class in the UK - how the fuck does it work?

It's reliable enough for most London based media twats

pinefox i generally agree about the simplicity of class structure and wish it were entirely true but i can't help but reflect on my own experiences of feeling othered or ignored based on cultural markers?

Yes, I think this is exactly what my own post above was saying.

seriously disagree Tom. i think people are v poor at picking up the nuances of accents from places they're not familiar with.

obv you're familiar with that milieu but like i said before, people learn to *pass*

pinefox i read your earlier post back, yes, sorry, i agree

And I agree that accent is extremely unreliable bit it isn't considered unreliable by the media - hence the whole gammon fiasco.

oh yeah agree

regional (non-RP) accents seem to connote authenticity and legitimacy of concerns only if they're expressing conservative views, otherwise they're just mocked or ignored - some kind of RP still seems to be a requirement for most kinds of "serious" political and intellectual leadership. this is definitely about class but doesn't map neatly onto it in material terms and it's hard for me to locate cause and effect more precisely here

If they express conservative views they're mocked as ignorant racist Northern proles.

both of you otm

When I first started infant school I was practically speaking in an estuary English accent that I picked up through imitation from two middle class kids my registered childminder mum was looking after for a year. But that didn't last very long. But then I got moved to a catholic school in a posher area on account of the headmaster beating my brother with a pool cue at the previous not so posh school. I was about 8 when I first fully realised the class dynamics of getting othered/judged/disparaged by children and also adults, purely on account of the the area you are from and would try not to admit that I lived in a very rough part of Deighton. But then I'd make up for it over the next 40 odd years by never shutting the fuck up about where I grew up, lol it turns you into a wittering basketcase 4 life!

when i started infant school my mom and dad didn't want me to be mates with a lad who had a strong Brummagem accent. i think that's partly cos they couldn't hear their own strong Walsall accents ffs

I had to learn to talk proper as a kid to be taken seriously after moving from e london to surrey and then I tried to unlearn it as a teen to sound more street as I lost interest in doing well and now I have the kind of generic estuary that can be more or less posh situationally but I find generally embarrassing in both directions esp when I unconsciously imitate who I'm speaking to. relatives who stayed in london sound more authentically working class than me but they're also mostly better off. this is a minefield and it can be v hard to disentangle the parts that are class from the parts that are other shit

i think the point is that we think about it yeah? like we have to think about it? say this with love