<p>I’ll tell your horse.</p>
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<p>Perfect example. Upper middle/upper class native Mainers do not have that accent. It’s a class marker. (This refers to their upbringing, not to their current income.)</p>
<p>I’m neutral, which I always thought I was. People always asked me which private school I attended (was a public school product). My kids also speak mostly neutrally. D is always teased because she has such an extensive vocabulary (S does too but he’s a lot quieter so folks don’t realize). Both kids have trouble pronouncing words that they don’t hear often/at all & have gotten from reading.</p>
<p>I don’t even understand intelligencia & it’s not used amongst the folks I hang out with. It sounds rather pretentious.</p>
<p>According to the test, I am neutral too.
Had an English teacher once that said- How we speak is not a true indication of our intelligence, but seriously affects how our intelligence will be perceived.</p>
<p>I say, there are various perceptions for those with visible tatts, particularly for employment; some negative, some neutral, but very few positive.</p>
<p>According to the test, I’m northeast, with all of CT in the center of the map, which is exactly right. (I pronounce Rs, but I also distinguish vowel sounds, unlike people from most other regions of the US.) I think I have a bit of what the NYT once called a “New Canaan potatoes-in-the-mouth” accent. :)</p>
<p>Younghoss, I think you sum it up well in #264.</p>
<p>I’m mid-Atlantic (Philadelphia), which is spot on since that’s where I grew up!</p>
<p>“Spot on”? Spot on what? Is that like “a blot on the old escutcheon”? Or, do you mean ‘spat on’?</p>
<p>I have been reading through this thread topic and see it has veered off course a bit 
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<p>" And yes, some of the heaviest smokers I’ve known were respiratory therapists. Boggles the mind."</p>
<p>This boggles my mind too as an asthmatic who struggles to breathe…how does one who works with such patients look themself in the mirror</p>
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<p>I concur with Consolation’s posting.</p>
<p>How about if I applied for a job as a receptionist wearing Tammy Faye Bakker-style mascara and makeup? It’s just makeup, right? Just a personal choice. It wouldn’t send any messages about my competence and my sophistication? I shouldn’t be judged negatively in the workworld based on how I present myself, right?</p>
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<p>Instinctively, yes, it would be. I associate multiple ear piercings and cartilage piercings with a lower, less educated class. Sorry.</p>
<p>It’s also painful that many asthmatics & other respiratory patients living in smoke-filled homes with parents & other loved ones smoking, sometimes even as they drive their kids/loved ones to the ER due to severe asthmatic attack. </p>
<p>Some smokers will quit smoking for their PET but not for themselves or their kids. It takes all types to make a world! </p>
<p>Sorry, back to tattoos and piercings.</p>
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<p>Why won’t you date a guy with ripped clothes or bad hygiene? I mean, those are personal choices. Someone with ripped clothes could easily be a smart, nice, kind person. Perhaps you’re doing the same emotionally based reactions you’re accusing us of. Guess what? Some of us find multiple piercings / tattoos as unappealing as you find ripped clothing and poor hygiene.</p>
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<p>When my mother was addicted to cigarettes, she was not sympathetic to the opposing view. We usually had to walk to school, but on rainy days, Mom would drive. As it was raining, she had the car windows up and began smoking a cigarette. I began to cough and said, “Please, Mom! I can’t breathe!” My mom responded calmly, “then don’t breathe.” </p>
<p>I can’t imagine saying such a thing to my child. Mom later saw the error of her ways and quit smoking when I became pregnant with my first child and made it clear that she would not be able to smoke around my baby. Unfortunately, too little, too late, and she has paid a terrible price for her addiction.</p>
<p>In my region we usually say “dead on”, but “spot on” means= exactly correct.
Gosh, I knew that and I’m not even a member of the intelligentsia!</p>
<p>Others will be the judge of that, hoss.</p>
<p>Also, I was teasing all the ‘johnnie-on-the-spots’. It just sounds affected to me.</p>
<p>I might be flattered to be thought of as intelligentsia, though I am certainly not liberal in much of my thinking.
I have been a blue-collar guy most of my life.</p>
<p>Affected? Me? LOL.</p>
<p>S2 just finished 2 years of criminal justice classes. This whole thread, all I can think of are all the pictures in his books of prisoners and their tattoos. Yuck. Class and/or gang affiliation marker, for sure. Although I’m not a tattoo fan in general, I think there’s a HUGE difference between a little hidden rose and much of what I see in current tattoo fashion.</p>
<p>Like I said before, the name “Leo” or “Leonardo” scripted on Mona Lisa’s neck would not be an improvement to the work of art.</p>
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<p>I think this kind of brings us to the crux of the issue, here. If piercings/tattoos are markers of social class and education, and given an interview scenario where you have a resume/CV to see exactly how educated someone is, is the bottom line here that it is okay to be classist? </p>
<p>(I’d also like to bring up that people who say that you don’t see tattoos/facial piercings on upper middle class people are patently wrong. Someone I know is the son of an audiologist and has two piercings in each lobe plus a cartilage piercing, and mentioned that he had a tongue ring in undergrad. That person is one of my professors.)</p>