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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Nancy Mitford born (28/11/1904)
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2024 23:16:34 +1300
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English novelist, biographer and journalist. Died 1973.
Would doubtless have been successful even without her eccentric sisters 
(one communist, two fascists and some others less interesting), whose 
lives and doings she spent part of her career chronicling.
But (the language link) she was much involved in the "U/non-U" flap of 
the 1950s. Here's Crystal's account:

1954: Alan S.C.Ross, Professor of Linguistics at the University of 
Birmingham, publishes a paper in the Finnish journal _Neuphilologische 
Mitteilungen_, "Linguistic class indicators in present-day English".
He draws examples from N.Mitford's 1945 novel _The Pursuit of Love_.
Ross uses the terms "U" and "non-U" for usages acceptable (resp. 
unacceptable) among the upper classes.

1955: Nancy Mitford writes an article, "The English Aristocracy", in the 
magazine _Encounter_ (later found to have been covertly funded by the 
CIA). She includes Ross's terms and some of his examples.

"She intended it to be no more than a humorous aside, but it was treated 
as deadly serious by her readers, many of whom began to worry about 
whether their usage was U or not..."

These basic texts were collected in _Noblesse Oblige_, edited by N.M., 
along with some responses, including a long "open letter" that Evelyn 
Waugh wrote to _Encounter_. When I first read it it struck me as 
crawling snobbery (Waugh and NM were actually good friends), but maybe 
it's wrong to try to separate snobbery from joking in Waugh.

And it kept coming back:
What Are U? (edited by A.S.C.Ross), 1969
U and Non-U Revisited (ed. Richard Buckle), 1978, published by DeBrett's 
Peerage [!]. Perhaps by this time the entire upper class was part of the 
joke.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Mitford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_S._C._Ross
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh