Fascinating captain [/spock accent]

Because the US doesn't have an ossified class structure that serves as an important part of identity.

It works both ways in Britain. In the US, there are rather different processes going on. In both cases, though, it's a question of prestige. (We have to assume that somehow the rich kids are trying to blend in to avoid some stigma; that's not quite right. They're adopting what are considered prestige forms of speech, but it's hard to say that without provoking outrage because it means, in some sense, rappers bear not just counterculture underclass prestige but prestige in the eyes of rich white kids. That's dangerously close to 'privilege' for a group, African-Americans, which has a one defining component of their identity "no privilege". Note that this element of linguistic prestige goes way back to pre-Harlem Renaissance days.)

It's more than just expletives, too. You can speak AAVE or Bronx English without a single expletive. It's phonology, morphology, it's syntax and semantics. We all have an accent, and no accent requires the use of specific words--not until they're completely redefined (and it's probably getting close for some kids, but that's because AAVE is drifting further away from mainstream English).

Note that this looks at upper class kids trying to blend it. This is so not a new idea or novel research. It's just new to those who didn't pay attention in the '90s. Blair was upper class. He tried (fairly badly) to emulate working-class English because he was labor and how you speak is a marker of who you are. For the same reason, a former girlfriend of mine from Tennessee was bidialectal: At home, in stores, when socializing, she had a rural Tennessee accent. When she lived in Oregon, in California, she had a pretty tight NBC English accent--the occasional leak, but very infrequent. Why? Because of the stereotype that if you have a Southern accent you must be stupid. In fact, I had to call her at work once when she lived in Tennessee and she had her standard American accent on the job there--but admitted that when she heard a Southern accent on the phone she dropped into Southern to establish solidarity and help make the sale.

Which is what Blair did.

Margaret Thatcher was working class. She took elocution lessons in order to learn RP and blend in with upper-class people whose votes she was after.

This is called "sociolinguistics" (or "social linguistics&quot and is a fairly well-established field. A lot of people don't like the findings because it doesn't match the "real reality" that they socially construct. But it examines behavior in the raw, not post-modern approaches to stylized forms of selected expression.

school students in England which used to be a mark of prestige but is now considered elitist. Note: private schools are called "public" schools in Britain.