Language Politics, Redux

Hey, remember months ago when I bitched about this show about dialect on Radio 4? Those were some good times, right? Anyway, that thing I was complaining about was, like, an early preview of the show itself. Now the show proper has finally begun, and... it is fascinating. Thankfully, no further willful ignorance of American English is in evidence so far. But there is class politics. Oh yes. There is class politics the likes of which you've never seen, child!

Seriously, you MUST take 25 minutes out of your day and listen to episode one. This is an entire show about all the hundreds of different ways to refer to a concept for which there is no word in American English! Do it! You'll thank me! If you wanted proof that Britain is still on some fundamental level very different from the United States, this show should provide it.

The obvious comment to be made is, of course, that if the chavs really are so pervasive that every single fucking region has its own name for them, then why isn't a single one of them actually heard on a show about them? I mean, even as informants in the linguistic survey? If I were Gayatri Spivak, I'd write an article, "Can the Scally Speak?"...