There are two main factors involved in calculating the class to which you, and others, belong: the words you use and, of course, how you say them.
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
Nancy Mitford coined the phrase ‘U and Non-U’ — referring to upper-class and non-upper-class words. And although some of her class-indicator words are now outdated, the principle remains.
But she didn’t go far enough. While some words may simply separate the upper class from the rest, others more specifically separate the working class from the lower-middle, or the middle-middle from the upper-middle.
There are, however, seven words that the English uppers and upper-middles regard as infallible indicators. Utter any one of these seven deadly sins, and their on-board class-radar devices will start bleeping and flashing and you will be demoted to middle class, at best, and probably lower.
1. Pardon: Here’s a good class-test: when talking to an English person, deliberately say something too quietly for them to hear you properly. A lower-middle or middle-middle person will say, ‘Pardon?’
An upper-middle will say ‘Sorry?’ (or perhaps ‘Sorry — what?’ or ‘What — sorry?&rsquo
. But an upper-class and a working-class person will both say, ‘What?’ (The working-class person may drop the t — ‘Wha’?’ — but this will be the only difference.)
2. Toilet: Another word that makes the higher classes flinch — or exchange knowing looks if it’s uttered by a would-be social-climber. The term used by upper-middles and uppers is ‘loo’ or ‘lavatory’ (pronounced ‘lavuhtry’, with the accent on the first syllable).
‘Bog’ is occasionally acceptable, but only if said in an obviously ironic-jocular manner. The working classes all say ‘toilet’, as do most lower-middles and middle-middles.
Lower and middle-middles with pretensions or aspirations, however, may opt for suburban-genteel euphemisms such as ‘Gents’, ‘Ladies’, ‘bathroom’, ‘powder room’, ‘facilities’ and ‘convenience’, or jokey euphemisms such as ‘latrines’, ‘heads’ and ‘privy.’
3. Serviette: It’s been suggested that ‘serviette’ was taken up by squeamish lower-middles who found ‘napkin’ a bit too close to ‘nappy’, and wanted something that sounded a bit more refined. Whatever its origins, ‘serviette’ is now regarded as irredeemably lower class. Upper-middle and upper-class mothers get very upset when their children learn to say ‘serviette’ from well-meaning lower-class nannies, and have to be painstakingly retrained to say ‘napkin’.
4. Dinner/tea: Nothing wrong with this word: it’s only a working-class hallmark if you use it to refer to the midday meal, which should be called ‘lunch’. Calling your evening meal ‘tea’ is also a working-class indicator: the higher echelons call this meal dinner or supper. But the uppers and upper-middles use the term supper much more than the middles and lower-middles, rarely describing an evening meal as dinner unless it’s a particularly formal occasion — and never, ever using the term dinner party.
For the higher classes, tea is taken at around four o’clock, and consists of tea and cakes or scones (which they pronounce with a short o), and perhaps little sandwiches. The lower classes call this afternoon tea.
All of which can pose a few problems for foreign visitors: if you’re invited to dinner, should you turn up at midday or in the evening? Does ‘come for tea’ mean four o’clock or seven o’clock? To be safe, you have to ask what time you’re expected. The answer will help you to place your hosts on the social scale.
5. Settee: Or you could ask your hosts what they call their furniture. If an upholstered seat for two or more people is called a settee or a couch, they’re no higher than middle-middle. If it’s a sofa, they’re upper-middle or above.
6. Lounge: And what do they call the room in which the settee/sofa is to be found? Settees are found in lounges or living rooms; sofas in sitting rooms or drawing rooms.
Drawing room (from withdrawing room) used to be the only correct term, but many upper-middles and uppers feel it’s a slightly pretentious name for, say, a small room in an ordinary terrace house — so sitting room has become acceptable.
You may occasionally hear an upper-middle-class person say living room, although this is frowned upon. Only middle-middles and below say lounge.
7. Sweet: The upper-middle and upper classes insist that the sweet course at the end of a meal is called the pudding.
Asking ‘Does anyone want a sweet?’ at the end of a meal will get you immediately classified as middle-middle or below. ‘Afters’ will certainly also activate the class-radar and get you demoted.
‘Dessert’ isn’t quite as clear as it once was. Some American-influenced young upper-middles are starting to say ‘dessert’, and this is therefore the least offensive of the three — and the least reliable as a class indicator.
SCHOOL NAME TAGS THAT SHOW THE MIDDLETONS AREN'T SO POSH
Here’s a hugely revealing quote from a mother whose daughter was in the same house as Kate Middleton at Marlborough, a very grand private boarding school:
‘There was always something slightly galling about having your children at school with the Middletons. Every pristine item of clothing would have a beautifully sewn-in name tape, for instance.
‘It was unthinkable that they’d end up resorting to marker pens on labels like the rest of us. There were huge picnics at sports day, the smartest tennis racquets, that kind of thing. It made the rest of us all feel rather hopeless.’
Now, to those who understand English class-indicators, this mother’s apparently humble statement — self-denigrating and full of admiration for the Middleton family’s perfections — is not only an indirect boast, but also a subtle snobby put-down. So let’s unpick the coded insults . . .
First, caring about every item of clothing being ‘pristine’, with perfectly sewn-in name tapes, is a middle-middle or even lower-middle indicator.
Even the word ‘pristine’ is a sneer: only the suburban bourgeoisie regard it as a term of approbation, and fuss about having everything ‘pristine’ or ‘spotless’.
Upper class and secure-upper-middle mothers (‘the rest of us’, as this mother is careful to remind us twice) would be carelessly indifferent about such trivia and perfectly happy to send their children back to Marlborough with crumpled clothes and their initials roughly scrawled in marker pen on their clothing labels. To say that the Middleton family would find this ‘unthinkable’ puts them firmly in their petit-bourgeois place.
Second, this mother’s professed feeling of inferiority over the Middletons’ lavish picnics at school sports days, their expensive brand-new tennis racquets and ‘that kind of thing’, is yet another veiled insult.
Such ostentatious displays of wealth are clear nouveau-riche indicators.
So, far from making this mother and ‘the rest of us all’ feel ‘rather hopeless’ by comparison, the Middletons’ immaculate clothes, dainty name tapes, fancy picnics and high-priced sports equipment would actually have made them all feel smugly superior.
In effect, what this mother is really saying is that among the truly upper/upper-middle Marlborough parents, the Middletons were not regarded as ‘PLU’ (People Like Us) but as jumped-up nouveau social-climbers.
But this is England, so she says it in code: an exquisite example of English irony, in which every line is a snobbish put-down, cleverly disguised as a self-deprecating compliment.
OTHER TELL-TALE WORD DIVIDERS
Posh: If you want to ‘talk posh’, you’ll have to stop using the term. The correct upper-class word is ‘smart’. In upper-middle and upper-class circles, ‘posh’ can only be used ironically, in a jokey tone, to show that you know it’s a low-class word.
Mum and Dad: Lower class young people call their parents Mum and Dad; smart children say Mummy and Daddy.
These aren’t infallible indicators, but grown-ups who still say Mummy and Daddy are almost certainly upper-middle or above. Prince Charles provided an example of this at the age of 64, by addressing the Queen as Mummy in his speech at her Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
Perfume: Mums wear perfume; Mummies call it scent.
Party time: Lower-class people go to a ‘do’; middle-middles might call it a function; smart people just call it a party.
Refreshments: These are served only at middle-class functions; the higher echelons’ parties just have food and drink.
Portions: Lower-middle and middle-middles eat their food in portions; upper-middles and above have helpings.
Patio: Unsmart people’s homes have patios; smart people’s houses have terraces.
THE M&S TEST
If you need to make a quick assessment of an Englishwoman’s social class, don’t ask about her family background, income, occupation or the value of her house (all of which would, in any case, be rude). Ask her what she does and doesn’t buy at Marks & Spencer.
The upper-middle classes buy food in the food halls, and will also happily buy M&S underwear and perhaps the occasional plain, basic item, such as a T-shirt.
They’d never buy a party dress from the store, and are squeamish about wearing M&S shoes,however comfortable or well-made they may be. And they’ll buy M&S towels and bed-linen, but not M&S sofas, curtains or cushions.
The middle-middles also buy M&S food, but get their cornflakes and loo paper at Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Most will buy a much wider range of clothes from M&S than the upper-middles, including some with prints and patterns.
Educated, upwardly mobile middle-middles, however, have now joined the upper-middles in rejecting M&S’s patterned clothing — and reserve particular scorn for the heavily embellished Per Una range.
They are, however, generally happy to buy M&S sofas, cushions and curtains.
Lower-middles buy M&S food, but usually only as a special treat. The clothes, on the other hand, are generally regarded as ‘good value’ by the thrifty, respectable, genteel sort of lower-middles: ‘Not cheap, mind you, but good quality.’
Some lower-middles feel the same about the cushions and duvets and towels, while others regard them as ‘very nice, but a bit too pricey’.
THE MARMALADE CLASSES
Here’s an even easier test. Watch what someone puts on their breakfast toast. Dark, thick-cut Oxford or Dundee marmalade is favoured by the higher echelons, while the lower ranks generally prefer the lighter-coloured, thin-cut brands such as Golden Shred.
The unwritten class rules about jam are much the same: the darker the colour and the bigger the lumps of fruit, the more socially elevated the jam. Some class-anxious middles and upper-middles secretly prefer the paler, smoother marmalades and jams, but feel obliged to buy the socially superior chunky ones.
Only the lower classes — older-generation lower-middles in particular — try to sound posh by calling jam ‘preserves’.
WHAT CLASS IS YOUR CAR?
Still struggling? Try talking cars.
The English like to believe, and will often doggedly insist, that social-status considerations play no part in their choice of vehicle. But the truth is that car choice in England is mostly about class.
If you don’t mind causing offence, try saying: ‘I’d guess you probably drive a Ford Mondeo?’ to older members of the middle-middle or upper-middle classes and watch them recoil.
‘Mondeo Man’ was for many years the generic euphemism for a lower-middle-class, suburban-salesman type, so class-anxious middles and upper-middles will be highly miffed at being demoted to this social category.
The Mondeo-test can be a pretty good indicator of class-anxiety: the more huffy English people are about the suggestion that they drive one, the more insecure they are about their own position in the social hierarchy.
This isn’t a question of price. Cars driven by upper-middles are often considerably cheaper than the Mondeo, and the almost equally ridiculed Vauxhalls.
Those who regard themselves as being a class or two above Mondeo Man may well drive a small, cheap, second-hand Peugeot, Renault, VW or Fiat hatchback — but they’ll still feel smugly superior as Mondeo Man glides past in his bigger, faster, more comfortable car.
Upper-middles who pass the Mondeo Test — those who are merely mildly amused by your suggestion that they drive a Mondeo — may have class anxieties about the Mercedes.
Try saying to a middle-middle or upper middle: ‘Let me guess . . . I’d say you probably drive a big Mercedes.’
If your subject looks hurt or annoyed or responds with a bit of barbed humour about ‘flashy rich trash’, you’ve hit the insecurity button. He’s clearly made it into the upper-middle intelligentsia, professional or ‘country’ set, and is anxious to distinguish himself from the despised middle-middle business class (or the nouveaux riches).
You may well find that his father (or even grandfather) was a petit-bourgeois middle-class businessman who sent his children to smart private schools, where they learnt to look down on petit-bourgeois middle-class businessmen.
Of course, most English people will tell you there’s no longer any Jane-Austenish stigma attached to being ‘in trade’. They’re mistaken.
Interestingly, the upper-middle chattering classes are the snootiest of all: most regard the Mercedes-driving classes with at least some degree of disfavour.
Again, the price of the car is not the issue, nor is the driver’s income. The class issue is all about the means by which one acquires one’s wealth — and how one chooses to display it.
A Mercedes-despising barrister or publisher, for instance, may well drive a top-of-the-range Audi, which costs about the same as a big Mercedes, but is regarded as more elegantly understated. (The Royal Family mostly drive Audis.)
Jaguars have also suffered a bit from a vulgar ‘trade’ connection, being associated with wealthy used-car dealers, slum-landlords, bookmakers and shady underworld characters. But Jaguars have also been the official cars of prime ministers and cabinet ministers, which — to some — lends them an air of respectability. Others, however, feel that this only confirms their inherent sleaziness.
What about SUVs? The upper classes and many upper-middles look down on them, particularly the ostentatious ones, which they regard as the height of vulgarity.
For the snooty higher classes, driving a Mercedes SUV would put you even lower down the social scale than a Mercedes saloon car — you’d be seen as a ‘chav with money’ rather than a rich bourgeois businessman.
HOW POSH IS YOUR PET?
Finally, an even more reliable class indicator is the type and breed of your pet. People in the upper
echelons prefer Labradors, golden retrievers, King Charles spaniels and springer spaniels, though they’re highly unlikely to admit that their choice of pet is in any way class-related. Instead, they’ll insist that they like Labradors (or whatever) because of the breed’s kind temperament.
The lower classes, meanwhile, are more likely to have Alsatians, poodles, Afghans, chihuahuas, bull terriers and, of course, Rottweilers.
Cats are less popular than dogs with the upper class, although those who live in grand country houses find them useful for keeping mice and rats at bay. The lower social ranks, by contrast, may keep mice as pets — as well as guinea pigs, hamsters and goldfish.
Some middle-middles, and lower-middles with aspirations, take great pride in keeping expensive exotic fish such as Koi carp in their garden
And to think that some people do live there lives by these 'rules'.
That Katie Hopkins creature is a prime example.
