Reader Carolyn in Washington, DC wrote in September to ask about social classes:
I grew up in England, but have lived in the US for the past 12 years. I
have a question for you that I wonder if you might ponder. I've noticed
that in the US "middle class" is used very differently than in the UK.
Here it seems that middle class refers to what would be often be called
"working class" in the UK. I do hear "blue collar" to describe someone
who has a non-office job, but it seems that you could be blue collar and
middle class, whereas in England, somebody like a mechanic would never
be called middle class.
It's taken me a long time to get to this because it's a big, hairy
topic. But to make it small and simple: in America everyone believes
they're middle class. In Britain, among people my age, at least, it's
almost a badge of shame to be middle class:
To be a middle class student just 20 years ago carried such social
stigma that many graduates in their 40s recall faking a proletarian
accent for their entire university education. --Decca Aitkenhead, "Class Rules", The Guardian, 20 Oct 2007
But I'll try to give it a little of the complexity it deserves, starting with the American side. Here's a bit from the book
American Cultural Patterns (rev. ed., 1991) by Edward C. Stewart and Milton J. Bennett [p. 89]:
Although sociologists speak of class structure and status obligation in
American society, most Americans see themselves as members of an
egalitarian middle class. There are variations in parts of New England
and in the Southeast [...]; but, generally, in American society, social
background, money, or power bestow perhaps fewer advantages than in any
other major society. Lacking obligations to class and social position,
Americans move easily from one group to another as they shift position
or residence; consequently, their social life lacks both permanence and
depth (C. Kluckhorn 1954a, 96*).
It's lines like that last one that made this book so much fun to use as a
textbook at my last university. Tell a group of privileged 19-year-old
Americans that their social lives lack permanence and depth and watch
the discussion
GO!
(It was a course in cross-cultural communication, which you might
expect would involve learning about communication in other cultures, but
the biggest step in understanding why your communication with others
fails is to understand the unspoken, subconsciously-held values that
underlie your own communication.) Move to another culture, and you start
to understand what "lacks both permanence and depth" means. Americans
are relatively good at making new friends in new situations because we
need to on a regular basis (and because our identity depends on the
appreciation of [many] others--but more on that in
a post on compliments).
Move into a culture with greater geographical and status stability,
and you find it can be hard to make new friends. This is because no one
else expects to have new friends--they have a complete social support
system made up of their families and friends they've had since forever,
and you're just not going to fit very easily into their lives. (I'm not
particularly talking about my experience in the UK now--I was lucky
enough to fall into some very welcoming social circles here. My
situation in South Africa was different. But I've heard other American
expats in the UK claiming to have had a less easy time of it.) But I'm
getting away from social class...or am I?
The self-proclaimed middle class in the US is HUGE because being middle
class = being average, normal, the same as everyone else, and Americans
aren't comfortable with the feeling that any one of them (I mean, us) is
much better or worse than themselves. I grew up in a small town
that/which,
once upon that time, was home to the international headquarters of a
couple of companies. Everyone considered themselves middle class--from
the people working in the factories all the way up to the CEOs. And we
had to consider everyone that way in order to keep up the American
egalitarian myth. Here's Stewart and Bennett again:
Running through American social relationships is the theme of equality.
Each person is ascribed an irreducible value because of his or her
humanness: "We're all human after all." Interpersonal relations are
typically horizontal, conducted between presumed equals. When a personal
confrontation is required between two persons of different hierarchical
levels, there is an implicit tendency to establish an atmosphere of
equality. [...] [A] compliment is often made regarding people who are
much richer or higher in position or status: "He's a regular
guy--doesn't lord it over you." [p. 91]
It's a myth, of course, because Americans are not all equal in status,
and we know it. But socially it's the "right thing to do" to act as if
everyone is.
As Carolyn observed, Americans often use 'collar' descriptions of job types as a code for discussing class. AmE
blue collar refers to jobs that one wouldn't wear 'business clothes' to, but to which one might wear blue (AmE)
coveralls (BrE =
overalls).**
White collar
jobs are those to which (traditionally) one would wear a suit--but of
course these days more and more such jobs have casual 'uniforms'. Newer,
analogous
collar terms have sprung up, such as
pink collar
for (usually low-paid) jobs that have traditionally been held by women
(e.g. waitress, receptionist, secretary, hairdresser, nurse) and less
commonly
green collar (environmental/agricultural jobs) and
grey (or gray) collar (usually for jobs that are between blue and white collar--e.g. non-
doctors working in health care). The term
working class is not as common in the US as it is in the UK--
low(er) income is often heard in its stead, for example in
low-income neighborhood. Phrasing
class-talk in terms of job types or income sits well with the American
discomfort with class-differentiation. Putting people into classes seems
like it's defining who they
are, whereas defining them in terms of job describes what they
do and defining them in terms of income is by what they are
getting. Doing and
getting are activities, and activities are changeable.
Being is a state, and more time-stable (a term from linguist
Talmy Givón), and therefore perceived as less inherently changeable. If you're uncomfortable with describing someone as
being something, a solution is to describe them as
doing something or having something
done
to them. This fits with the American notion of equality of
opportunity. We know we're not all equal--and identifying people by
their job or income acknowledges this. But by identifying people by
what they
get and
do,
there's an implicit suggestion that they could have taken other
opportunities and had better jobs with better pay. Or that they didn't
have the skills or talents [or connections] necessary to make the most
of the opportunities presented to them--but in a culture in which we
tell children that "anyone can grow up to be President"***, we tend to
gloss over the things that make 'equality of opportunity' an
unachievable myth.
Class is a more prominent issue in British life, although in a lot of ways its relevance has been reducing since, oh,
the war.
(One says 'the war' in the UK to mean World War II. It doesn't matter
how many other wars there have been.) Class is marked in many ways,
including where you live, how you speak, what you eat, what recreational
activities you take part in, how you decorate your house,
et cetera, et cetera. I recommend Kate Fox's book
Watching the English if you'd like some details on particular class markers. Or, for a brief primer, here's
an International Herald Tribune article on the subject. But for the classic explanation, see John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett on
The Frost Report.
The UK is experiencing some changes in how class is perceived
experiencing more social mobility than probably ever before, and Tony Blair (whose leadership
was marked by affinity for things, including wars, American) famously
claimed "We're all middle class now". Even before Tony, John Major spoke
of a "classless society" in Britain. But for all this egalitarian
show, there's still a deep-seated sense of class identity. A survey
by
The Guardian, discussed in
Aitkenhead's article [link above], finds that class-consciousness is
still very important in the UK, but it is getting more and more
confusing. One means of trying to objectively measure class status is
the UK marketing industry's letter-based divisions based on occupation.
Category A = doctors, company directors,
barristers [AmE
lawyers]
etc.; B = teachers, police officers, etc.; C1 = clerical staff; C2 =
tradespeople like plumbers, electricians, etc.; D = manual labo(u)rers; E
= casual workers, pensioners, etc. A third of the so-called
AB professionals
polled claimed to be working class. The C2s are "the best at correctly
identifying their own class" (76% identify as working class).
Aitkenhead writes, "So we have a curious situation where the vast
majority of us -- 89% -- believe we are judged on our social class, yet
fewer and fewer of us can either tell or admit what it is." In
particular, people often identify according to their parents' class,
unless, of course, it's middle class.
I discuss class-based linguistic distinctions (e.g. whether you say
napkin or [BrE] serviette)
here as they come up--and these are generally much more common in BrE.
To find old discussions, hit the 'U/Non-U' and 'class' tags at the
bottom of this post. Reader Andrew R has also pointed out
this discussion on the Guardian site.
Evidence that these things are still relevant comes from the news item
last year in which it was alleged that Prince William and Kate
Middleton broke up because of Kate's mother's
déclassé language use. (I
didn't discuss this much last year because everyone else was
already blogging about it.)
* "American Culture -- A General Description." In R. H. Williams (Ed.),
Human factors in military operations. Chevy Chase, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univer., Operations Res. Office, 1954.
** Sidenote: BrE
overalls are equivalent to AmE
coverall or boilersuit--i.e. a kind of jumpsuit worn as work clothes (usually in messy jobs). AmE
(bib) overalls are what the British call
dungarees. In AmE
dungaree is an old-fashioned word for
blue jeans. Late edit: though
boiler suit was the only name I knew for these things when I was a child (the [AmE]
janitor at our school wore one), it's now been pointed out to me that it's actually a BrE term and few other Americans use it. Huh! I have no idea how I acquired it back then. I always liked the term, though.
***
For the class of expatriates' children, this is really a myth, since
according to the Constitution, only those born on American soil can
become President. So, already a lost job opportunity for dual-citizen
Grover. It's America's loss.
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