Strix
Posh Lingo
MISS NANCY MITFORD'S article on the English Aristocracy in the current issue of Encounter, which drew Pharos's tire last week, has given rise to much pleasurable discussion. Most of this has centred on U-Words. This 'useful formula' (as Miss Mitford rather charitably calls it; I am sure that she herself speaks but rarely of the H-bomb or the. V-sign) was invented by Professor Alan Ross, of Birmingham University, and used by him in a paper on `Upper Class English Usage,' which was published last year in the bulletin of a learned society in Finland.
U-words are the words by whose use members of the upper class can be distinguished from the members of other classes. Pudding and false teeth are U-words; sweet and dentures are not, nor are cycle (instead of bike) and phone (instead of tele- phone). Serviette, greens (for vegetables) and mental (for mad) are quoted as other obvious `non-U indicators.'
Before pushing on to the less etymological aspects of her theme Miss Mitford mentions, as a factor liable to confuse still further a situation already sufficiently illogical and obscure, the frequent use, by those who in fact know better, of non-U words as a joke; and I am sure that a sense of parody is a formative influence in the case of U-slang. Non-U speakers, when they deliberately use what they believe to be U-words, are apt to make some attempt at mimicry, and phrases like '1 say, that's jolly decent (frightfully sporting, abso- lutely topping) of you, old, man' are delivered in a sort of Western Brothers accent. U-speakers, playing the same gambit for the same purpose only the other way round, tend to rely for their comic effect on the incongruity, upon their lips, of the words themselves. 'Ta ever so,' 'a nice lie-down,' one for the road'—the use of such expressions is a mild form of skit- tishness; but to deliver them in a non-U accent would be ficetious, and anyhow it is funnier—in so far as it is funny at all—to pronounce them in patrician or at least sophisticated tones.
In this way bits of non-U slang earn temporary and rather short-lived promotion. Wizard, for instance, started in the war-time RAF, graduated to schoolboy usage after the war and achieved for a time lodgement in the parody department of U-slang. Much the same, I suspect, has happened to smashing. I believe this sort of process to be much commoner than it used to be. The classes mix more (especially, during National. Service, at their most slang-prone age), grown-ups see more of their children, and all ranks of society arc bom- barded by the radio and the films* with the same new catch- words. I don't believe, for instance, that in its day stunning, though of comparatively refined origins, could ever have achieved the social success of smashing.
* * * It is worse than useless to try and trace any sort of principle, rule, tradition or preference in the light 9f which the line is drawn between U-usage and non-U-usage. Why should 'the wife' (for 'my wife') be non-U, 'the children' common to both, and 'the dog' (implying a sort of communal dog, for whom nobody in particular is responsible) very slightly non-U?
At times it seems as though U-speakers had a leaning to- wards understatement. 'A moderate effort' is the U-equivalent of 'a damn bad show': when applied to an individual, 'boring,' though it may sometimes mean merely what it says, is at present often used to express disapproval or even anger in • Both non-U words. The wireless and the cinema are the U-versions. contexts where non-U speakers would employ a harsher and more explicit pejorative. At other times, however, U-speech shows a pronounced trend in the opposite direction, towards overstatement. '1 had the wind up' is a non-U admission : a U-speaker would say '1 was petrified with fear.' As in the eighteenth century, U-conversation is larded with vehement and extreme adjectives (ghastly, frightful, disastrous, nauseat- ing), but they are no more intended to be taken au pied de la lettre than the unprintable epithets so freely used by soldiers. Perhaps it is true to say that a relish for incongruity is one of the very few identifiable characteristics of an argot in which a dull party can be called 'a disaster,' while a disaster (on the battlefield) can equally well be called 'a party.'
Military U-speech (talking of battlefields) is a very highly specialised subject because of the innumerable differences in regimental usage. I believe, for instance, that mufti (for plain clothes) is not merely permissible but obligatory in some per- fectly reputable regiments; there may even be units where officers are allowed to refer to their commanding officer as 'the CO.' (I am told that in the RAF the adjutant is often spoken of as 'the adj.') Before leaving this debatable and almost unexplored ground I must record my impression that, although it is perfectly U to be wounded, it is slightly U-er to be hit.
*
We have already glanced at the inconsistencies which be- devil the use of the (for my, our, a, etc.). Here are some more : 'The village are livid' becomes, in non-U, 'Our village is up in arms.' We're going to the theatre't becomes 'We're going to (or, worse, doing) a show.' Occasionally one seems to stumble on a clue which may lead one out of this pointless labyrinth. A Yorkshire landowner may, when away from home, say in August 'THE grouse are no good this year' and in November 'MY pheasants are no good this year'; the distinction (not only valid but decorous) drawn here is between 'the' grouse, whose abundance or otherwise is attributable to various minor Acts of God from which his neighbours have suffered or benefited more or less equally, and `his' pheasants, whose welfare is (theoretically) directly affected by his strategy and his keepers't tactics.
* * *
All tradition is bequeathed, however distrustfully, to the young. The U-yOung have not been dragooned about the use of words in the way their parents were; and they have ingested a richer, more variegated slice of the marzipan of English usage than reached, in the ordinary way of business, the gizzards of their elders. If they are sensible and civic, they will try and iron out these pregnant but elusive nuances and strive for a clear, classless medium of communication in which all say 'Pardon?' and none say What?', every ball is a dance and every man's wife is 'the' wife.
I shall be surprised, and disappointed, if they make the slightest endeavour to impoverish our extraordinary national life by doing anything of the sort.
1' 'We're going to the play' is obsolescent and its use, therefore, slightly affected.
This usage (keepers in the plural) is rare but permissible in certain contexts; 'my head-keeper' is non-U. if talking to friends who might reasonably be expected to know it, the man's name will be used, but should not be prefixed by 'old.' In all other circumstances the U-usage is 'my keeper' (cf., the U-mother's 'my Nannie'). I am not yet ade- quately informed about the vocabulary of U-lunatics.
Previous page
