''drinks'' and not ''cocktails.'' They live in ''houses,'' not ''homes.'' They also speak matter-of-factly, calling another person ''rich'' instead of ''wealthy.'' They have But, except for professional performers like Buckley, the upper classes tend to avoid the cumbersome polysyllabic words used by middle-class strivers (and writers in the New York Review of Books) to impress people. Though they used to affect terms like ''ain`t'' back in the 1920s, the speech of the upper classes is educated and grammatical. One hears this especially in Tidewater Virginia and Charleston, S.C. Buckley and the high-born Southern, which is not a drawl but a derivation of the Old English accents of colonist ancestors. was credited with much classier speech than her husband, President Kennedy, who said ''cahn`t'' but also said ''Cuber.'' American upper-class accents come in three varieties: the slightly British, typified most by Katharine Hepburn`s speech and heard even in Midwestern social enclaves like Lake Forest the elegant drawl, as practiced by the likes of William F. As Fussell archly noted, nothing identifies one`s class more than one`s speech.
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