Taking it on the chin

From how to wear red trousers with aplomb to always ‘going to the loo’, The Chin Dictionary is a self-deprecating and witty guide to being ‘posh’, observes Joe Gibbs

- Joe Gibbs

HOW do you identify a member of today’s British upper class, that doughty survivor of Imperial extinction, agricultural depression, school-fees hyperinflation, democracy and wokeism? The distinguishing marks are not quite as legible as they used to be. Income or material possessions, despite what sociologists might say, are a poor guide. Many of that class haven’t a brass farthing to their name—or look as if they haven’t, which is not quite the same thing. Dress, occupation, titles and not having to buy your own furniture are no longer safe indicators. Even an accent fails periodically when a generation flirts with estuarine chic. Perhaps the sole remaining litmus test is vocabulary.

In 1954, Alan Ross of Birmingham University published a paper in an obscure Finnish philological periodical entitled Linguistic class-indicators in present-day English. In his introduction, the Prof digressed briefly on the behavioural characteristics of a gentleman. These included an aversion to high tea, not playing tennis in braces and becoming amorous, maudlin or vomiting in public when drunk, but never truculent. Yet such minor traits were easily emulated by persons who, ‘though not gentlemen, might at first appear, or would wish to appear as such’. He concluded: ‘It is solely by its language that the upper class is clearly marked off from others’, implying that the intricacies of the dialect were tricky to acquire faultlessly unless imbibed with mother’s milk. Coining the terms U and non-U, he set out a blacklist of words and expressions and acceptable alternatives.