More Talking About Words: Watching Language (cont'd)

With Prof. Richard W. Bailey

< Watching Language

Burberry-clad Biritsh chav—copyright, Chav of the Month @ chavscum.co.uk.

Chav

Chav was recognized as the word-of-the-year 2004 by the British writer, Susie Dent (in Larpers and Schroomers: The Language Report, Oxford University Press, October 2004), and it has run through England like wildfire.

There's a website: chavworld.co.uk. It was designed to put a positive spin lacking in another site, chavscum.co.uk.

As explained by Oliver Bennett (in The Independent, January 28, 2004), a long list of abusive terms for the underclass might have arisen as a reaction to political correctness:

"Or a vent for society's toxins, if the forum in chavscum.co.uk is anything to go by. This cult website was set up in December 2003 to chronicle the chavs, also known as neds, townies, kevs, charvers, steeks, spides, bazzas, yarcos, ratboys, kappa slappers, skangers, janners, stigs or scallies. "'Whatever you know them as', this site is about them, it reads. Britain's peasant underclass that is taking over our towns and cities!'"

Chavworld.co.uk puts a happier face on things. On that site you can order copies of Chav! A User's guide to Britain's New Ruling Class by Mia Wallace and Clint Spanner (Transworld, 2004). It includes a glossary of chavspeak.

Much vilified in the press in England, Chavs are undereducated and underemployed youth who behave like the soccer hooligans and yobs of yore but use designer clothing as their colors. Enthusiasm for (mostly counterfeit) Burberry plaid among Chavs caused a drastic decline during the last Christmas season for that maker's clothing and accessories.

Chavs are usually taken to be male. Hence the need for the terms chavette for women and chavlings for children.

Various etymologies have been proposed, including cognates in Romani and Hebrew, but the term's origin remains unsettled.

From the perspective of English, Chav is interesting because it has created new compounds and flowered with suffixes: chavdom, chaviness, chavistocracy, chavmeister, chavporn, chavscum, chavspotter, chavster, chavtastic, chavviest, chavvy. Prefixes lag behind in this flurry of creativity, but there are (so far): prechav, postchav, Uberchav.

Let's let a Chav have the last word (from a thread titled "Proud to be a Chav" at chavworld.co.uk):

"People call me a Chav cos I luv Lacoste, Tommy [Hilfinger] and [Georgia] Armani....but I say stuff 'em. Chavs Rule."

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Richard W. Bailey is the Fred Newton Scott Collegiate Professor of English. His most recent book is Rogue Scholar: The Sinister Life and Celebrated Death of Edward H. Rulloff, University of Michigan Press, 2003—a biography of an American thief, impostor, murderer and would-be philologist who lived from 1821 to 1871. It was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2003.