Synopses & Reviews
This book explores the origins of the influential view of modern society that places a "middle class" at its center, as it developed in Britain during the so-called "Industrial Revolution." Using a wider variety of sources and closer methods of textual analysis than previous studies of languages of class, the author develops a nuanced model for the interplay of social reality and social language. He demonstrates that a "middle class"-based language of social description did not simply reflect changes in social structure, but was rather the outcome of political circumstances in a period of radical political change.
Synopsis
This book explores the origins of the view of modern society that places a âmiddle classâat its centre, as it developed in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. It responds to the newly fashionable and rapidly expanding field of middle class studies, while challenging its fundamental assumptions and offering radically new methods and perspectives.
Table of Contents
1. Imagining the âmiddle classâ: an introduction; Part I. Against the Tide: Prelude to the 1790s: was the French Revolution a âbourgeois revolutionâ?; 2. The uses of âmiddle classâlanguage in the 1790s; 3. Friends and foes of the âmiddle classâ: the dialogic imagination; 4. The political differentiation of social language: the debate on the triple assessment; Postlude to the 1790s: the uses of âbourgeois revolutionâ; Part II. The Tug of War: 5. Taming the âmiddle classâ; 6. The tug of war and its resolution; Part III. With the Tide: 7. The social construction of the middle class; 8. The parallels across the Channel: a French aside; 9. The debates on the Reform Bill: bowing to a new representation of the âmiddle classâ; 10. Inventing the ever-rising âmiddle classâ: the aftermath of 1832; 11. 1832 and the âmiddle classâconquest of the âprivate sphereâ; Epilogue.