Suppose someone from a poor family gets into Harvard or Oxford (or French/German/Spanish equivalent), but doesn't know how to hold his fork correctly, or wear makeup correctly. How is society to fix this problem?

That chimes in with a comment I heard about All Souls College, Oxford, alleging that any prospective fellows had their table manners scrutinized during dinner in hall, prior to their election.

You're clearly a dangerous pinko commie pragmatist.

I believe that in the good old days organizations like the BBC and CBS made an effort to use their nationally received version of English pronunciation, for example, so at least in theory a kid from Wales or the East End or Mississippi or Yonkers would have an example of how to talk "properly." But now we have traded that in for more realistic entertainment, taking away this one small example of support for upward mobility...  

interesting take i never heard before.

it's a tricky issue, the standardisation of dialects to some common norm.

it is sad to see a child born and raised in hawaii, (say), is told not to speak pidgin when that's the vernacular with which she is comfortable. it seems like 'whitefella-isation' and brings back redolent memories of 'missionary colonialism', the same ignorant force that planted thorn trees on the beaches there to prevent 'unchristian' behaviour in the tropical moonlight.

this rootcutting has always really offended me, as it cuts to the core identity of a person, effectively depersonalising him, to force 'received' english for example... it always sounded so phoney, the diction of bbc presenters, it was cartoon toffee nose, plummy stuff, and it they wore it like a moss bros rentatux.

so i grew up kinda despising what it symbolised. those are the cons.

the pros are obvious, there's no way a cornishman would have understood much coming out of the mouth of someone from the isle of mull, 200 years ago.

same here in italy, though the italian spoken by tv anchors aren't trying to sound like arch duchesses, imitating the royal cutglass!

i see the good too, that's why i think a global language is optimal for all. the strides toward understanding between nations have been ginormous, as more and more people have access to the text based world, images and music aren't enough.

it's just hard to hear the bland, unrooted, cadences of tv language and feel much. while listening to the tones of people speaking dialects, well, it's the music of the area, w-a-a-ay pre-textual, and has effects like music. the welsh are amazing like that, they sing while they talk. many primitive peoples were perceived to have 'singsong' voices for the same reasons.

tv talk has so much less soul, but it works...

god knows we need all the unity we can conjure right now.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty