Stratification in Britain

Stratification - is arrangement in strata and the position of different strata in relation to one another. Stratum (pl. strata) – is a level of people in society; social class or division.

British society is considered to be divided into 3 main groups of classes – the upper class or aristocracy, the middle class and the lower or working class. This is known as the class system and it is important to know something about it if you want to understand British people and society.

British people grow up with a deep knowledge and understanding of the class system even if they are not very conscious of it. Most people know which class they belong to and are able to tell which class another person comes from by the way they speak, their clothes, interests or even the type of food they eat.

Social class is not only about behaviour or attitudes. For example, although many upper class people are rich and may own a lot of land, having a lot of money does not make a person upper class. It is also important to come from a particular kind of family, have friends who are considered suitable, have been to a certain type of private school and speak with a right kind of accent. There are people who are poor but who do not think of themselves as working class because their family background, education, political opinions, etc. are different to those of most working-class people.

Many people do not like the class system but it is impossible to pretend that these differences do not exist or that British people do not sometimes form opinions in this way.

Many kinds of food, activities and aspects of lifestyle are associated with one particular class. These are often referred to, e.g. in jokes and stories, in order to convey information about a person’s social class. For example, if a man is described as enjoying a few beers and a game of darts in the pub on a Saturday night, British speaker would guess that the man is working class.

Even more indicative than what the speaker says is the way that he or she says it. The English grammar and vocabulary which is used in public speaking, radio and television news broadcasts, books and newspapers is known as “standard British English”. Most working-class people, however, use lots of words and grammatical forms in their everyday speech which are regarded as “non-standard”. Nevertheless, nearly everybody in the country is capable of using standard English when they judge that the situation demands it. They are taught to do it at school. Therefore, the clearest indication of a person’s class is often his or her accent. Most people cannot change this convincingly to suit the situation. The most prestigious accent in Britain is known as “Received Pronunciation” (RP). It is the combination of standard English spoken with an RP accent that is usually meant when people talk about “BBC English” or “Oxford English” or “the Queen’s English”.

Look at the stereotyped representation of the three classes (upper, middle and working from left to right) as seen in a satirical TV programme “Frost over England” in 1967. This view is now quite a long way from the reality, but still lives on in people’s minds.

Upper class

The upper class in Britain is statistically very small and consists of the peerage, gentry, and landowners. These people were traditionally the wealthiest in the land having inherited money and position. Typically they would speak with Received Pronunciation accent and have been educated at public schools.

In the United Kingdom, entry to the upper class is still considered difficult, if not impossible, to attain unless one is born into it. Marriage into upper-class families rarely results in complete integration, since many factors raise a challenging barrier between the upper, upper middle, and middle classes.

Titles, while often considered central to the upper class, are not always strictly so. Both Captain Mark Phillips and Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence, the respective first and second husbands of Her Royal Highness The Princess Anne lacked any rank of peerage, yet could scarcely be considered to be anything other than upper class.

That being said, those in possession of a hereditary peerage – for example a Dukedom, a Marquessate, an Earldom, a Viscounty or a Barony – will, almost invariably, be members of the upper class, though a Life Peerage is that of the rank of Baron, most Life Peers are not Upper Class.

Where one was educated is often considered to be more important than the level of education attained. Traditionally, upper class children will be brought up — at home — by a Nanny for the first few years of life, until old enough to attend a well-established preparatory school or pre-preparatory school. Moving into secondary education, it is still commonplace for upper-class children to attend one of Britain's prestigious public schools, typically Ampleforth College, Eton College, Harrow School, Marlborough College, Oundle School, Rugby School, Uppingham School, Wellington College, Westminster School and Winchester College, although it is not unheard of for certain families to send their children to grammar schools.

Sports — particularly those involving the outdoors — are a popular pastime, and are usually taken up from a school age or before, and improved upon throughout the educational years. Traditionally, at school, rugby union is much more popular than football: indeed, the two sports are often taken to represent the two extremes of social classes 'at play', although paradoxically rugby is not played at Winchester. Other frequented sports include lawn tennis (which has a broad appeal and could hardly be considered to be dominated by any one class), croquet (quite the opposite), cricket and golf.

Equestrian activities are also popular — with both sexes. There is a long-standing tradition of the upper class having close links to horses; indeed, one of the foremost example of three-day eventing prowess is Zara Philips, daughter of Princess Anne and recently-crowned Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year. Men who ride will more often participate in polo, as is the case with both His Royal Highness Prince Charles and his sons, Their Royal Highnesses Prince William and Prince Harry.

Hunting and shooting, too, are favoured pastimes. Some upper class families with large estates will run their own, but many will know someone who keeps pheasants, or other game, and may instead shoot with them. Much as with horses, there is a particular affinity for dogs (especially Labradors and spaniels) amongst the upper class — and, equally, sporting pursuits that involve them. It should, however, be noted that none of the aforementioned sports are, of course, exclusively upper class.

Language, pronunciation and writing style have been, consistently, one of the most reliable indicators of class.

The choice of house too, is an important feature of the upper class. While it is true that there are fewer upper class families that are able to maintain both the well-staffed town house and country house than in the past, there are still many families that have a hereditary 'seat' somewhere in the country that they have managed to retain. An upper class house (if privately owned, and not staffed) tends to be a comparatively untidy composite of grand furniture — having been inherited — which may have become frayed and threadbare over time and vast piles of ancient books, papers and other old reading material for which there is now no home.

Many upper class families will be in possession of works of art by old masters, valuable sculpture or period furniture, having had said pieces handed down through several generations. Indeed, inheriting the vast majority of one's possessions is the traditional form in upper class families.

The organization of the garden is also an important upper class trait. Bedding plants, rockeries, hanging baskets and goldfish ponds will be nowhere evident; instead we find avenues of limes or sequoia, box hedges, shrub roses, herbaceous borders and stone pathways. Upper class gardens will look more natural and unconstructed than artificially preened.

Money and material possessions are often thought of as a less important factor for the United Kingdom's upper class than for the upper classes of other countries; although this allows for an upper class family to be impoverished, an upper class family is likely to have had wealth at some point in its history.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31