Cultural manners

I agree: I've internalised a lot of this sort of stuff from my mum who was a total snob (based on her own social insecurity). Nowadays I officially reject it all as being hide-bound class insecurity and I would judge someone hard if they actively pulled someone else up on it.

But I still reflexively cringe when people say "pardon" or "serviette", even as I hate myself for it. It's hard-wired.

True.

I think at an individual rather than structural level, it cans sometimes be almost subliminal. I was taught to push food onto my fork (rounded side up, left hand) with my knife (right hand) - even peas. While I now often eat with my upturned fork in my right hand with no knife, I literally shiver with distaste if DH holds his fork upturned in his left hand and pushes food on with his knife. It’s clearly insane and awful of me - but I’m not joking about my visceral response. That shows I think how the mind can be manipulated to think of others as ‘less than’.

I don’t think many of us on this thread do see these snobberies about the choice of words as something from the bad old days - not if we’ve read the thread, anyhow. At least one person has admitted to correcting their children for saying ‘pardon’ and quite a few more for saying ‘what’.

I think names as class identifiers got more pronounced throughout the twentieth century. Authors of fiction would use stereotypes such as ‘Mabel’ for a 1920s housemaid. However, I look back at my family who were domestic servants and manual labourers in the 1920s and they all seem to have either timeless Christian names like John and Jane and Mary, or sometimes (for the men) family surnames given as names.
I think names as class identifiers is a more pronounced trend now even than it was in the eighties when Viz had Sharon and Tracy, but maybe I’ve taken my eye off the ball.

I’m hoping this thread will keep me amused until all the class-based Christmas arguments take over.

I agree completely with this... sneering at people for being "posh" is indeed obnoxious. Any kind of sneering based on an arbitrary perception of where people sit in society in unpleasant.

But the bare fact of the matter is that the more cultural capital you have, the more power and authority you are likely to have in society. And that has all sorts of benefits: you're far more likely to have (and be able to make) money, you're likely to be better connected and to find it easier to find good jobs. You're much more likely to find life easier in all sorts of ways.

So sneering "down" is likely to be proportionately more damaging to the person you're sneering at that sneering up.

That doesn't mean it's OK to discriminate against anyone because of their background. But the implications of sneering at people for having less money/cultural capital are different from sneering at them for having more.

Thanks very much for the explanation @WinterDeWinter.

I think sneering at others sneering at others is ok and that's the worst that @Thepeopleversuswork could be accused of

Thepeople thank you for answering my question.
I thinking sneering at people for whatever background is horrible. Sneering at people for being ‘posh’ is just as bad as for being ‘common’.
If you don’t like the person then find a reason to dislike them as a person, not because of their background.

@Barbadossunset

How did the reasons your mother thought it vulgar to say common differ from your reasons?
Do you think it’s vulgar to sneer at people for being middle - or upper - class?

I think describing anyone as "common" is incredibly insulting. It's basically trash-talking them as being "average", "uninteresting" and without intelligence or polish.

My mother would have disliked it because she considered it LMC (though she would happily have thought it of people but just using a different name).

Although of course lavatory is Latin-origin. Perhaps a public school sort of thing?

I assume you are shouting from another room because you want them to come to you rather than trying to have a conversation.

I am hard of hearing, I ignore all attempts from people calling from another part of the house. I am unlikely to hear my own name.

I think it is rude to yell names, we go to the person concerned, adult or child.

DPIL shout names loudly from the kitchen when dinner is ready. When they are here, we go to wherever they are with a 10 min warning, then go back to say dinner is ready.

When I was at school (private, decades ago), fees were within reach of more ‘normal’ families, and there was a wide range of meaningful scholarships, bursaries, and local authority places. We were a much more socially diverse cohort than would be possible now, when you need serious money to afford the fees. And although money doesn’t equal class, put everyone together and socialise them together, you will churn out people who all belong to the same club.

@WinterDeWinter totally agree with you. I think given names have always been class signifiers; food too. Where you go on holiday and what you do on holiday is a massive new signifier — and, as with many things, does not always correlate with how ‘expensive’ it is. And interior design. Almost certainly because making decisions about such things used only to be available to the upper classes. Now they are generally available, there have to be ways to differentiate in order to retain that entrenched social power.

No, but lots are.

Even in tech, a new-ish power profession or industry or whatever, properly posh people are over-represented.

WinterDeWinter do you think anyone who was privately educated is automatically ‘posh’?

Maybe 'wildly naive'? Apologies, I have quite an exaggerated style because i often can't 'find' the correct word I'm looking for (processing disorder) so I have to find workarounds and they can be a bit, erm, 'literary', which I'm sure can be very annoying.

Why do you think I'm obnoxious @Chickenkeev . That's a really strong word and I'm looking back at what I wrote and wondering what I did.

What I was trying to say is that through discussions about distinctions between what and pardon, which now seem ridiculous and archaic, we are perhaps kidding ourselves that class is a thing of the past.

And that my own experience had been that the same privately and/or Oxbridge educated people are still in the key positions of power as they always have been.

This was the case in television, broadsheet journalism, politics, the charity sector and the art world which are the things I've had experience of - but I expext it's also the case in banking, law, medicine etc. Even in tech, a new-ish power profession or industry or whatever, properly posh people are over-represented.

That's all. You can agree or disagree, but I honestly don't see what's obnoxious about it.

When I said 'willfully taking our eye off the ball' I was clumsily trying to say that maybe we like to pretend that we no longer live n a society in which inherited privilege is still a very real thing.

@Pineapplesnowbells and @WhatWouldJeevesDo re the new markers of class, I was definitely thinking of names! But there are others aren't there - I think it's all become a bit more fractured and hyperlocalised now, but in my quite 'bohemian' [vom] part of London it's indicated by parenting styles, types of cooking/food, the kind of fitness/ 'wellness' you do (yoga/cycling/running), being ok with swearing and drinking in front of children, not being 'uptight'. In West London amongst the lawyers and bankers there are probably quite different ones, but they all do the same thing, which is to create them and us.

Not when they're actually being obnoxious. It's descriptive. You may disagree with my evaluation of OP which is fine. But i feel they are obnoxious. As is my right. You are equally well within your rights to think i'm wrong.

It was late, I expressed myself badly.

Fair enough - so what does ‘Wilfully taking our eye off the ball’ mean?

Calling someone ‘obnoxious’ is always rude.

I didn't intend to be rude. And if this thread tells us anything, it's that rudeness is subjective.

Why are you being so rude? It was late, I expressed myself badly.

If you reach for the sickbag Alice when you hear "toilet" ," lounge"and "serviette" then dont work in gynae with UWC and LMC patients. "Lady garden" - augh

I think it's an obnoxious way of saying ignoring something. But i can't sure like 🤣

Wilfully taking our eye off the ball” needs some explanation.

I don’t understand this sentence either