Cultural manners

[anareen]

Having a discussion/debate

Is it rude for DC to say "what" when you call them?
I think it is. I teach DC to respond with "yes" when called. I grew up in Hispanic culture. Possibly this is a factor?

What are others input? Do you teach DC something along the same lines?

🤣 very interesting thread it has turned in to, hasn't it?

Good point! 🫶🙌🏻

Or perhaps to sneer at sneering?

it’s a Russian doll isn’t it?

You would hate this house- if you shout someone a) you have to bellow to be heard and b) you might get any type of response. What? Is standard, but

yeah/what do you want now/stop talking to me/no/I’m not in/ffs stop shouting/I’m not speaking to you/argh I’m doing something, shut up/I’m trying to sleep/I can’t hear you/what are you going on about are all acceptable answers.

We are middle class!

Well yes and no - I’d say fundamentally the class system is based on inherited power, and these signifiers are just one of the defences. They can be breached occasionally - for eg 19th century American heiresses - but only with the consent of the powerful.

I always find these discussions wildly naive in the way they position all this stuff as being from a sort of generic ‘past’. one of the biggest shocks of my life (80s scholarship girl) was realising the extent to which class still really does equate to power in what till then had seemed to me to be a meritocratic society with some limits (was very blind to my own class privilege for eg). It feels to me that this is getting worse, not better. I wonder why we all pretend it’s not?

I think the point I’m making is - no-one cares about teaching their children to say “looking glass” rather than “mirror” any more - but only because a whole new raft of class signifiers have superseded those antiquated ones that we seem to find amusing. I think we’re wilfully taking our eye off the ball.

What are the new signifiers @WinterDeWinter?

Given names weren’t usually a class signifier until recently.
What else @WinterDeWinter?

I've read this three times and i still haven't a clue what it means 🤔

"wotsits, that's wot!"

From advert for ghastly crisp like chemical "sweetmeats".

Loo is not rough!

It’s the conventional posh-er term. Unless you want to go the whole hog and say lavatory.

She’s referring to the old fashioned U and non U (Nancy Mitford - although TBF she was joking). It established what was ‘smart’ and what wasn’t. Some of it (like looking glass rather than mirror or scent rather than perfume) is obsolete, some of it (like napkin rather than serviette or lavatory (or loo) rather than toilet) still holds.

However as PP says that’s 70 years ago, what constitutes ‘smart’ is different now.

Thanks! But i still haven't a clue. And i can't compute much now after hearing about Matthew Perry. I'm sitting here bawling my eyes out. Which probably isn't acceptable either 😳

Those are American

Is lavatory American though? I thiught it was posh English?

Lounge is a public sitting area, like in a hotel or airport. Traditionally it is incorrect (and LMC/naff 🙈) to use it in place of sitting room.

Yep it is.

Living room and bathroom are American. Living room does make sense for a open plan sitting room/dining room though. Bathroom for loos is just daft.

But it seems to be common parlance in these parts? I thought it was just an English thing.

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

I beg your pardon is often sarcastic now, because it’s quite archaic, but traditionally (until a at least the 80s) it was polite. The U options were IBYP or what.

The ‘Irish upper classes’ were Anglo-Irish — many of them arrived with Cromwell, were given confiscated land and built their ‘Big Houses’, many of which were burned in the revolutionary period, after which many of their owners left (their lands having been reduced by a succession of Land Acts from the late 19thc, anyway.)

Which is to say the Anglo-Irish were essentially, as they’ve been called, ‘the Raj in the rain’ — their usages mirrored UC English usages, as they were generally educated there, girls presented at court, boys went to Oxbridge etc.

Molly Keane gets a lot of comedy out of the children of the Anglo-Irish and English upper classes being educated (before prep school if male) by lower-middle-class women with different ideas about good manners. One of her governesses is always trying to teach a six year old what she considers ‘nice’ table manners (leaving a little bit on your plate ‘for manners etc) , and is horrified when he just eats carelessly like the rest of his UC family. I can’t remember the expression, but something like ‘not as if his food were important, but though he himself were enormously important’. And his mother keeps wanting to get rid of Miss Parker because she uses non-U expressions like ‘ever so’.

@ColleenDonaghy — not just the Irish middle classes. I realised at Oxford (WC Irish) that people couldn’t tell the difference between me and Roy Foster.😀)

Just an English thing without being a class signifier? Now is that likely?

Oh it’s used a lot, but like toilet, serviette, settee etc it’s traditionally viewed as common. Although actually saying anything is common, is, of course, common.

Oh, what I meant to say was Molly Keane’s narrators will use ‘lavatory’, but some of her characters refer to ‘the Place’ or ask children ‘Have you been?

Her child characters are constipated a lot…

😀