Nancy Mitford- The English Aristocracy

  You are writing an information pack for A-Level English Language students on language and society. Use Mitford's article to explore her views on Language and Class. 

  One way to think of a person’s position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for judging class. At first, a person's class is his parents' class. Later, he may pick up a new hand of his own; it is likely to resemble that of his parents, but not always as the wealth or lack of wealth within the family may differ throughout his life.
  Language and society work together to discourse the main aspects of social life, as it is believed that we can see the nature of people and what class they belong to by the way they dress or speak. This point could be seen as arguable true, but false also. As in the 1950's, this statement could of been true as to the speech of people and telling which class they belong to. Yet, it is believed by many that this in longer the case in modern day English.
  A feminism from the 50's, Nancy Mitford, believed that such a thing was extremely true back in the day. Mitford was born into an English Aristocracy family, was well spoken and evidently in the 'upper-class' of England. She strongly believed that the way in which one spoke would be the dependent of their social ranking in class. In her article, named the English Aristocracy, she mentions the most famous of her developments, the non-U and U of English speaking. The 'U' was seen as terms used by the upper class, of which included words such as Serviette, Mantelpiece and Dentures. As opposed to the non-U speakers, who were obviously the lower class or working, who were seen by Mitford to use words such as Napkin, Chimney piece and False teeth. Also, it was seen that the pronunciation of words were also a huge part of the contrast between the non-U and U. 
  However, this idea of non-U and U seems to have become much more relaxed, if not disappeared, in this modern England as evidently as you may imagine. Yet, people or judged non the less for in cases in they can not spell or talk 'properly'. And so, people are still put into these ideas of 'classes' eg. upper class etc. These classes are split into three main categories, which are then divided into seven each sub-category of their own:
• Upper class
– Upper upper : Old money
– Lower upper : New money
• Middle class
– Upper middle : Professional
– Middle class : White collar and entrepreneurs
– Working class : Blue collar
• Lower class
– Upper lower : Unskilled labourers
– Lower lower : Socially and economically disadvantaged

  These classes can soon be identified with simple uses of identification, the main few are these: How you look? How you dress? How you talk? What you like to do? Where you live?What your house looks like? And finally, what you eat? All these simple questions are a simple way of getting round a person to find out there class, without already knowing them. This reflects back to the article by Mitford,  as she expresses how people can in fact be judged and class guessed on their appearance and by their non-U and U speaking. Although in Modern day English it may be seen that slang and punctuation are more the aspects of telling people 'apart'. 

For more information on Language and Society in class please visit:
www.languageenglishsociety.co.uk/class

Commentary
  As beginning my information pack for A Level students, I decided that the best thing to do would be to introduce the idea of language and class. I did by listing different aspects of class and how class would be judged professionally. The idea of listing would give the students a clear understanding of what these classes are judged on in order to inform them, as to inform was the purpose of my essay.
  Furthermore, as beginning to introduce the article by Mitford I decided that the best way to do was to refer back to the past. This reference to facts and figures, lead me to the article by Mitford and allowed me to introduce it as to begin to speak about the article. Also, facts from the articles were used in the part in my essay about Mitford, as referring to the U and non-U, along with the examples of words used by each. By doing this, I could give my audience, A Levels Students, the best idea about Mitford as my purpose to inform them of such a matter with the knowledge of Mitford.
  Also, I used listing again in my essay when coming to explore the different classes in England, and how they sub divide into their own classes. By organising this into the rhetoric device of listing, it enabled my essay to look neat and tidy in order to inform the audience instead of confuse them. I feel the listing of the classes gave my information pack a neat and attractive one, as to look professional with the use of the listing.
  Finally, in my final paragraph of my information pack I thought it would be a good idea to use rhetorical questions in order to get the audience thinking about the information they have just read. I did this by expressing the questions which need to answered in order to find out the class of a person. By adding this in at the end of my essay it gives the students chance to think about the situation and so, gets them thinking more about the information just giving.