed ”What Class Are You?” a quiz that included the question, ”The carpets in your house are?” (Shag rugs, it emerged, are lower class, natural oak floors are middle class, upper class carpets are ”threadbare.”) In another quiz, The Daily Telegraph revealed that while the lower classes use ”say again?” when they cannot hear something, the middle classes say ”pardon?” and the upper classes bray ”what?”
The quizzes were a joke. But at the same time they weren’t, just as Nancy Mitford’s famous list of ”U” and ”Non-U” (the ”U” refers to upper class) words in 1954 year was both a frivolity, as she considered it, and a more or less accurate reflection of the customs of the time. The upper classes generally did say ”sofa,” ”rich” and ”jam,” as Mitford wrote, and not ”settee,” ”wealthy” and ”preserves.”
Many of Mitford’s non-”U” words had been adopted in the Victorian era by aspirational lower-class people striving to seem refined, said John Joseph, a professor of applied linguistics at Edinburgh University. Those included words with French origins - ”serviette” for napkin, for instance, and ”toilet,” which came from ”toilette.” Far from being impressed, the upper class shunned the words as arriviste affectations.
The words are arbitrary, for the most part - what is wrong with saying ”dentures” instead of ”false teeth,” another Mitford distinction? - but the anxious middle classes read the ”U” list as a guide to correct usage, Joseph said. Meanwhile, the upper classes, cross that their secret coded language had been leaked out, moved on to other words or began deliberately to use Mitford’s proscribed language as a kind of double fakeout.
Now, ”a lot of people who are noble and of blue blood say ’toilet’ as a joke because they know that they are above the issue,” said Mary Killen, who parses upper-crust etiquette in her advice column in The Spectator magazine.
That is confusing, the idea of people who use ”toilet” ironically, particularly when most Britons under the age of 30 either say it as a matter of course or seem able at least to hear it without recoiling (with the possible exception of William’s friends).
But Britons still readily identify themselves as members of different social classes. Most people, while professing that it does not matter to them and that it is all a bit silly, still have their own rules for what constitutes lower class, generally defined as any class lower than one’s own.
”A couple taking another couple out for a drive would sit themselves thus,” Andrew Baxter wrote in The Daily Telegraph. ”Working class, men in the front. Middle class, man with his own partner in the front. Upper class, man with the other partner in the front.”
Another litmus test, Killen suggested, is the sort of chocolate people bring as house presents when going to an old-family country house weekend. ”There is a fashion for Quality Streets,” she said, referring to a low-rent assortment available in every gas station in Britain. Buying an expensive collection from Fortnum and Mason? It looks like you tried too hard.
Few people not to the manner born get it right, at least not the first generation around. It is still gauche to be seen making the effort, to appear ”ambitious” - another faux pas attributed to Kate Middleton’s unlucky mother, who was also accused of being too obviously thrilled by the potential implications of her daughter’s now-thwarted relationship with William.
The Times of London recently printed a series of essays by writers who discussed their class credentials. Their upper-class representative, the 69-year-old Earl of Onslow, argued that class is mostly ”a question of attitude and behavior.” But he said that he did harbor one snobbery: ”I find it almost impossible to force the word ’toilet’ between my lips.”
In fact, Onslow found it impossible to spell the word, too. In the original draft of his essay, the Times said, he wrote ”toilette.”
Between the lines of Britain’s class warfare
By Sarah Lyall
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 LONDON: Did a ”toilet” come between them?
We will probably never know. But the reports last week that Prince William and his girlfriend, Kate Middleton, broke up in part because of her mother’s so-called middle-class behavior, including using the word ”toilet” for ”bathroom,” were a vivid reminder that class issues still bubble vexingly beneath the surface of British life.
Mrs. Middleton’s other missteps, apparently, included having once worked as a flight attendant, a fact that caused some of William’s friends to cattily mutter ”doors to manual” whenever Kate came into the room.
But it does not really matter what she did or did not do. What is significant is that even in new, egalitarian Britain, everyone seemed so mesmerized by accounts of it, so ready to believe in the return of the class war that had supposedly ended in a truce years ago.
British society is certainly no longer as rigid or stratified as it was when George Bernard Shaw said in ”Pygmalion” that ”it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”
Money, social mobility and access to higher education have changed all that.
John Major was talking about a ”classless society” back in 1990. ”We are all middle class now,” Tony Blair declared soon after becoming prime minister. Last week, the columnist Alice Thomson wrote in The Daily Telegraph that ”it doesn’t matter any more where you come from, but how much you are worth.”
The House of Lords is now filled not with men with inherited titles, but with trade unionists, self-made millionaires and political apparatchiks of both sexes appointed by the prime minister. The BBC announcers no longer read the news in dinner jackets, and they are as likely to speak in Mancunian or Scottish accents as to use classic BBC English.
Meanwhile, it is not easy being posh. The Tory leader, David Cameron, has worked hard to present himself as Regular Dave, playing down his privileged, Etonian, black-tie wearing background.
But while overtly caring about class is considered déclassé, many people still do care, or at least notice, their conflicted feelings buried in a millefeuille of denial, evasion, embarrassment, double-bluffing humor and fake insouciance. Even laughing at class snobbery can be a fine excuse for revisiting, and reinforcing, the divide between the classes.
Thus, the populist Daily Mail tabloid last week printed ”What Class Are You?” a quiz that included the question, ”The carpets in your house are?” (Shag rugs, it emerged, are lower class, natural oak floors are middle class, upper class carpets are ”threadbare.”) In another quiz, The Daily Telegraph revealed that while the lower classes use ”say again?” when they cannot hear something, the middle classes say ”pardon?” and the upper classes bray ”what?”
The quizzes were a joke. But at the same time they weren’t, just as Nancy Mitford’s famous list of ”U” and ”Non-U” (the ”U” refers to upper class) words in 1954 year was both a frivolity, as she considered it, and a more or less accurate reflection of the customs of the time. The upper classes generally did say ”sofa,” ”rich” and ”jam,” as Mitford wrote, and not ”settee,” ”wealthy” and ”preserves.”
Many of Mitford’s non-”U” words had been adopted in the Victorian era by aspirational lower-class people striving to seem refined, said John Joseph, a professor of applied linguistics at Edinburgh University. Those included words with French origins - ”serviette” for napkin, for instance, and ”toilet,” which came from ”toilette.” Far from being impressed, the upper class shunned the words as arriviste affectations.
The words are arbitrary, for the most part - what is wrong with saying ”dentures” instead of ”false teeth,” another Mitford distinction? - but the anxious middle classes read the ”U” list as a guide to correct usage, Joseph said. Meanwhile, the upper classes, cross that their secret coded language had been leaked out, moved on to other words or began deliberately to use Mitford’s proscribed language as a kind of double fakeout.
Now, ”a lot of people who are noble and of blue blood say ’toilet’ as a joke because they know that they are above the issue,” said Mary Killen, who parses upper-crust etiquette in her advice column in The Spectator magazine.
That is confusing, the idea of people who use ”toilet” ironically, particularly when most Britons under the age of 30 either say it as a matter of course or seem able at least to hear it without recoiling (with the possible exception of William’s friends).
But Britons still readily identify themselves as members of different social classes. Most people, while professing that it does not matter to them and that it is all a bit silly, still have their own rules for what constitutes lower class, generally defined as any class lower than one’s own.
”A couple taking another couple out for a drive would sit themselves thus,” Andrew Baxter wrote in The Daily Telegraph. ”Working class, men in the front. Middle class, man with his own partner in the front. Upper class, man with the other partner in the front.”
Another litmus test, Killen suggested, is the sort of chocolate people bring as house presents when going to an old-family country house weekend. ”There is a fashion for Quality Streets,” she said, referring to a low-rent assortment available in every gas station in Britain. Buying an expensive collection from Fortnum and Mason? It looks like you tried too hard.
Few people not to the manner born get it right, at least not the first generation around. It is still gauche to be seen making the effort, to appear ”ambitious” - another faux pas attributed to Kate Middleton’s unlucky mother, who was also accused of being too obviously thrilled by the potential implications of her daughter’s now-thwarted relationship with William.
The Times of London recently printed a series of essays by writers who discussed their class credentials. Their upper-class representative, the 69-year-old Earl of Onslow, argued that class is mostly ”a question of attitude and behavior.” But he said that he did harbor one snobbery: ”I find it almost impossible to force the word ’toilet’ between my lips.”
In fact, Onslow found it impossible to spell the word, too. In the original draft of his essay, the Times said, he wrote ”toilette.”