Sophistication is the quality of refinement — displaying good taste

Taste (sociology)

Taste as an aesthetic, sociological, economic and anthropological concept refers to a cultural patterns of choice and preference. While taste is often understood as a biological concept, it can also be reasonably studied as a social or cultural phenomenon. Taste is about drawing distinctions...

, wisdom

Wisdom

Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...

 and subtlety rather than crudeness, stupidity

Stupidity

Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, wit, or sense. It may be innate, assumed, or reactive - 'being "stupid with grief" as a defence against trauma', a state marked with 'grief and despair...making even simple daily tasks a hardship'....

 and vulgarity

Vulgarity

Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social classes or social climbers...

.
In the perception of social class

Social class

Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

, sophistication can link with concepts such as status

Social status

In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....

, privilege

Privilege (social inequality)

Privilege is a way of framing issues surrounding social inequality, focusing as much on the advantages that one group accrues from society as on the disadvantages that another group experiences.- Group role :...

 and superior

Superior (hierarchy)

In a hierarchy or tree structure of any kind, a superior is an individual or position at a higher level in the hierarchy than another , and thus closer to the apex. It is often used in business terminology to refer to people who are supervisors and in the military to people who are higher in the...

ity.

Scope of sophistication

In social terms, sophistication can be seen as "a form of snobbery".

A study of style conveys an idea of the range of possible elements though which one can demonstrate sophistication in elegance

Elegance

Elegance is a synonym for beauty that has come to acquire the additional connotations of unusual effectiveness and simplicity. It is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness particularly in the areas of visual design, decoration, the sciences, and the esthetics of mathematics...

 and fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

, covering the art of "[...] the shoemaker, the hairdresser, the cosmetologist, the cookbook writers, the chef, the diamond merchant, the couturieres, and the fashion queens, the inventors of the folding umbrella ... and of champagne."

History

In Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, sophia was the special insight

Insight

Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context. Insight can be used with several related meanings:*a piece of information...

 of poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

s and prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

s. This then became the wisdom of philosophers such as sophists. But their use of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

 to win arguments gave sophistication a derogatory quality.

The system of modern Western sophistication can be traced to France and to the policies of King Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715).

The English regarded sophistication as decadent and deceptive until the aristocratic sensibilities

Sensibility

Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...

 and refined elegance of Regency dandies

Dandy

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...

 such as Beau Brummell

Beau Brummell

Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell , was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV...

 (1778–1840) became fashionable and admired.

Types of sophistication

Recognised varieties of sophistication include:

• cultural sophistication
• intellectual sophistication

In the analysis of humor, Victor Raskin

Victor Raskin

Victor Raskin is a distinguished professor of linguistics at Purdue University. He is the author of Semantic Mechanisms of Humor and Ontological Semantics and founding editor of Humor, the journal for the International Society of Humor Studies.He is an associate director and founding faculty...

 distinguishes "two types of sophistication: limited access, or allusive knowledge, and complex processing".

Acquiring sophistication

Methods of acquiring the appearance of personal sophistication include:

• educational travel - note the function of the traditional Grand Tour
  Grand Tour
  The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
  
   for European aesthetes

• finishing school - the female counterpart to the grand tour

On a societal level commentators can associate various forms of sophistication with civilization

Civilization

Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...

.