Question about "middle-class" in a British context. "Techie" seems like a blue-collarish job, so what makes him middle rather than working class? Just an accent and manner of speaking that you wouldn't hear from a ditch digger?
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Replying to @clifford_banes
Middle-class accent, yes. Also, no, techie is not considered blue-collar but college graduates making good money.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
As a non-Brit, economic classes having accents is odd. I thought middle-class roughly meant "vaguely posh bourgeoisie", David Mitchell being the stereotypical example. In most places, if you can tell a person's economic class by their speech, they're unemployable juggalo types.
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Replying to @clifford_banes
It's very much down to accent here. Upper class people can be poor. Working class people can be rich. The middle class breaks into upper middle, middle middle and lower middle. David Mitchell is at the top of middle middle, bottom of upper middle. I am middle middle middle.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
Is middle class vs working class sort of like "acting white" vs "keeping it real"?
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Replying to @clifford_banes
No. Much much older. Predates our racial diversity by centuries. We didn't really have black Brits until the 50s and South Asian Brits until the 80s. They kind of slot in to pre-existing categories depending on their British accent.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
I meant in the American context, as in a reluctance to self-gentrify by adopting the language and dress of a group previously above yours, even though such social mobility is readily available.
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Replying to @clifford_banes
No, that context doesn't work here. Your history is very specific with blacks & whites living alongside each other with blacks as a lower class for centuries. Our racial issues align more with American attitudes to Asians - east and south.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
I'm not American, and I'm not talking about racial issues per se, just using it as an analog because US cultural hegemony has likely made this an example we are both familiar with.
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Replying to @clifford_banes @HPluckrose
I'm curious why there's such stratification in the UK, when other Western countries seem to have more homogenization. Or is it an effect of these strata having more of a voice in UK public discourse, not that there's more of them?
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I don't know, I'm afraid. I think it's an insular thing. Brits notoriously bad at moving around even within Britain & this has led to very many distinct accents & we retain an awareness of the significance of accents
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