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The Great U and Non-U DebateUntil Nancy Mitford wrote 'The English Aristocracy' in 1955, England was blissfully unconscious of U-Usage and its lethal implications. The phenomenon of 'Upper-Class English Usage' had, it is true, already been remarked upon by Professor Alan Ross who, in an academic paper printed in Helsinki ayear earlier, claimed that the upper classes now distinguished solely by their use of language, but it was the Honourable Mrs. Peter Rodd (as she was addressed by U-speaker Evelyn Waugh, Esq.) who first let the cat out of the bag. Her article sparked off a public debate joined vigorously by EvelynWaugh, 'Strix', and Christopher Sykes, whose counterblasts are collected here. Osbert Lancaster, caricaturist of English manners, takes the debate into the visual dimension, and John Betjeman poeticizes on the theme with characteristic charm:Phone for the fish-knives NormanAs Cook is a little unnerved;You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes And I must have things daintily served. A new introduction by Ned Sherrin reveals more of the articles and correspondences that were generated by the debate, in his inimitably entertaining fashion.… (more)
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Although Nancy Mitford is often cited as the author,
Luckily, Waugh's would-be razor wit is followed by "Strix"'s essay on colloquialisms, slang, and how language shifts over generations and geography. I think zie brings up the best points of all--that gentlemen have "a relish for incongruity": they love to sprinkle their speech with ironic snips of lower-class slang, they call a battle "a party" but a dull party "a disaster," and they play with understatements vs. overstatements. Actual events or people are talked about in an understated way, whereas feelings (petrified, nauseated, firghtful) are overstated. "Strix" also ends with a fantastic paragraph: "All tradition is bequeathed, however distrustfully, to the young. The upper-class 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 to 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."
The best contributions are those of Mitford and Waugh, both of which are quite amusing. One sees a little of Auberon Waugh's arch upper-class satire he employed in his Private Eye diary in his father's earlier essay here.