Version vom 23. November 2009, 18:41 Uhr

Class in Britain

Vocabulary: Britain has become less class-bound

Summary of the six main passages of the text:

1. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of a growing middle class who sees themselves as working class but have more abilities, opportunities, tolerance and ambition than their ancestors. His predecessor , John Major imagined a classless society but did not succeed, because in a society there will always be differences e.g. in income, power, abilities, so you never achieve a completely classless society. Margaret Thatcher called class a Communist concept, as it only saw the opposition of two classes.
2. It is an English obsession to divide the people in classes. As politicians and historians claim the English care much more about class division than other countries. But there will never be a classless society as long as there are differences between people, e.g. in education, personal abilities, salary, jobs etc.
3. There are three different kinds of class-systems: hierarchical, triadic and dichotomous. The first one means that every person is part of a chain from highest to lowest and everyone knows exactly where they stand. The Triadic model is the division into three different parts: low, middle and upper class. The dichotomous system divides society in two completely opposed classes (e.g. rich/poor, capitalists – proletarian masses => Marx).
4. History shows that classes didn't only have conflicts (Marx) but could also cooperate. Moreover, society has always only worked as the majority of the people have accept it – including the idea of social inequalities. In England, the majority of people who believe in the triadic concept see themselves as middle class and are proud of it: A nation of “burghers”, tradesmen, reasonable, educated middle-class citizens!
5. During the industrialization, the system of class divisions changed from one defined by hierarchy to one defined by class which had a huge effect. It divided the people in working class and brought forth the upper-middle class of “gentlemen” Most important for ta gentleman: language => accent and pronunciation. In times before the Industrial Revolution people from poor to rich spoke the accent of their country/region, but then it became the accent of their class. So the upper-middle-class for example began to speak/speaks the “received” or “Oxford” accent, often learned at a “Public School”
6. Public-schooling became a distinctive feature --> public-school-educated Tony Blair leads Labour. upper- to upper middle-class accent arrived sometime in the eighteenths century and is now departing. --> striving english-men like tony blair raise their voices if they speak on tv.

Social Exclusion

See David Batty. Social exclusion: the issue explained

Signs of/factors leading to social exclusion:

• unemployment, poor skills ==> low incomes
• poor housing
• high crime
• bad health, drug addiction
• lack of medical care in deprived areas
• family breakdown
• high teenage pregnancy rate
• homelessness
• high number of young people not in education/training or employment and truancy/school exclusion

Solutions: Government tries to establish institutions that

• analyse the causes and publish the results in reports.
• critically evaluate local governments' work to improve efforts to help socially excluded groups
• help to improve cooperation of departments / institutions to solve the multi-faceted problem
• initiate programmes to improve health of children, reduce teenage pregnancy and school exclusion and to counsel young people about education and employment
• coordinate efforts to encourage private investment in deprived communities.

Essay - Every child growing up in poverty is a ticking social timebomb

Collection of ideas

These children will often ...

Writing an introduction

Check if the introduction ...

• introduces the topic (+)
• gives readers an idea of what dirction the essay will take (+)
• provides an overview of the structure/line of argument (+)
• implies/poses a question and creates an expactation/interetst in the readers (+)
• states general truths/defines what needs no definition (-)
• asks questions/announces answers but does not give them (-)

Possible Introductions

• Question:

• Basic thesis/contrast ==> Definition:

• Surprising fact / statistic:

• Quotation:

Class: Two Language Samples

• RP Received Pronunciation, University education
• EstEngl Estuary English