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U and non-U English

 

 
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U and non-U English
 
 
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U and non-U English usage, with U standing for upper class
Upper class

The upper class is a concept in sociology that refers to the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class often have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area....
, and non-U representing the aspiring middle class
Middle class

Middle class is the group of people in contemporary society who are between the working class and nobility. This socioeconomic class includes professionals, highly skilled workers, and lower and middle management....
es, were part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolect
Sociolect

In linguistics, a sociolect is a variety of language associated with a particular social group. The term derives from the morphemes ?socio-,? meaning social and ?-lect,? meaning a variety of language....
s) in 1950s Britain and the northeast United States
New England

New England is a region of the United States located in the northeastern corner of the country, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and New York State, and consisting of the modern U.S....
.






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UNon-U
Bike or BicycleCycle
Dinner JacketDress Suit
KnaveJack (cards
Playing card

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin card, or thin plastic, figured with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games....
)
VegetablesGreens
IceIce Cream
ScentPerfume
They've a very nice house.They have a lovely home.
Ill (in bed)Sick (in bed)
I was sick on the boat.I was ill on the boat.
Looking-glassMirror
ChimneypieceFireplace
GraveyardCemetery
SpectaclesGlasses
False TeethDentures
DiePass on
MadMental
JamPreserve
NapkinServiette
SofaSettee or Couch
Lavatory or LooToilet
RichWealthy
What?Pardon?
Good healthCheers
LunchDinner (for midday meal)
PuddingSweet
Drawing-roomLounge
Writing-paperNote-paper
How d'you do?Pleased to meet you
(School)master, mistressTeacher
U and non-U English usage, with U standing for upper class
Upper class

The upper class is a concept in sociology that refers to the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class often have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area....
, and non-U representing the aspiring middle class
Middle class

Middle class is the group of people in contemporary society who are between the working class and nobility. This socioeconomic class includes professionals, highly skilled workers, and lower and middle management....
es, were part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolect
Sociolect

In linguistics, a sociolect is a variety of language associated with a particular social group. The term derives from the morphemes ?socio-,? meaning social and ?-lect,? meaning a variety of language....
s) in 1950s Britain and the northeast United States
New England

New England is a region of the United States located in the northeastern corner of the country, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and New York State, and consisting of the modern U.S....
. The debate did not concern itself with the speech of the working classes, which in many instances used the same words as the upper class.

History

The debate was set in motion in 1954 by the British linguist Professor Alan S C Ross
Alan S C Ross

Alan Strode Campbell Ross was a British academic specialising in linguistics. He is best remembered as the ultimate source and inspiration for Nancy Mitford's 'U and non-U English' forms of behaviour and language usage....
 (Professor of Linguistics in the University of Birmingham). He coined the terms U and non-U in an article on the difference that social class
Social class

Social class refers to the hierarchy distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Usually most societies have some notion of social class , but concretely defined social classes are not found in every known type of human societies....
 makes to English language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 usage, which was published in a Finnish professional linguistics journal. His article covered differences of pronunciation
Pronunciation

"Pronunciation" refers to the way a word or a language is usually spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If someone said to have "correct pronunciation," then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
 and writing style
English writing style

An English writing style is a way of using the English language.The style of a piece of writing is the way in which features of the language are used to convey meaning, typically but not always within the constraints of more widely accepted conventions of grammar and spelling....
, but it was his attention to differences of vocabulary
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
 that received the most attention.

The English author Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford

Nancy Freeman-Mitford, Order of the British Empire , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Rodd thereafter, was an England novelist and biographer, one of the "Bright Young Things" on the London social scene in the inter-war years....
 was alerted and immediately took up the usage in an essay, “The English Aristocracy”, that was published by Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender

Sir Stephen Harold Spender Order of British Empire was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work....
 in his magazine Encounter
Encounter (magazine)

Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author, Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1990....
 in 1954. Mitford provided a glossary of terms used by the upper-classes, some of which are in the table at right, unleashing an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness and snob
Snob

A snob is someone who adopts the worldview of snobbery ? that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, etc....
bery, which involved a good deal of soul-searching that itself provided fuel for the fires. The essay was reprinted, with contributions by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was a United Kingdom writer, best known for such darkly humorous and Satire novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop , A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catho...
, John Betjeman
John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman, Order of the British Empire was an English poet, writer and Broadcasting who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack"....
 and others, as well as Ross's original article, as Noblesse Oblige: an Inquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy in 1956. Betjeman's poem How to Get on in Society concluded the collection.

The U and non-U issue could have been taken lightheartedly, but at the time many took it very seriously. This was a reflection of the anxieties of the middle class
Middle class

Middle class is the group of people in contemporary society who are between the working class and nobility. This socioeconomic class includes professionals, highly skilled workers, and lower and middle management....
 in 1950s Britain, recently emerged from post-war austerities. In particular the media used it as a launch pad for many stories, making much more out of it than was first intended. In the meantime, the idea that one might “improve oneself” by adopting the culture and manner of one's "betters", instinctively assented to before World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, was now greeted with resentment.

Refinements of language usage that identify the speaker are nothing new: see shibboleth
Shibboleth

Shibboleth is any distinguishing practice which is indicative of one's social or regional origin.It usually refers to features of language, and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group....
 and précieuses
Précieuses

The literary style called pr?ciosit? arose from the lively conversations and playful word games of les pr?cieuses, the witty and educated intellectual ladies who frequented the salon of the Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; her Chambre bleue offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionism and...
. Aristocrats are not the only social group that define themselves by linguistic usages that identify outsiders: compare U.S. AAVE
African American Vernacular English

African American Vernacular English ?also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English ?is an African American Variety of American English....
 and the Southern U.S. good ol' boy network
Good ol' boy network

Good ol' boy describes a system of social networking and perceptions alleged to exist prevalently among certain communities and social strata in the United States....
. Many of the words were slightly outdated by the 1950s, being more typical of the 1850s (e.g: Looking-glass, Chimneypiece); unlike some other groups the English aristocracy and middle class were not self-consciously adopting a new group vocabulary, but had not changed in using some words during a century of great social changes.

Some of the terms and the ideas behind them were largely obsolete by the late 20th century, when, in the United Kingdom, reverse snobbery led younger members of the British upper and middle classes to adopt elements of working class speech (see: Estuary English
Estuary English

Estuary English is a name given to the dialect of English language widely spoken in South East England and the East of England; especially along the River Thames and Thames Estuary, which is where the two regions meet....
 and Mockney
Mockney

In British English, the term mockney has come to be used, predominantly in the media, to describe those who present themselves as Cockneys with the intention of gaining popular credibility....
). Many, if not most, of the differences however are still very much current — and therefore perfectly usable — as class-indicators
Social class

Social class refers to the hierarchy distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Usually most societies have some notion of social class , but concretely defined social classes are not found in every known type of human societies....
.

Further reading

  • Mitford, Nancy
    Nancy Mitford

    Nancy Freeman-Mitford, Order of the British Empire , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Rodd thereafter, was an England novelist and biographer, one of the "Bright Young Things" on the London social scene in the inter-war years....
     (ed.). Noblesse oblige. Hamish Hamilton, London, 1956. ISBN 0-19-860520-X.
  • Fox, Kate
    Kate Fox

    Kate Fox is a Cultural anthropology and director of the Social Issues Research Centre . She has written several books about her social research....
    . Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2004. ISBN 0 340 81885 9
  • Cooper, Jilly
    Jilly Cooper

    Jilly Cooper, OBE is an England author. She started her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975....
    . Class. Corgi Adult, 1999. ISBN 978-0552146623
  • Alan S C Ross. How to pronounce it. Hamish Hamilton, London, 1970. SBN 241 01967 2
  • Charlotte Mosley (ed.) The Letters of Nancy Mitford
    Nancy Mitford

    Nancy Freeman-Mitford, Order of the British Empire , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Rodd thereafter, was an England novelist and biographer, one of the "Bright Young Things" on the London social scene in the inter-war years....
     and Evelyn Waugh
    Evelyn Waugh

    Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was a United Kingdom writer, best known for such darkly humorous and Satire novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop , A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catho...
    . Hodder, London, 1996, at pp. 297–394. ISBN 0 340 63804 4