Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, number 573, Discussing Social Class.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast, episode 573.
I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan.
© transcript Emily Beynon a special 8-10 page guide we provide for all of our episodes to help you improve your English even faster.
This episode is called Discussing Social Class.
It's a dialogue between Hector and Sophia.
Using a lot of vocabulary related to talking about people at different social and economic levels in a country.
Let's get started.
Can you believe, James?
All evening, he tried to tell me how this country would be better if we had no social classes.
He's out of his mind.
He was just trying to get a rise out of you.
We all know that the two of you don't see eye to eye.
He thinks that just because he comes from a working class background, he can criticize anyone who is middle class or upper class.
I just can't stand his holier-than-thou attitude.
He knows you, and he knows which buttons to push to get you worked up.
I don't think he was serious when he said he thought class warfare was a good idea.
Well, he was downright insulting.
He talks as though we have no sense of social responsibility.
We do our share for the poor.
What more does he want from me?
I think he has a chip on his shoulder because his parents are blue collar and he now lives in a white collar world.
He feels he has to stand up for the marginalized people in our society.
Okay, but does that mean I have to allow him to insult me under my own roof?
Of course not.
Next week, we're having dinner at their house.
Hector says to Sophia, Can you believe James?
Social class refers to a large group of people who have approximately the same wealth, the same amount of money, education and what we call social status, power and importance in a community or in a society.
So Hector is saying that his friend James is.
Hector thinks that he is out of his mind, which means he's crazy.
Sophia says, he was just trying to get a rise out of you.
To get a rise R-I-S-E out of someone means to make someone react strongly, usually by getting them angry about something or upset.
You don't really mean sometimes what you say, but for fun or for whatever reason, you're trying to get the other person to react, to get angry.
So you say something that you know will make him or her upset.
Sophia says that that is what James is doing.
We all know that the two of you, Hector and James, don't see eye to eye.
The phrase to see eye E-Y-E to eye the things you have in your head that you use to see means to agree with someone, to have the same opinion as someone.
They don't agree.
Hector says James thinks that just because he comes from a working class background, he can criticize anyone who is middle class or upper class.
These are three terms we use in talking about social classes.
The first one is working class.
This is a class, a social class made up of people who have less education, who often work in low-paying jobs, usually jobs where you get paid by the hour.
That is, you don't get one amount of money for the whole week or month.
It depends on how many hours you work.
Normally this is considered those who are less wealthy have less money than most other people in the society, often people who work at physical or manual labor jobs.
Hector says that James comes from a working class background, meaning his parents were working class people.
So he thinks he can criticize anyone who is middle class or upper class.
Well, if working class is the lower class, the upper class would be those who have a lot of money, a lot of importance and power in a society.
The middle class are those that are somewhere in between, right?
You're not rich, but you're not poor.
You have some education.
Perhaps you went to college, but you're not necessarily extremely wealthy.
You don't have a lot of money.
In the United States, most everyone likes to think of themselves as being middle class.
It's the largest group.
It sounds...
Not too poor, not too rich.
So there are however, no definitions, no official amount that you have to make in order to be in the middle class or the upper class.
These are just terms that people use, often without defining them very carefully.
Hector says, I just can't stand...
James's holier than thou attitude.
He can't stand it.
He can't tolerate it.
It makes him angry.
What makes him angry is James's holier than thou attitude.
Holier H-O-L-I-E-R hyphen than hyphen thou T-H-O-U is an expression we use to describe someone who thinks they are better than another person, who feels superior, to be at a higher moral level, more ethical, a better person.
Someone who thinks that, we might say, has a holier-than-thou attitude.
Sophia says he knows you and he knows which buttons to push to get you worked up.
To know which buttons to push means to know what will make another person react in a certain way.
This is especially true with people who are married.
They know which buttons to push if they want to get their wife angry or their husband angry.
They know what to say that will make him or her mad.
That, of course, is one of the great advantages of marriage.
Sophia says that James knows which buttons to push to get Hector worked up.
To get worked up means to get angry, to get annoyed, to have very negative emotional reactions.
There's actually a couple of meanings of this term.
Those can be found in the learning guide.
Sophia continues I don't think he was serious when he said he thought class warfare was a good idea.
Warfare comes from the word war or has the word war in it.
It means when two groups or two countries are fighting.
So class warfare would be when different groups, different social classes in a country or a society are fighting with each other.
The poor, the working class are trying to take the money away from the rich and the upper class.
That would be an example of class warfare or the other way around.
Hector says, well, he was downright insulting.
Downright, D-O-W-N-R-I-G-H-T, is here used as an adverb to emphasize something.
Basically, here it means very insulting.
He was downright insulting.
He was very insulting.
Usually we use it for a negative adjective.
Insulting is a negative adjective.
It means to be rude, to not be very nice to someone, to say bad things about them to their face, directly to them.
Hector says that James talks as though we have no sense of social responsibility.
Social responsibility is the idea that people who have a lot of money will help those who have less money or less power.
He says, To do your share, S-H-A-R-E, means to help, to do your part.
It means to usually participate in some larger project or larger movement to help people who need help.
Do your share can also simply mean do what you are supposed to do as part of a larger group.
So if you have a group of people at work, you may tell someone to do their share if they're not working.
Probably in that case, we would say to do their part.
To do one's share is often used to describe helping people who need help.
So, Hector says that we do our share for the poor.
What more does he want from me, he asks.
Sophia says, I think he has a chip on his shoulder.
To have a chip C-H-I-P on your shoulder means that you cannot forgive someone for something that happened in the past.
You feel angry.
We might also use the expression to hold a grudge G-R-U-D-G-E, to have a chip on your shoulder, to have a negative attitude because you're still angry about something.
Sophia says that James' parents are blue-collar, and he, James, now lives in a white-collar world.
Blue collar and white collar are two additional terms in English we use to describe different social classes.
Blue collar is someone who is in the working class, someone who doesn't make a lot of money.
White collar refers to people who have professional jobs.
Your collar is the part of your shirt that goes around the neck that is next to your neck.
If you work in an office, you probably have to wear a shirt that has a collar.
And traditionally, white shirts were used in business and still are, often for a man with a tie.
So to be a white collar worker means to be a teacher, a professor, a lawyer, a business person, someone who works in an office.
A blue collar worker tends to be someone who works in again more manual labor type jobs, working with their hands and their muscles.
Sophia says that James feels he has to stand up for marginalized people in our society.
He has to stand up for the marginalized people.
To stand up for means to defend people, marginalized means, people who feel unimportant, people who feel they don't have any power, perhaps because of their race, their skin color, because of the fact that they're, for example, a woman, because they have less education and money.
They don't feel as though they have power anymore political power, economic power in the society where they live.
Hector says, okay, but does that mean I have to allow him to insult me under my own roof?
R-O-O-F?
Under your own roof means in your home.
So James is at, we are guessing Hector's house and he's still saying these what Hector believes are insulting things.
Sophia says You do not have to allow him.
Permit him, let him insult you in your own house, under your own roof.
She says, next week we'll have dinner at their house.
Hector and Sophia, I guess, are husband and wife.
Sophia is actually joking here.
She's trying to be funny.
She's saying that well, next week he can insult you at his house, which of course is not what Hector wants either.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Can you believe James?
All evening he tried to tell me how this country would be better if we had no social classes.
He's out of his mind.
He was just trying to get a rise out of you.
We all know that the two of you don't see eye to eye.
He thinks that just because he comes from a working class background, he can criticize anyone who's middle class or upper class.
I just can't stand his holier-than-thou attitude.
He knows you, and he knows which buttons to push to get you worked up.
I don't think he was serious when he said he thought class warfare was a good idea.
Well, he was downright insulting.
He talks as though we have no sense of social responsibility.
We do our share for the poor.
What more does he want from me?
I think he has a chip on his shoulder because his parents are blue-collar and he now lives in a white-collar world.
He feels he has to stand up for the marginalized people in our society.
Okay, but does that mean I have to allow him to insult me under my own roof?
Of course not.
Next week, we're having dinner at their house.
The script for this episode was written by our own white-collar employee here, Dr. Lucy Say.
We're both what you would call white-collar workers working in an office.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
