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Non-U
U and non-U English usage, where "U" stands for upper class, and "non-U" represents the aspiring middle classes, was part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolects) in Britain in the 1950s. The different vocabularies can often appear quite counter-intuitive: the middle classes prefer "fancy" or fashionable words, even neologisms and often euphemisms, in attempts to make themselves sound more refined ( "posher than posh"), while the upper classes in many cases stick to the same plain and traditional words that the working classes also use, as, confident in the security of their social position, they have no need to seek to display refinement.Ross, Alan S. C., "Linguistic class-indicators in present-day English" , ''Neuphilologische Mitteilungen'' (Helsinki), vol. 55(1) (1954), 20–56. History The discussion was set in motion in 1954 by the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross, professor of linguistics in the University of Birmingham. He coined the te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy Mitford
Nancy Freeman-Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973), known as Nancy Mitford, was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London social scene in the inter-war period. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies. Mitford enjoyed a privileged childhood as the eldest daughter of the Hon. David Freeman-Mitford, later 2nd Baron Redesdale. Educated privately, she had no training as a writer before publishing her first novel in 1931. This early effort and the three that followed it created little stir. Her two semi-autobiographical post-war novels, ''The Pursuit of Love'' (1945) and ''Love in a Cold Climate'' (1949), established her reputation. Mitford's marriage to Peter Rodd (1933) proved unsatisfactory to both, and they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class In The United Kingdom
The social structure of the United Kingdom has historically been highly influenced by the concept of social class, which continues to affect British society today. British society, like its European neighbours and most societies in world history, was traditionally (before the Industrial Revolution) divided hierarchically within a system that involved the hereditary transmission of occupation, social status and political influence. Since the advent of industrialisation, this system has been in a constant state of revision, and new factors other than birth (for example, education) are now a greater part of creating identity in Britain. Although definitions of social class in the United Kingdom vary and are highly controversial, most are influenced by factors of wealth, occupation, and education. Until the Life Peerages Act 1958, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was organised on a class basis, with the House of Lords representing the hereditary upper class and the House of Commons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playing Card
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. They are most commonly used for playing card games, and are also used in magic tricks, cardistry, card throwing, and card houses; cards may also be collected. Some patterns of Tarot playing card are also used for divination, although bespoke cards for this use are more common. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling, and usually are sold together in a set as a deck of cards or pack of cards. The most common type of playing card in the West is the French-suited, standard 52-card pack, of which the most widespread design is the English pattern, followed by the Belgian-Genoese pattern. However, many countries use other, traditional types of playing card, including those that are German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kate Fox
Kate Fox is a British social anthropologist, co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) and a Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Research. She has written several books, including '' Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour''. Biography Kate Fox is the daughter of anthropologist Robin Fox. As a child she lived in the UK, the United States, France, and Ireland. She studied for an undergraduate degree in anthropology and philosophy at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 1989 she became co-director of MCM Research Ltd., and continues to provide consulting services. She is now a co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre, based in Oxford, England. Recent topics include social effects of alcohol and the purposes of small talk. Fox is currently writing a book that "examine many aspects of 21st-century life and obsessions - including mobile phones, social media, online dating, shopping, celebrity, reality TV, computer games, selfies, etc - from an evolu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Countersignalling
Countersignaling or countersignalling is the behavior where agents with the highest level of a given property invest less into proving it than individuals with a medium level of the same property. This concept is primarily useful for analyzing human behavior and thus relevant to signaling theory in economics, sociology and psychology. Signals and signaling theory Many of the things that people and animals want to know about each other, such as toughness, cooperativeness or fertility, are not directly observable. Instead, observable indicators of these unobservable properties must be used to communicate them to others. These are signals. Signaling theory deals with predicting the level of effort that individuals, the signalers, should invest to communicate their properties to other individuals, the receivers, and how these receivers interpret their signals. Two conditions have to be fulfilled before signaling theory should be applied. First, there has to be informational asymmetry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shibboleth
A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation, or protecting from real or perceived threats. Origin The term originates from the Hebrew word (), which means the part of a plant containing grain, such as the head of a stalk of wheat or rye; or less commonly (but arguably more appropriately) "flood, torrent". The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect used a differently sounding first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter ''shin'', which is now pronounced as (as in '' shoe''). In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead under the comma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network. "Class" is a subject of analysis for List of sociologists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and Social history, social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of "class". Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term "social class" is usually synonymous with "Socioeconomic status, socio-economic class", defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g., "the working class"; "an emerging professional class". H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mockney
Mockney (a portmanteau of " mock" and "cockney") is an affected accent and form of speech in imitation of cockney or working-class London speech, or a person with such an accent. A stereotypical mockney speaker comes from an upper-middle-class background. A person speaking with a mockney accent might adopt cockney pronunciation but retain standard grammatical forms, whereas the genuine cockney speaker uses non-standard forms (e.g. negative concord). Details The first published use of the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1967. It is an affectation sometimes adopted for aesthetic or theatrical purposes, and at other times just to sound "cool", to generate street credibility, or to give the false impression that the speaker rose from humble beginnings and became prominent through hard work and some innate talent rather than the education, contacts and other advantages that a privileged background tends to bring. Britpop band Blur was said to have a "mockney ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estuary English
Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England: an "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent, Received Pronunciation, and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent, Cockney. There is some debate among linguists as to where Cockney speech ends and Estuary English begins. Name Cruttenden uses the term London Regional General British in preference to the popular term 'Estuary English'. The names listed above may be abbreviated: * Estuary English → EE * London Regional General British → London RGB Wells has used different names for an accent closer to Cockney (Popular London) or closer to Received Pronunciation (London Regional Standard or South-Eastern Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reverse Snobbery
''Snob'' is a pejorative term for a person who believes there is a correlation between social status (including physical appearance) and human worth.De Botton, A. (2004), ''Status Anxiety''. London: Hamish Hamilton ''Snob'' also refers to a person who feels superiority over those from lower social classes, education levels, or other social areas. The word ''snobbery'' came into use for the first time in England during the 1820s. Examples Snobs can through time be found ingratiating themselves with a range of prominent groups – soldiers (Sparta, 400 BCE), bishops (Rome, 1500), poets (Weimar, 1815), farmers (China, 1967) – for the primary interests of snobs is distinction, and as its definition changes, so, naturally and immediately, will the objects of the snob's admiration. Snobbery existed also in mediaeval feudal aristocratic Europe, when the clothing, manners, language and tastes of every class were strictly codified by customs or law. Geoffrey Chaucer, a poet moving ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationing In The United Kingdom
Rationing was introduced temporarily by the British government several times during the 20th century, during and immediately after a war. At the start of the Second World War in 1939, the United Kingdom was importing 20 million long tons of food per year, including about 70% of its cheese and sugar, almost 80% of fruit and about 70% of cereals and fats. The UK also imported more than half of its meat and relied on imported feed to support its domestic meat production. The civilian population of the country was about 50 million. It was one of the principal strategies of the Germans in the Battle of the Atlantic to attack shipping bound for Britain, restricting British industry and potentially starving the nation into submission. To deal with sometimes extreme shortages, the Ministry of Food instituted a system of rationing. To buy most rationed items, each person had to register at chosen shops and was provided with a ration book containing coupons. The shopkeeper was provide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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