>On Oct 21, 2004, at 10:08 AM, snit snat wrote:
>
>> I never get this one. If you're middle class (bourg), then you're
>>incapable of being radical -- a sentiment almost always uttered by
>>a middle class bourg -- which is to say, someone from the
>>professional/managerial strata.
>
>In this sort of context, "middle class" is simply a derogatory
>epithet. No denotative meaning whatsoever.
Middle class is denotation-challenged. It's used to describe everyone from nurses to lawyers, from $30k households to $200k households, blue-collar and white-collar, etc. It can be a euphemism for working class, and it can be a way of making members of the professional-managerial class seem like just folks. But it does have a real existence in people's heads.
Doug