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The OED tells us that the term ‘the chattering classes’, first coined by journalist Frank Johnson in 1980, is a derogatory one directed at ‘a politically active, socially concerned and highly educated section of the ‘metropolitan middle class,’ especially those with political, media, and academic connections.
I’m not sure that this definition is true any more. You only have to see the number of emailers, bloggers, texters, Twitters, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other social-networking fanatics chattering and burbling away online to give credence to the need for a new definition to be drawn up for the term.
As I had the misfortune to travel up to London yesterday, I’d add to any new definition, the people who seem always to be chattering away on their mobile phones. There is no escape from them - you see and hear them on the train (even in the ‘Quiet Zone’), on the Tube, walking the streets ... just about everywhere. What marks them out is not the fact that their conversations are usually banal, but that they all seem to be shouting into their phones as if the people on the other end are deaf. They are often also not looking where they are going.
If all that doesn’t demonstrate the need for a redefinition of the term’ the chattering classes’, I don’t know what will!
.
The OED tells us that the term ‘the chattering classes’, first coined by journalist Frank Johnson in 1980, is a derogatory one directed at ‘a politically active, socially concerned and highly educated section of the ‘metropolitan middle class,’ especially those with political, media, and academic connections.
I’m not sure that this definition is true any more. You only have to see the number of emailers, bloggers, texters, Twitters, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other social-networking fanatics chattering and burbling away online to give credence to the need for a new definition to be drawn up for the term.
As I had the misfortune to travel up to London yesterday, I’d add to any new definition, the people who seem always to be chattering away on their mobile phones. There is no escape from them - you see and hear them on the train (even in the ‘Quiet Zone’), on the Tube, walking the streets ... just about everywhere. What marks them out is not the fact that their conversations are usually banal, but that they all seem to be shouting into their phones as if the people on the other end are deaf. They are often also not looking where they are going.
If all that doesn’t demonstrate the need for a redefinition of the term’ the chattering classes’, I don’t know what will!
.
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