Questions and Topics We Can Help You Answering; 

Paper Structure:

•    Page 1: Cover sheet
•    Pages 2, 3, 4, and 5: The text of your paper - four full pages of text
•    Page 6: Bibliography

Formatting Instructions:

•    Your cover sheet should provide your name and the title of your paper only;
•    Your title should be a creative one that you come up with yourself - allowing you to establish the tone for the paper that follows;
•    Provide citations for all quotes you take from the Kate Fox book (including page numbers), from the films, or TV shows, and for all references you make to events or incidents in the Fox book, films, TV episodes, and course lectures;
•    If using an e-version of Fox’s book, you should provide the chapter number and section title from which a quote comes instead of page numbers;
•    Citations can be footnotes, endnotes, or in-text references, whichever format you’re most familiar and comfortable with; 
•    Your text should be double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font, with one inch page margins; insert page numbers bottom right;
•    Your thesis statement should be in bold or italicized. 

Assignment:

In this assignment - worth 20% of your course grade - you will outline and explain some of the multiple ways you can differentiate between the social classes as they exist in Britain today, providing multiple illustrative examples from course materials. 

Course Material: Watching the English, (Kate Fox), Gosford Park, Remains of the Day, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Horror of Dracula, The Italian Job, Made In Dagenham, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Horror of Dracula (1958), The Hammer House of Horror, Steptoe and Son: Back in Fashion, The Northern Soul Movement, The Carry On Films, Fawlty Towers: A touch of Class, Four Weddings and a Funeral, “Yes, Prime Minister”, The Full Monty, 

Monarchy: The Royal Family
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL8BAC5269D42383C4&v=CFvS_XaWamE),

The Queen (2006), Red Dwarf: Gunmen of the Apocalypse, Guy Fawkes Night, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Blackadder the Third, Shaun of the Dead

Social class in Britain is no longer based in the old, pre-World War II idea of there being three ‘fixed’ social classes - upper, middle, and lower (or working) class, with the automatic deference (for those above you) and condescension (to those below you) these differences in class status demanded. And while social class in today’s society still goes a long way towards determining a person’s lifestyle, the social class a person was born into no longer pre-determines their future, as was generally the case, especially for the working and upper classes, in previous decades.

Nor is class today based solely upon income and money, but includes many other elements: level of education, mode of speech, expectations of life, and general world view - amongst many others. For example, someone can be wealthy and yet still consider themselves, and be considered by others, to be working class, while others can live on the edge of poverty and still consider themselves, and be thought of by others, as upper class. 
Your paper should be in proper formal essay format and NOT just a set of bullet-points. Instead, your paper should have a proper introduction, complete with a clear thesis statement that makes your interpretation explicit, and a proper conclusion that summarizes and draws your findings together. 

You should draw on three categories of course materials for your examples. The categories are: 1) the course films you have viewed online; 2) the course sitcoms you have viewed online; 3) material from Kate Fox’s book Watching the English. No internet material or other book sources can be used!

N.B. - The ‘sitcoms’ are the shows listed as sitcoms on the Syllabus. This does not include the Grumpy Guide to Class documentary included in the Introduction to Social Class YouTube clips, #6 on the Syllabus/D2L (which should NOT be used). 

Failure to include material from the films, the sitcoms, and the Fox book in a balanced manner will result in the loss of your grade associated with that category of material (i.e. a third of your grade for each of the three categories). Plagiarism (i.e. the unacknowledged use of information you found on the internet, in non-course books, or in the Grumpy Guide to Class documentary), will also be penalized.
In short, you need to draw on the full range of materials presented in this course to give as rounded a picture of the differences between social classes in Britain today as possible. 

Grading Criteria:

Your paper will be graded according to the following criteria:

1) The clarity of your thesis statement;
2) The strength and persuasiveness of your argument in support of your thesis;
3) Your use of the three above listed types of course materials and only the     above-listed three types of course materials to support your argument;
4) The absence of any material sourced from the internet, non-course books, or from the Grumpy Guide to Class documentary (inclusion of which will be penalized);
5) As this isn’t high school, simply copying and pasting (or paraphrasing) lines     or ideas from the question/prompt will lose you points;
6) The elegance and readability of your prose;
7) Correct spelling, grammar, and syntax;
8) The greater variety of course materials you use for your examples;
9) The inclusion of a balanced array of examples, and no tokenism;
10) Adherence to the above-listed format and content guidelines. 

Hints on How to Structure Your Paper

    Kate Fox notes in her book Watching the English that she doesn't include a separate chapter on social class in England because it’s so all-pervasive that it affects and is present in all aspects of life in Great Britain. As a result, there is a section on social class in every chapter of her book, on every different aspect of British life that she tackles. When something affects all aspect of life in this way it means that a paper trying to explain it can take any number of forms. 

Based upon the past experience I’ve acquired of the papers that students have submitted for this assignment in previous semesters it has become clear that there are better and worse ways of tackling the topic. In my opinion, the optimum way of tackling it is not to try and explain each of the three social classes separately, but to pick several different ‘markers’ of social class (i.e. the things that can be analyzed to show differences between the social classes), and then explain how each of the social classes acts in respect to this marker, and so illustrate and explain the differences between the classes. 

By class ‘markers’ I mean things like language use (accent, pronunciation, and vocabulary), and the way that the different social classes can be identified from one another by differences in the patterns of their speech. Language use is the single most important marker of class difference in Britain today, so you cannot complete this assignment satisfactorily if you do not explore the issue of language use. 

You should thus pick language use and two or three other ‘markers’ to explore the differences between the social classes, and then select examples from Fox, the films, and the sit-coms to explain and support your analysis of class differences. 

Two Things to Avoid:

The single biggest mistake that students make in tackling this assignment is to not include one of the three categories of evidence in their paper - i.e. material from the Fox book, from the sitcoms, or from the films, that you viewed online. You need an equal balance from all three of these sources. A third of your grade is dependent upon each of the three sources, so if you don’t quote evidence from (for example) any of the sitcoms, then you’ve automatically forfeited 1/3 of your grade for the assignment. 

The second biggest mistake students make is to try and use just one film or just one sitcom to draw examples from. This usually results in explorations of the plotline rather than issues of social class. If you talk about the plot, you’re not talking about social class. If you’re not talking about social class, you’re not fulfilling the requirements of the assignment and will not gain any credit for the plotline-related material. In other words, you’re just wasting time and space. 
    So, pick a social marker, explain it, and then provide some examples to illustrate it. Once you’ve explained a class difference you can give brief mentions of examples to support them, even if it’s only to say that So-and-So in this film does the same thing as So-and-So in this sitcom, thus providing more depth and variety to your analysis.  
What Not to Use:

The Pre-World War II material

The question for this assignment asks you to illustrate the differences between the social classes as they exist today. So, you need to be VERY careful when trying to use material portraying social class differences in the period before World War II. This means, specifically, Gosford Park and Jeeves and Wooster, as well as the 1930s material from Remains of the Day. 

The Second World War shattered the old class system, particularly in relation to the way the classes interacted with one another (the deference and condescension noted in the assignment above). Thus, the way that servants deferred to their ‘masters’ in the 1930s is simply not applicable in the present day. So, telling me how the house-maids and footmen deferred to Lord and Lady McCordle in Gosford Park, or how Stevens deferred to Lord Darlington in Remains of the Day, or Jeeves deferred to Bertie in Jeeves and Wooster is completely irrelevant to how the social classes in British society operate and interact today. 

There are some aspects that can be drawn from the 1930s material that are still relevant today, such as the differences in accents between servants and aristocracy, but even this is fraught with difficulty, as butlers were expected to be well-spoken as they would be interacting with the aristocratic guests of their ‘masters’. You are thus altogether better off simply avoiding all 1930s material when writing your paper. 

So, for the films, concentrate on those from the 1960s onwards: Made in Dagenham, The Italian Job, and most especially, as they’re both from the 1990s, The Full Monty and Four Weddings and a Funeral. For the sitcoms, as noted above, avoid Jeeves and Wooster, and focus instead particularly on Fawlty Towers and Steptoe and Son (with Porridge, and Dad’s Army too, though less strongly). 


The Genre Films

Do NOT use either The Horror of Dracula or Monty Python and the Holy Grail for this assignment. Both are genre films – horror and satire/parody respectively – that are NOT intended to be accurate reflections of modern British society. Thus, portrayals of social class distinctions in these films are distorted and not accurate depictions.