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After the Fall: class and political language in Britain, 1780–1900*

Part of: Historiographical Reviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

James Thompson
James Thompson
Affiliation:
King's College Cambridge
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Abstract

The fall of class in nineteenth-century British history has become a familiar tale. Its rise in the historiography of eighteenth-century Britain has been less noted. This essay explores the reasons for this divergence and emphasizes its methodological origins. It highlights the need for a comprehensive history of class society and identity to replace the confused and contradictory picture of particular classes and communities that is currently on offer. To understand better the constitution of class society, it urges historians to talk less of consciousness and more of identity and to recognize that class is an imagined community much like any other. It proceeds to use this understanding of class identity to assess the turn to political language amongst social historians interested in class. The paper offers a sustained examination of the recent work of Joyce and Wahrman in particular and argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the variety of usable political languages and to the particular discursive contexts in which they are employed. It is argued that to acknowledge that class is so constructed is not to deny its existence or its importance and that historians need to look beyond political discourse to explain how class became so central to the self and the social in the nineteenth century.

Type
Historiographical Review
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 785 - 806
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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52 Consult, Wahrman, Imagining, p. 12Google Scholar for a clear statement that ‘political language’ should ‘be given its due as a key site for the shaping of the social consciousness of large groups of people’. It is perhaps the case that Wahrman makes ‘political language’ not merely ‘a’ key site, but the key site for the shaping of social consciousness.

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71 Samuel Smiles, Self-help (1859), Character (1871), and Duty (1880).

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80 Visions of the people has an entry for sociolinguistics in the index but none for soccer or football.