Happy-slapping hoodies with ASBOs and ringtones, etc etc

[kateorman]

Obviously, in a population of millions, there must be some young people who match the "feral animal" stereotype. But the danger of that stereotype is that, when you see someone who looks and sounds like a "chav", you immediately connect them to theft, violence, breeding like rabbits, etc - when in fact you almost certainly know nothing about them

Comments

[swiftangel]

I think part of the problem lies in the use of the word "chav". The usage is not consistent. Different people apply it in different ways. To me (and Ash) it applies more to behaviour than age or economic status. Yes, we would use it to refer to the ASBO brigade, and to many teenage mothers (but I should stress that teenage mother does not always equal single mother), but also to people like Mr Pimp.

I don't know his real name, but he wanders around town dressed like a pimp. He's got the awesome pimp coat, an amazing pimp hat, sculpted beard and mustache and cool wingtip shoes. But he decides it would be quite fun to shoplift from Poundland. That, to my mind, is chav behaviour. He doesn't need to shoplift. He can easily afford to buy the stuff he steals (no single item could possibly cost more than £1!). We saw him pocket a bunch of stuff and then promptly take it over to a rather pricey little cafe to join his wife for lunch. They even bought extra sausages to cut up and feed to their two dogs. That guy is an example of what I (and many other people I know) would call "chav".

Many BNP voters do exhibit chav behaviours by my reckoning, but I'm with you on disagreeing with the "first on the ballot" comment. I just wanted to point out that the definition of "chav" is rather varied.

[kateorman]

It's true - there's "chav" as in "dresses like a prole" and "chav" as in "irresponsible criminal". By conflating the two, the stereotype gives pollies and the media a useful internal enemy. It's not behaviour which becomes the marker - otherwise Brits would just say "petty thief" or "noisy neighbour". The idea of the "chav" means that any teenager who conspicuously dresses, talks, and acts like a teenager becomes suspicious.

[alawston]

It's also a Hampshire dialect word for a gypsy.

[kateorman]

Quoth the Oxford Dictionary: "Probably either from Romani chavo unmarried Romani male, male Romani child, or shortened from CHAVVY noun (baby, child)." If the former's the derivation, that's shameful. I had no idea.

[alawston]

Hmm, far be it for me to fuck with the OED, but it's also been attributed to social workers' shorthand on assessment forms, where they would apparently often write CHAV on home visits, to stand for: Council House And Violence. I've never heard of the Chatham theory.

The essential thing here is that the derivation is highly unclear.

[kateorman]

The parallel with "pikey" is impossible to miss, tho.

[alawston]

It's not exactly a parallel because there's a convergence. The whole thing's Guy Ritchie's fault. Pikey only came into mainstream use with the release of Snatch, where it's tossed around every couple of minutes. Similarly, the whole chav label arrived in the public consciousness after Ritchie and Madonna started wearing Burberry jackets and as a direct result the Sun started their bizarre 'The Sun: Proud to be Chav' campaign (they had a little banner and everything, it was tragic). Back in the carefree days of 2004, being a chav had nothing to do with the 'proles', it was more about middle-class wankers making a sad attempt at working-class solidarity through buying stupidly expensive shit clothes and pretending to be cockney. David Tennant's Doctor is actually a chav in a way that Rose can never be, because he's a Lord pretending to be a geezer. And he wears Converse trainers.

[kateorman]

Blimey! Britain is complicated...

Here's another parallel: many words in English for "woman" have ended up being used to mean "whore". I wonder if the same is true for words which mean "working class", or perhaps just for "chav": starts off positive or neutral, inevitably decays into an insult.

[alawston]

Class guilt and class snobbery come together to fudge just about every social issue in the UK. For example, a young single mother working as a doctor is a supermum, a young single mother working in Tesco is a slag.

[adrian_middle]

A bit late (hardly use LJ these days), but the best link is probably this one which mentioned the northern variant "Charv", which is argued came first (despite continued claims that Chav means "Cheltenham Average" meaning working class girls who didn't get to go to Cheltenham Ladies' College.

[alawston]

Um, if you're ever going to use that link in any kind of online debate, bear in mind that some of the slang on that page - never mind the actual book - is about as prevalent as Ace's 'bilgebag, toerag, Gordon Bennett, well wicked' lexicon of the late '80s. Absolutely no one calls their school subjects 'stinks'. Ever.

[kateorman]

lulz

"Chav" hasn't even made it into the actual dictionary yet!