to be offended that, because I can string a sentence together and don't use txspk, people assume that I must be middle class?

[colditz]

There is nothing at all wrong with being middle class. It's a nice state of being.

But I get very upset when my friends, or posters her, say things like "Well, you are quite middle class, aren't you!"

I'm not. I'm quite intelligent, I'm quite well read, I'm quite moral and I'm getting on for quite old, but I'm not at ALL middle class.

It's as if to be working class (which I consider myself to be) you have to be ignorant and a bit dim, thoroughly uninterested in the world beyond the TV and actually, that's insulting. Some working class people are ignorant and a bit thick, but the same could be said for any class of people. Look at the Duke Of Edinborough!

I can be working class and quite bright, I can be working class and quite well read, I can be working class and able to vocally assert myself without cursing. Working class is not synonymous with "incapable of functioning properly outside of a greasy caff"

I know plenty of people who are intelligent but their speech is littered with clunkingly obvious grammatical errors that are common to their own regional WC speech patterns.

It irritates me, because it makes them sound less intelligent than they are, which is a shame, and I'm sure it holds them back to an extent, but it doesn't denote their intelligence. Their education perhaps, the class they were born into, certainly, and if they are well-read, then they are clearly rather apathetic/nonchalant about brushing up their own grammar, although ingrained habits formed from birth are hard to shake.

In my experience all the people I know who speak/write with glaring grammatical errors are the first generation in their family to be considered MC rather than WC.

And Xenia, I don't think you should assume that all state educated people are WC!

Yabu because most people do know that wc can be intelligent, speak without swearing etc

I imagine most people in Britain assume to know someone else's class from their accent.

YANBU simply because I would consider it rude pass comment on someones social class.

DH's speech is littered with grammatical errors that are common to his regional speech. However, he is completely capable of turning it on and off. He never speaks like that in a business setting. BIL has completely shaken off his regional accent (I assume he had one as his parents do) and has a smooth, velvety, extremely well spoken voice all of the time.

They have very similar backgrounds (WC/lower middle-class/state school) and now they both have senior management positions in very large businesses. However, their choices are vastly different. I wouldn't be surprised if a quick assessment by a stranger on meeting put then as WC and UMC repectively. I have no idea where an expert would put their social classes, or mine for that matter, or really care.

Perhaps you're considered middle class cos you post on Mumsnet?

Well doesn't this assumption arise because middle class people have very very often had a better education. There is no mystery here.

When I was at my (very working class) primary school in the 1980s, "intelligent" and "posh" were practically synonymous (not that many of the kids knew what "synonymous" meant either, but there you go.)

I also don't consider features of regional dialects to be "grammatical errors" but maybe that's just me.

Interesting.

I can string a sentence together and don't use txspk, people assume that I must be an old aged pensioner.

GivesHeadless - I love regional accents, and would hate to see educated people consciously try to erase them, in a 1950's elocution school manner. It's a snobby attitude.
I have a strong regional accent, I find it's s ^what' I say rather than how I say it that makes me sound thick. [hgrin]

I can remember when it would have been a compliment to be considered middle class, if you were working class.

These days it's much cooler to have working class roots.

"I can remember when it would have been a compliment to be considered middle class, if you were working class."

I grew up working class and would NEVER have considered it a compliment to be considered middle class. Coming from the other working class children I knew it would have been, as I said earlier, a deliberately provocative insult; coming from someone who was actually middle class it would have been horrifically patronising.

I think the underlying assumption is that being middle class is a good thing. This is not a belief I ever shared at the time. I have to concede that I am now middle class; I have made this move, to my shame, not because being middle class is good, but because I have had a life of people telling me that being working class is bad.

I think the underlying assumption is that being middle class is a good thing.

Not these days. Everyone is desperate to point out what a hard, working class childhood they had; only to have come good and now be able to shop at Waitrose, but pretend to be ashamed of it.

So what classes someone to be middle class then? Surely it doesn't just come down to how you speak?

See, I don't even have to "Scuzzy council estate girl come good" credo.

I was born to a sahm and a policeman (constable). If it's relevant, my mother was a council estate brat, my father was a detached house brat.

I was born into a semi.

I went to the local sink primary school, then the local sink secondary school, and left school with a good clutch of GCSE's. Nobody could give me a good reason to stay at school so I didn't.

I did factory owrk and shop work for a couple of years, then started working in nursing homes. During this point I fell pregnant, my mother went mental (and I don't mean shouting and screaming, I mean accusing me of stealing things from under her pillow as she sleeps) and kicked me out. The council was kind enough to house me in a nice little flat on an estate.

I still had my nursing home job, carried on raising my baby with my p[artner (cook) and fell pregnant again. I completed my NVQ2 but at the very end of my maternity leave, I get made redundant. A year later, partner and I split up, and last year I started working as a support worker.

Are you starting to see what I mean when I say that NOTHING about me points to middle class?

YANBU, but I think what your friends are saying is that you are an atypical working class person. It is well documented that working class folk have lower educational attainment than the middle classes. In general, a good standard of education is needed before you can access 'the classics'. Someone who hasn't made it to A-Level might struggle with Dostoevsky, for example. So there are likely to be more m/c dostoevsky readers than w/c ones. If you spend your time reading dostoevsky, you leave less time in your life for whippets, eels etc (OK that bit was a joke and I don't expect you to hit me the next time I see you)

So because I tend to have the written equivelant of verbal diarrhoea, people tend to assume I'm educated. I'm not educated past basic standards, actually.

I wouldn't hit you. I'll set the whippet on you.

YABU... It's inverse snobbery. 'Middle-class' has become a frowned-on term and everyone from politicians to celebrities is desperate to be seen as 'honest working class stock' these days. Working or educating yourself up into a higher socio-economic group is apparently not a good thing any more.

I consider myself middle class yet lived in a 3 room house with no toilet, no bath for the first 5 years of my life. then between 6 and 12 in squats, council houses and another house with no toilet bath etc. Dad was a smallholder mum a housewife. Both went on to be mature students and get jobs in social work. I got a drinkers degree and now at 40 earn less than the national average.

If where you live and what your parents do define you class what am I really?

OP you contradict yourself. You're offended at being presumed to be middle class, yet you say there's nothing wrong with being middle class.

I care much more about what people think of me as a person than what class they think I do or don't belong to - I really don't care what 'class' people think I belong to.

I am offended when people use my general knowledge or turn of phrase as 'evidence' that I am middle class, yes.

This is because they are making an assumption, the working class people don't have much general knowledge and don't know how to turn a phrase.

As a working class person, I am offended by the assuption that people of my class must be stupid in order to be of my class.

It IS NOT that being middle class is a bad thing. How would it be a bad thing? It's the assumption that the only clever people are middle class people, so if I am clever I must be middle class, that intelligence alone has moved my social classification.

And because I am working class, I am offended by the notion that only middle class people can be bright and well read.

I am running out of different ways to word this, by the way.

I AM being unreasonable, aren't I?

Because you're all right. It doesn't matter.

Stop trying then. If this is a genuine concern in your life, I envy you.

It's a difficult one because notions of class have changed so much in the last 100 years that honestly I don't think any of us can be entirely sure what it means to be UC, MC or WC.

Certainly historically, education (not intelligence, mind) did tend to be an indicator of class simply because WC people generally left school at 14 or earlier to go into service/work on the farm/down the mine etc and only the UCs and UMCs could afford to pay to go to uni.

The 'education' test no longer holds true today in a world of universal access to education (although I wonder whether that will change with increased tuition fees?), but I do wonder when WC children go to uni and take up 'MC' jobs, at what point do they or their children cease to be WC? And vice versa, if MC children take up a trade, do they then become WC?

Personally, I don't particularly care what class someone is or thinks they are - or thinks I am. I certainly wouldn't be insulted, whatever class someone labelled me. So in that sense, YABU.