The two articles below are about chavs. They could be used as a basis for students to discuss the idea of social class. In your culture can you make a distinction between social classes? Do names, dialects or accents carry certain connotations? Can you switch classes or are you stuck with the class you are born into?
Holiday Company offers ‘chav free’ breaks free of children called Britney
A holiday company is offering ‘chav free’ activity breaks aimed at middle class people tired of resorts filled with ‘Britneys, Candices and Dwaynes’.
Activities Abroad has sent out an email to 24,000 people on its database with two lists of names, those they were likely to find on one of their holidays, and those that they were not.
The company came up with the idea after reading about research which said children with middle-class names were eight times more likely to pass their GCSEs than children with names such as Wayne and Dwayne.
The firm then researched the names “you are likely to encounter or not encounter” on one of its holidays.
The unlikely ones were: Britney, Kylie-Lianne, Bianca, Tiffany, Dazza, Chardonnay, Chantelle, Candice, Courtney, and Shannon, while the likely ones were: John, Sarah, James, Charles, Rachel, Michael, Alice, Lucy, Joseph, and Charlotte.
Activities Abroad takes between 3,000 and 4,000 people away on holidays each year, including husky safaris in Canada and volcano trekking in Costa Rica, both of which cost about £2,000. It says its main market is family activity holidays costing between £300 and £1,200 per person.
Alistair Mclean, the managing director, was unrepentant after a customer used her internet blog to complain about the lists, and said she would not be using the company again.
Mr Mclean wrote: “I simply feel it is time the middle classes stood up for themselves. We work hard to make a decent home and life for our families and we pay taxes to contribute to our society and economy. Unfortunately, everybody else in our society seems to take from us, whether it is incompetent bankers or the shell-suited urchins who haunt our street corners.
So regardless of whether it is class warfare or not I make no apology for proclaiming myself to be middle class and a genuine contributor to our society. Do you encourage your children to go off and play with the shell suited, Lambert and Butler sucking teenagers who hang around our shopping centres at night?
Again, my apologies if we offended. I am genuinely sorry that you won’t be traveling with us, or recommending us, in the future.”
However, another blogger called Candice said: “I own my own business, have a post graduate degree, an undergraduate degree, 4 A-Levels, an advanced diploma in life skills, a diploma in performance coaching, GCSEs, speak French and Italian and drive a Merc. Happy slap that you idiot.”
Earlier this month, there were reports of food fights, arson attacks and foul language involving ‘chavs’ on a Caribbean cruise aboard the pounds £330m Ventura. One customer likened the behaviour to “the worst days of Benidorm and the lager louts.” P & O later denied reports that cut-price customers were to blame.
Mr McLean told the Daily Telegraph he had only had 15 negative responses from the 24,000 emails the Northumberland-based firm sent out, while the number of inquiries and brochure requests had
He said: “Everybody is assuming it has had an adverse effect but it has not. We are saying what a lot of people think.”
In the eight or nine years that the company has been running holidays, Mr McLean said it had never had a customer with one of the names on the first list.
Daily Telegraph 27 / 01 / 2009
Chav
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chav, Chava or Charva is a slang derogatory term applied to certain young people in the United Kingdom. The stereotypical image of a chav is a white aggressive teen or young adult, of working class background, who wears branded sports and casual clothing (baseball caps are also common) who often fights and engages in petty criminality and are often assumed to be unemployed or in a low paid job. The term may originate from the Romany term “Chavvy”, which is a general term for young person. In its English form it is generally derogative and appeared in mainstream dictionaries in 2005.
Popularisation in the media
From its origins as a slang term, use of the word spread so rapidly that by 2004 it had become a hugely popular word in national newspapers and common parlance in the UK. Susie Dent’s Larpers and Shroomers: The Language Report, published by the Oxford University Press, designated it as the “word of the year” in 2004. A survey in 2005 found that in December 2004 alone 114 British newspaper articles used the word. The popularity of the word has led to the creation of sites devoted to cataloguing and mocking the “chav” lifestyle.
The “chav culture” has been portrayed extensively in British media:
- The Welsh rap group, Goldie Lookin’ Chain, have been described as both embodying and satirising the chav aesthetic, though the group themselves deny any such agenda, simply making a mockery of the subject. The British car tuning magazine Max Power once had a beige Mk3 Vauxhall Cavalier stickered to make it look like the Burberry check, named it the “Chavalier” and gave it to the band.
- Footballer Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen, rapper Lady Sovereign, glamour model Jordan, actress Danniella Westbrook, former Big Brother contestant Jade Goody and Kerry Katona have also been labelled “chavs” by British tabloids.
Criticism of the stereotype
The widespread use of the chav stereotype has come under criticism; some argue that it amounts simply to snobbery and elitism, and that serious social problems such as Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, teenage pregnancy, delinquency and alcoholism in low-income areas should not be scoffed at. Critics of the term have argued that its proponents are “neo-snobs,” and that its increasing popularity raises questions about how British society deals with social mobility and class. In a February 2005 article in The Times, Julie Burchill argued that use of the word is a form of “social racism,” and that such “sneering” reveals more about the shortcomings of the “chav-haters” than those of their supposed victims.
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