[ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class
Damien Broderick
thespike at satx.rr.com
Sun May 27 20:24:19 UTC 2007
At 09:34 AM 5/27/2007 -0700, Lee wrote:
>Especially thirty or forty years ago, but still very strongly today I propose,
>an important class marker is whether you pronounce the "g" in "ing" words.
>I'm disappointed that some of the people I knew in high school who spoke
>"normally" then have begun saying "walkin'", "talkin'", and "thinkin'".
I dunno 'bout US usage in this regard, but I gather than in the UK
attention to such niceties is a sign of middle-class and lower-middle
class prissiness (like "passed away" rather than "died".) Aristocrats
in Britain notoriously went huntin' and fishin' on their ample
estates, and said "ain't" rather than "is not"; they tromped about in
muddy boots and threw things everywhere for the servants to pick up,
pretty much as trailer trash are said to do without the benefit of servants.
(See Nancy Mitford's classic compendium *Noblesse Oblige*, now out of
date. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English )
Damien Broderick
More information about the extropy-chat
mailing list