Horizon

There's a lot strange about the Evans article. One of the things I find oddest is her internalization of the sort of posh-accent == pretention equation her neighbors make. This notion that how her speech is perceived equates to her own metrics for self-value on some fundamental level — beyond the worthy goals of setting other people at ease and avoiding misunderstanding — it's really a part of the whole quest for authenticity, isn't it?

Yes, and she's keeping her snobberies intact by praising instead of disdaining all the familiar stereotypes.

...and her article is about class but she backhands race into it pretty awkwardly.

Yes, it's an odd approach. You just wonder, doesn't she know there's a whole literature on how not to do this stuff?

Were you also surprised by this:

This is the first intimation I have that within one relatively small area of London, and within one community like Bermondsey, there are different kinds of common people.

Our author has lived for over a decade among this community, and this is the first time she's realized that its members differentiate each other based on manners, appearance, character and wealth? Perhaps it's because I come from a heirarchical culture, but I could never imagine assuming some group of different people are a perfectly level/egalitarian society free of distinction.

Seems to me she hadn't cared to know until recently. It reads a lot like Dan Quayle's alleged comment on returning from Central America: "You'd be surprised, they're all different countries."