by SIMON HOROBIN
Sixty years on from Nancy Mitford’s Noblesse Oblige, how has the language of class evolved?
Few things are as British as the notion of class – and little betrays it as effectively as how you speak and the words you use.
Usefully for those keen to decode this national peculiarity, 2016 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Noblesse Oblige, a slim collection of essays edited by the notorious author and socialite Nancy Mitford, which investigated the characteristics of the English aristocracy.
The volume opened with “An Essay in Sociological Linguistics” by Alan Ross, a professor of Linguistics at Birmingham University, in which he set out the differences between “U” (upper class) and “non-U” (middle class) usages, covering forms of address, pronunciation and the use of particular words.
It was the last of these categories – how to refer to the midday meal, the lavatory, the living room – that captured the interest of the class-conscious of 1950s England. Indeed, if the use of dinner (U form luncheon), toilet (U form lavatory), lounge (U form drawing room) and other non-U markers were not so explicitly marked before the publication of Noblesse Oblige, they certainly became so after it. Despite the Oxford English Dictionary attesting to the use of serviette in English from the 15th century, a headnote to the dictionary entry warns that it has “latterly come to be considered vulgar”.
Fish-knives? How vulgar!
Given his academic credentials, you might assume that Ross’s essay drew upon extensive scientific research. But in fact his claims were based on personal observation and anecdote. When he did draw upon textual sources, these are literary fiction of earlier generations such as the works of Jane Austen. The only contemporary source he cites is – somewhat circularly – Mitford’s own novel The Pursuit of Love (1945).
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