Social Hierarchy Expressed Through Language
Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2019 4:32 pm
Sir! Permission to speak? Although this topic relates to the use of language in the real world, it could be contentious, and I truly do not wish to start another pointless bun fight. What do you think of the following?
When I was a young officer cadet, so many (many) years ago, one of my fellow cadets, affecting a British RP accent and adopting a deliberately haughty tone, disdainfully said:
Horses sweat,
Men perspire,
Ladies glow, and
Officers feel the heat.
I am sure that we can all understand the intended message here; this was the use of language to express social hierarchy. Now then, please do not take offence at my erstwhile fellow cadet. He was, as most of us were, the offspring of a working-class couple and he had entered the military as a means of raising his social standing and improving his prospects in life. He was deliberately ridiculing (the reported) social mores of a previous era and expressing (mockingly) that he had finally “arrived.”
While we may deplore the phenomenon and decry it vehemently (particularly should we have been assigned, by birth, to the lower ranks), we would be blind fools to deny that social hierarchy exists in all human societies, even in self-defined classless ones where apparatchiks are recognized as being “more equal” than others. Furthermore, these notions are communicated through multiple means, at times overt and at other times subtle. However reserved “the message” may appear to be on the surface, it usually passes. Those who “do not get the message” declare their own place in the hierarchy through their lack of awareness of the code. Children learn to do this at an early age, teenagers can be vicious executioners of this style of communicating, and adults learn to incorporate refinements which, although less hurtful, still get the point across.
So then, without wishing to start another bun fight, I was wondering if anyone would like to comment on this socio-linguist phenomenon and provide examples from their own experience (please exercise restraint and show respect for the Forum Rules) .
By the way, my fellow cadet was one of the most charming, witty, out-going, down-to-earth, hard-working, industrious, adaptive and imaginative people that I have ever met. He was just toying with rest of us, possibly because he suspected that we had been taking our own “arrival” a little too seriously. Still, there was one aspect of his world view with which I was at odds: for him, rules were handrails, not handcuffs. While we never discussed the matter, I am sure that he was one of those satanic descriptivists. It would have been just like him.
EDITED:
Typos, as always.
When I was a young officer cadet, so many (many) years ago, one of my fellow cadets, affecting a British RP accent and adopting a deliberately haughty tone, disdainfully said:
Horses sweat,
Men perspire,
Ladies glow, and
Officers feel the heat.
I am sure that we can all understand the intended message here; this was the use of language to express social hierarchy. Now then, please do not take offence at my erstwhile fellow cadet. He was, as most of us were, the offspring of a working-class couple and he had entered the military as a means of raising his social standing and improving his prospects in life. He was deliberately ridiculing (the reported) social mores of a previous era and expressing (mockingly) that he had finally “arrived.”
While we may deplore the phenomenon and decry it vehemently (particularly should we have been assigned, by birth, to the lower ranks), we would be blind fools to deny that social hierarchy exists in all human societies, even in self-defined classless ones where apparatchiks are recognized as being “more equal” than others. Furthermore, these notions are communicated through multiple means, at times overt and at other times subtle. However reserved “the message” may appear to be on the surface, it usually passes. Those who “do not get the message” declare their own place in the hierarchy through their lack of awareness of the code. Children learn to do this at an early age, teenagers can be vicious executioners of this style of communicating, and adults learn to incorporate refinements which, although less hurtful, still get the point across.
So then, without wishing to start another bun fight, I was wondering if anyone would like to comment on this socio-linguist phenomenon and provide examples from their own experience (please exercise restraint and show respect for the Forum Rules) .
By the way, my fellow cadet was one of the most charming, witty, out-going, down-to-earth, hard-working, industrious, adaptive and imaginative people that I have ever met. He was just toying with rest of us, possibly because he suspected that we had been taking our own “arrival” a little too seriously. Still, there was one aspect of his world view with which I was at odds: for him, rules were handrails, not handcuffs. While we never discussed the matter, I am sure that he was one of those satanic descriptivists. It would have been just like him.
EDITED:
Typos, as always.