Etiquette and Defining “Class”

Asked by a team of sociologists what's involved in “social class,” one respondent said, “Whether you have couth or are uncouth.” And there's a “social” division distinguishing those who “entertain” in their domestic premises and those who wouldn't think of it.

The word “classy” should be stricken from the vocabulary of anyone who would consider themselves educated in good manners and etiquette. As Amy Vanderbilt cautioned, one’s clothing or whatever, may show or exhibit class, but it’s not “classy” or “high class,” Etiquipedia would like to caution readers to avoid use of the word “classy” when attempting to describe elegance in taste, dress or the use of good manners.

Nobody knows for sure what the word class means. Some people, like Vance Packard, have tried to invoke more objective terms, and have spoken about status systems. Followers of the sociologist Max Weber tend to say class when they're talking about the amount of money you have and the kind of leverage it gives you; they say status when they mean your social prestige in relation to your audience; and they say party when they're measuring how much political power you have, that is, how much built-in resistance you have to being pushed around by s*%#s. 

By class I mean all three, with perhaps extra emphasis on status. I do wish the word caste were domesticated in the United States, because it nicely conveys the actual rigidity of class lines here, the difficulty of moving-either upward or downward-out of the place where you were nurtured.

How many classes are there? The simplest answer is that there are only two, the rich and the poor, employer and employed, landlord and tenant, bourgeois and proletariat. Or, to consider manners rather than economics and politics, there are gentlemen and there are cads. 

Asked by a team of sociologists what's involved in “social class,” one respondent said, “Whether you have couth or are uncouth.” And there's a “social” division distinguishing those who “entertain” in their domestic premises and those who wouldn't think of it. — From “Class,” by Paul Fussell

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia