Mind your language | 22 January 2011

U and non-U saw their birth in 1954, in volume 55 of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. A.S.C. Ross’s ‘Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English’ was presented to the world in the same learned journal that later published the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky, though much of the world waited in ignorance until 1956, when Ross’s ideas were collected by Nancy Mitford in Noblesse Oblige.

Ross’s thesis was that in England, ‘it is solely by its language that the upper class is clearly marked off’. He conceded that some non-linguistic markers remained, such as playing the game real tennis or a dislike of the telephone. Nowadays that might perhaps be mobiles.

Ross acknowledged that verbal class-indicators changed over the years. More than half a century after his learned paper, I wonder if something of the same kind can be accomplished through trade names. It is not a simple matter of prices. For example, many U people shop at Marks & Spencer. It is more expensive to buy things at Burberry, but Burberry, not necessarily through its own fault, became popular with non-U shoppers. The same thing had happened in the 1960s, when Crombie coats became the object of desire for borderline Mods-Skinheads. Crombie has, I think, now recovered from this evanescent class-indicator. U dressers do buy clothes off the peg. Today it seems that Hawes & Curtis, the shirt-maker, has moved from the U to the non-U market simply by multiplying the number of its branches.

My thoughts about non-U trade names were provoked by finding my husband eating a Lion bar. ‘What are you eating?’ I asked. ‘Some chocolate,’ he answered, which was almost true. There is U chocolate, which is not consumed at a sitting or in public places. Bournville plain chocolate is U, and half a bar might be found in the glove compartment of the old car; Curly-Wurly or Wispa, although manufactured by the same company, are definitely non-U, and their wrappers are no doubt sometimes chucked carelessly from the windows of aggressive 4 x 4s.