Posh of course isn’t just about accent but about growing up with wealth and privilege, access to networks of influence and an expectation of success. About 7% of the population in the UK have a public (i.e. private) and/or Oxbridge education, so this is a pretty good marker for being in the upper strata of society.

Chavs is definitely a description intended for the working class and is not just about young, anti-social behaviour. Cambridge students getting up to high jinks after the May Ball are not identified as chavs. Someone wearing a tracksuit and a baseball cap, having children young, eating fast food or living on a council estate is. Kids who spend their summer sitting on a wall getting drunk and stoned are acting like chavs, kids who spend their summer on the beaches of Goa getting drunk and stoned are not. See what I mean?

Of course, you are right Ophelia, accents are malleable, and need to be understandable, so the mere fact of people with posher than average accents in positions of power and influence does not automatically mean that these professions are dominated by people with a privileged family background. But when people have done the research, the truth is (in the UK at least) that MPs, top civil servants, serious TV/radio presenters, top doctors, CEOs, top academics, newspaper editors etc..all do reflect a predominance of people with elite backgrounds. For example around a third of MPs went to private schools. I haven’t got the other numbers, but Anthony Sampson’s book ‘Who Runs this Place’ traces the predominance of white, male, Oxbridge elite at the top of almost every sphere of public life in the UK.

Anyway, my point was, that the arrogance that Clay Shirky describes as a necessary attribute for getting ahead is something that is taught and is as much part of the ‘class ceiling’ as it is of the ‘glass ceiling’ that women face.

Maybe one day, when we all end up speaking Seth Efrican or Strine or Brahnx (is that correct?) or (who knows) even Awksfud, that particular problem will go away. In the meantime it’s just another example of the problems we face in reconciling what we learn about the world as children with how it actually is. Meanwhile, it seems to me that the most important of such difficulties is the attitude that if it’s a woman who says it, whatever it is and however she speaks, it isn’t worth listening to. Women, race, class… Basically, it’s all about class, or classification, isn’t it?

Of course we’re not talking about synonymy. (Hence the Colbert reference still does some work here — he represents South Carolina just fine.) We’re talking about self-representation, choice, and audience acceptance. The only way we would be dealing in crude equivalences is if we thought self-representation was actual representation, or if we were conflating the permissible with the mandatory. I support both of the formers and neither of the latters.

But by ‘exclusion’ I don’t mean the touchy-feely kind, I don’t mean anything about being offended or lacking respect, I just mean that a multitude of accents makes understanding difficult for non-native speakers. I think news programs, in contrast to other kinds, have good reasons for aiming at uniformity of pronunciation so as not to make understanding more difficult than it needs to be. It’s a public service thing. I really think clarity and uniformity should be one of their goals. They could to be sure just decide that all accents would be Bronx accents…but you can see what that would do to their talent pool.

And then, a Bronx accent is not synonymous with working class, and vice versa. Michelle Obama is working class. (Not now – but then anyone reading the news would also not be working class now, in that sense. It’s not accent that makes the difference.)

I think this is all a bit crude, frankly. Most working class people in the US just aren’t detectable by accent. They may be by syntax, but if they are they’re unlikely to be journalists. The lack of Bronx accents on the news just really doesn’t tell us much.

If the act of displaying a minor character trait that reflects something about who you are is being exclusive, then it’s the kind of exclusion I support. Exclude away, ye minor demons! On the other hand, if people don’t think it’s part of who they are, then they’re free to change their accents, like Stephen Colbert did. It makes no difference to me.

Anything you do is excluding people by virtue of the fact that you’re a unique person doing it. Exclusion is simply not much of an argument on its own. On the one hand, you’re excluding ESL’s; on the other, you’re excluding Southies. Pick your poison.

It might seem strange to advocate exclusion so baldly. But actually I’m finding that that’s what people are calling for. For instance, when a white man says to someone in the pink ghetto, “I totally understand what you’re going through”, they’re not given a warm reception. It doesn’t matter what the white guy’s background is — could be he was homeless for a while, could be he has three degrees in sociology, could be this or that or the other thing — but the underlying message he will reliably get is, “we appreciate your solidarity, but given the lingering qualitative differences between our life experiences, you will always be estranged from us to some degree”. That’s “othering”, I think, because the white guy could feel sad and ashamed when they’re just trying to be helpful. But it’s also the stone cold truth. (Of course, the audience can always try to phrase it in nicer ways, and probably ought to for the purposes of solidarity, but that won’t change the underlying point.)

Plus as I mentioned, the accent question is complicated by education and mobility (social and geographic). It just isn’t the case the people born and raised in the Bronx or South Boston invariably keep the accents they had at age 5. I think Barney Frank keeps his on purpose – pour encourager les autres – and that’s swell, but I don’t think it should be assumed that the absence of obviously working class accents from the news means the absence of working class people from the news.

But I’m definitely not in agreement with how you’ve chosen to apply this point. “Chav” may have class connotations — what doesn’t? But its primary purpose is to describe young people who engage in anti-social behavior. Hence the use of words like “deranged” and “pathetic” from a stereotypical white male patriarch’s perspective, which was my initial point.

And, just to make things interesting for purposes of discussion, it’s use of language I would defend. For saying that use of morally loaded language to describe anti-social behavior is “blaming the victim” suggests that you advocate some kind of economic determinism at best (reductionism at worst). I reject that.

And this is a conviction that I apply with some consistency, without fear of being thought a “neo-snob” or what have you. Just as I condemned a close relative when he was arrested for grand theft auto, so I would condemn a stranger of the same age range for the same crime. After all, he grew up middle-class and made the worst of it.

The ‘voice of the expert’ is also, almost universally posh. On Newsnight, The Today Programme…

Hmm – really? How are you defining “posh”? The BBC is certainly no longer exclusively BBC-accented, or RP, or Home Counties, or whatever you want to call it. If it has an average accent that accent surely is estuary. But to American ears (mine anyway) it doesn’t have an average accent at all, it has a minestrone of regional accents, with more or less violently pinched vowels. (Many of its reporters talk about trewwwps instead of troops or even trewps. Some even talk about treeps.)

And that trope doesn’t really work in the US, because in most of the country there isn’t much if any different in accent (as opposed to syntax etc) between posh and non-posh.

And then there are questions about the connection between higher education and jobs in broadcasting and what effect that has on accents. In short, I’m not sure it’s a straight line between what BBC presenters sound like and working class representation.

April 20, 2010 at 10:57 am

” In an apples-to-apples comparison, women are paid at least equally”

Actually, no they are not. Women on average earned about 76.5% of what men earned as at 2004. A 2005 study by Cornell University found that women were less likely to get hired and more likely to get a crummy salary in relation to their position.

Further, it actually doesn’t pay for a woman to be married – if you get married as a woman in the US you are likely to earn about 94.5% of the salary of your unmarried female counter-part.

The ‘chav’ put down does the same job as ‘bitch’ – making sure that the people in question don’t get too uppity, reminding them who is boss, and who ought to remember their station in life. That it is bandied about in books, websites, discussions even more free and easily than bitch etc…just goes to show how deeply ingrained and acceptable this prejudice is.

As Ben says, one reaction to this is to adopt a posture of not caring what others think. This superficial arrogance shouldn’t be confused with the kind of deep self-confidence instilled in future leaders on the playing fields of Eton and suchlike, that Clay Shirky is talking about. It doesn’t travel well.

But to call it pathetic and deranged is blaming the victim.

BWAHAHAHAHAH!

Seriously? <i>Seriously?<i/>

For an actual logical response, see what Dave said. My only response is LOLOLOL!!!

I’m one of the oldest people in the world

Oh, you do work that for all it’s worth, don’t you Ophelia? Well, ha! I know people tons older than you. Centuries, so take that. :)

Ben, thanks for the chav reference – that makes total sense!

Juggalos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af8AtOn0Ak0&NR=1

Chavs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoQnOBGf6DQ