Erm
Regarding accents: they have nothing to do with intelligence. You're right in that before the Beatles' time, broadcasters were elitist by only ever using RP accents. But the thing is, there's nothing wrong with different accents. And it's good that the views were relaxed.

Regarding poetry for example: you can be quite sure that any established poet employs extremely deliberate use of language. I am not familiar with the works of Emily Dickinson, but from what you say I take it that she uses non-standard English. Okay - but that's fine. The reason it's fine is because I am sure she DOES (or did?) know how to speak standard English, but made a deliberate decision not to do so, for the sake of artistic variety and interest.

This is completely different to when a stupid person simply does not care about correct English use - and when they make a mistake, they don't even know whether it's right or wrong!

You talk of "elitist snobbery". But you need to understand that there are two different things here. A BBC controller in the 1940s decreeing that the only correct variety of English is Received Pronounciation, and forbidding any accents, could well be considered an elitist snob. A person who is able to distinguish between a) intelligent people who care about their language, and b) those who don't - is not an elitist snob, but simply sees the world for what it is.
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 22:12, 1 reply)

I would just like to apologise
about taking the piss a bit. Trouble was, the initial post was full of errors (by conventional standards) and therefore ripe for a piss-take. I write for a living and I'm forever correcting other people's writing. I don't really care how people speak, but I do care about the written language. Not that it's really important in the overall scheme of things. Anyway, you seem like a decent sort. Peace.
(Valentine_Sprake immanentising the eschaton since 1983, Fri 1 Apr 2011, 0:00, closed)