Wanna take a short questionnaire?

Me too

 

What you say is very interesting and useful. I would like to add though, that an amplified use of expletives in working class can be due to a lack of vocabulary, but another likely reason is in what is called covert prestige. To try to be as concise as possible, and not to bore everyone with a sociolinguistics "lesson", overt prestige refers to forms like RP, or very standard forms which convey prestige in relatively "high" social classes, and covert prestige refers to patterns refering to relatively "low" classes. Profanity is part of it. Since working class people are not associated with the prestige of people using standard forms, they use forms associated to the roughness of their lives and jobs, that is, expletives.
So working class people may suffer a lack of vocabulary, but the more likely reason for their use of profanity is, in a way, to display their pride to belong to the working class, and display the masculinity associated with it...

I hope I have not annoyed you all. ; )

Thank you for your remarks and contribution, I love to have feed backs from the participants, it is always constructive!

 

I think I'm just about to prove your point here, in that I'm not entirely sure what all of this means, but is it saying that working class people are a bit fik and lacking prestige, and the only thing we have to be proud of, paradoxically, is the fact that we have nothing to be proud of just like everyone else around us?

 

NO, it is absolutely not what I meant, and I am sorry if it is the way it was understood, I should have cared less about being concise in order to be clearer... ; )

What this means is that, on the whole, there are two kinds of "prestige" (the quotation marks are important here). First, the prestige of the upper class, that is, the most educated people. These people generally have a more standard accent. This kind of accent displays education, but may also sound posh.
People from the working class on the other hand, are less educated, since they have a technical knowledge, practical skills. Most of the time, working class people have manual jobs, tough jobs, associated with masculinity. Then they sound less educated (less posh), but their speech patterns also reflect this masculinity through local accents, vocabulary and grammar.

This way, these two "ways of lives" both have their own features reflected in speech.

What I mean is that this does not imply that there is a nice and educated accent that everyone should try to have, and a bad, low-class accent which should be avoided, what I mean is that every accent reflects certain characteristics.

Moreover, this masculinity displayed by working class accents is what is lacking in upper class accents, and studies showed that many upper class men often use working class' speech patterns because of this very prestige they display. And conversely, most working class people know how to speak with a standard accent, but choose not to, because they in a way consider that it would be turning back to the values they are attached to, and they believe that by adopting a standard accent, they would sound less reliable.

So there was absolutely NO value judgements in what I said, I have a profound respect for the English language and all its aspects, this is why I chose to study it, and myself coming from a working class environment, it would be quite paradoxical if I believed people should not talk like that...

I apologize if my words may previously have sounded rude, and also for the length of this post... ; )

I hope this is now clearer... Is it?

Thank you.

 

I was pulling your leg. I doubt if anyone was offended, I certainly wasn't

The studies are wrong. Probably theories from people who have read a book or two without having really lived.

There are two reasons why people hold onto their accents and dialects. One is simply to fit in. Its not even about social acceptance. Its about giving ones self an advantage in any given situation. Let me give you an example. I'm kind of torn between being a towny and woolyback. I live in a town, work in a town, doing a very towny job. A have some land in the countryside, spend most of my free time in the countryside, and have close relatives who are proper woolybacks. Being duplicitous as I am, as we all are, I have a different accent depending on the situation. When I chat with the local chavvy kids, I am a chav (granted an elderly bearded one). My body language, accent, and everything is meant to say 'I'm almost the same as you, just a lot wiser and infinitely tougher, so we'll respect each other and get along'. When I'm among woolybacks I am a woolyback. Then I know all about 'oss sh**' and words that can be reduced to the letter 't'. I'll laugh at tales of 'daft beggars' that fell over in the mud cos they were too weak to lift a 100kg sack of tatties on't backo t trailer. And when I'm at work in the office and the boss or a client is in, I'm a reasonably well spoken professional.

I said there were two reasons why people hold onto their accents. The second is out of a slightly mischievous sense of humour. Sometimes it becomes quite apparent that someone we fancy winding up is struggling to understand our accent. So what's the solution? Drop right into your natural accent of course just to confuse them for fun. I remember being in a meeting once with a handful of fellow techies, and a load of managers. This was when I lived outside my area. One of the fellow techies was a fellow north east lad. He had an idea. I immediately understood him, but none of the managers did because the technical details went way over their heads. We didn't want the managers to get in the way, but at the same time could hardly tell them to but out, so as we bounced ideas off each other, we just dropped right back to our native north east accent. In no time at all we had the details sorted out, and realised we were surrounded by nodding managers, trying their best to look intelligent, knowing full well that they hadn't understood a single word of what they'd just heard.

 

Gann on man Clueless, Gan an tell em, divnt dunsh us and divnt drap yer dottle on the proggy mat
Ha'way the lads

Jack McH

 

Most of what you said was clear enough, but...

...

 

Well done Michael! This has turned into one of the most interesting and informative threads I've seen on GC. You've chosen a good cross section of the population, as gardeners encompass all socio-economic groups. From the replies I've read so far I'm sure you'll gain much useful data for your research, even if you do find you have to refine or change your questions.

From my own (long) experience attitudes to profane/obscene language language do change over time. What was once in public quite shocking evolves through mildly shocking to an everyday, everywhere occurrence.
I was brought up in an upper middle class home and y can remember the only time my father swore - it was "dammit" when the car backfired when he was cranking it. But I was sent to a private school where on of my best friends was the son of the lord lieutenant of the county and his father's language shocked me. When I left school I spent five years working in coal mines where the language was quite 'robust', but the guys I worked with would never have used profanities in front of a woman.

 

As Dave says, this is quite interesting

It has already leaked out beyond the limits of GC, with my wife now talking about it. She tells me she went through her phase in her teens when she found herself using a wording beginning with 'sh' every day.

 

Well, I did it and it disclosed what I already knew, that I do swear but only under extreme provocation and usually only when I'm alone. Old fashioned I may be, but I find something inherently distasteful in the fact that swear words are used by some, quite so much in everyday speech.

I'm not about to enter the class debate, except to say that there are 'certain' areas I know of where such language is more prevelant and I merely make the observation that these do tend to be areas of poor housing and low unemployment.

Certainly my friends and colleagues tend not to swear on a regular basis - at least not out loud and/or not within my hearing although it's impossible to say whether this happens because they don't hear me do it, or because they wouldn't do it in any event.

I did love the question where you are invited to list the swear words you do use - although, having had 3 children, several Godchildren as well as spending a lot of time in the schools of which I'm a Governor, I'm ashamed to say that I did not include my favourite swear phrase to use in the presence of children 'Oh ..... buttons' - it's surprising how much venom you can get into that word!

 

In my teens I had a small NSU Prinz car which wasn't always reliable. I called it Puck and when it let me down I'd say "Oh Puck".

 

THANK everyone for all these remarks and discussions! As Dave W said, all these data are invaluable to me, and the opinion of native speakers, having experienced these situations all along their lives is vital, and helps me reflect on it more easily, being myself a non-native speaker of English.

"There are two reasons why people hold onto their accents and dialects. One is simply to fit in. Its not even about social acceptance. Its about giving ones self an advantage in any given situation."

I did not mean that upper class men constantly use working class features and deny their standard accent, they just sometimes, maybe in more casual situations (out of the office where the accent will be very standard, to fit the norm, in a way...) use working class speech patterns. Maybe someone working in a London bank, once at home, will more easily tend to use Cockney pronunciations when hitting his thumb with a hammer for example. Still, his accent will majoritarily be standard, he will hold on to that, but, because of the masculine and virile aspect of the Cockney accent (for example) lacking in his office job, he will sometimes use such features in more casual situations.

But you are absolutely right when you say that in certain given situations, mostly depending on the people you talk to, one will adapt their speech to their interlocutor. This is called assimilation. Two people meeting for the first time, and coming from different social situations (having differing accent), will more or less consciously adopt a more neutral accent to, as you said, imply "I'm almost the same as you". On the other hand, people starting to disagree and having a row for example, can easily adopt very local accents which the other one will not understand, just to make him feel uncomfortable and try to "verbally gain the upper hand".

Then, people do hold onto their accent, but the notions of overt (upper class) and covert (working class) prestige will have some features of each "accent" (of course the English language is not limited to these two types of accents) go into the other one, and conversely. I hope this was clear...

All this to say that the linguistic gap between the working and the upper class is not always as big as it could seem.

"You have used the word 'expletive' whereas I used 'invective'. They do, of course, have completely different meanings because of the circumstances in which the 'swear words' are used (there are other definitions, such as vituperation)."

I looked it up into a dictionnary and indeed, they do not have the same meanings. I did not know these words, thank you. Actually "expletive" seems to have a more general meaning, whereas "invective" and "vituperation" seem to depend on tha situation and vocabulary used.

"You've chosen a good cross section of the population, as gardeners encompass all socio-economic groups."

Actually, I was not so much thinking of the socio-economic groups, but of the age group when I posted this thread on the forum. ^^
I remarked that I lacked 35-50 years old people for my study, and I felt like gardening could be one activity gathering this age group...

"What was once in public quite shocking evolves through mildly shocking to an everyday, everywhere occurrence."

This point is extremely important and it is one of the aspects that I intend to study. The generationnal dimension/conflict is present in every language and I believe it to be of critical importance.
What you say about the use of expletives/invectives/vituperation (^^) in front of women is also a major point I want to explore.

"It has already leaked out beyond the limits of GC, with my wife now talking about it."

You cannot imagine how delighted you have made me! ; )

Anyway, thank you to all of you, keep going.

I would like to ask the administrators of this site to tell me if they want to delete this thread for some reason, I would like to keep a copy of all the comments which have been made. They are part of the most useful and constructive comments I have had, so I would not like to lose them.

And also, sorry for the not conventionnal citations... I do not know how to cite several people on the same post...

Thank you.

 

The reason for the decline in morals and standards is very simple. It takes effort to maintain morals and standards, and to instil them in the next generation.

Until fairly recently, the only time most people heard someone speak who was not in their immediate vicinity was when they heard some posh BBC bloke talking on the radio. Nowadays we have global communication and today's kids are overwhelmed with inputs from all walks of life, in all parts of the world.

Whereas once a kid could be told 'we don't use that word because its bad', and that was the only point of reference they had, nowadays they're hearing a minority protesting, while the majority of the peers and their TV idols are using the words they've been told not to use. I remember when I was a kid, if I got done for anything naughty, I was made to feel as though whatever naughty activity I was getting done for was not normal behaviour, and therefore I was not normal for doing it. This was of course embarrassing so you think twice about doing it again. Nowadays you get done for something naughty, someone tries to make out that you're not normal for it, yet everywhere you look others are behaving the same way.

Consider this. I'm not ancient, yet in my lifetime I've seen very significant cultural and attitude changes. A young woman walking in the park on a sunny day, wearing pants so thin and tight that they may as well be painted on, would 20 years ago have created a bit of a stir, with most people, even of her own generation, thinking it was a bit wrong. Nowadays we see music videos that are borderline porn. By comparison, the lass in the park with tight pants on is a conservative frump. So while at one time it would have taken either a lot of nerve or a blatant disregard for standards for a lass to dress scantily, now it is the norm, to such a degree that a lass would be more likely to be mocked for dressing sensibly. So we see a broad change in public attitude (I really, really wanted to use the term 'vox populi' here but it just isn't quite right). That's why language is deteriorating.

 

dunsh = Knock
dottle = cigarette ash
Proggy Mat = Carpet made of cloth cuttings looped through sacking

BBC - Tyne - History - Hooking and progging

Most of the mats on google are door mat types, but my Maternal Grandmother used to make the full 12'x12' ones
No clothing or cloth of anytype was allowed to be thrown away, it all went to gran, and it was dangerous to visit her house in any new clothes
Why them new trousers are a bit long Jack, let me tak them up
Yer were lucky to escape intact school caps were the main target as nice and bright colours :-)

My big regret is leaving two behind when we sold the old home, at the time they were used in the attic rooms, the usual Jacobean Oak stained and gloss around the edges of the room, floor boarding and the big proggy mat in the middle, they were warm and weighed a ton

How to make, cut any cloth material into 4" x 1" strips, Fold in half, push through hessian sacking stetched on a large wooden easel type frame. remove proggy tool, push tool through hessian one eighth of an inch lower and pull loop back through over remaining tail (like they make hooky mats now)
Gran used to Knock a 12' x 12' out a month

Jack McH