Snobbery!

Hmmmmm.

Have to agree on the British deserving some credit for keeping that alive!

Snobbery

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Snobbery is the state of being a snob – “[o]ne who meanly or vulgarly admires and seeks to imitate, or associate with, those of superior rank or wealth; one who wishes to be regarded as a person of social importance”, or “[o]ne who despises those who are considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste” (OED). The adjective is snobbish; the adverb snobbishly.



Snobbery, therefore, is the state of judging people, or their status or possessions etc, by inappropriate criteria. It is sheer snobbery to assume that a Duchess is better than a collector of rubbish because she is married to a man who is descended from a man who helped to win a battle. It is inverted snobbery to assume that the rubbish collector is better than the Duchess.



Snobbery is very common in British society. We commonly make judgements about people from the way they speak; worse, the judgement is often condemnatory. “The moment an Englishman opens his mouth, another Englishman despises him” said the playwright G.B. Shaw (Pygmalion, 1916). Snobbery is also common on grounds of how one dresses, one’s table manners, one’s learning and many other irrelevant grounds.



In its most usual form, snobbery refers to judgements made on grounds of social class. This is sometimes more clearly defined as social snobbery. However, such groundless value judgements, or prejudices, can take other forms. In academic circles, for example, intellectual snobbery is not uncommon – assuming that one person is better than another because he has read more ‘difficult’ or fundamental texts. This is subtly different from academic snobbery, one form of which is to assume that anyone with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge is, ipso facto, better or cleverer or better educated than anyone from another University. (In the USA, the commonest academic snobbery puts the ‘Ivy League’ universities above all others.)



Try to avoid snobbery. It is offensive and ill-mannered. However, it is probably impossible. I fear that everyone has some more or less irrational prejudice against other people who are seen as being “not one of us”.



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