‘All I’ve gotta do is wank on about some bollocky poem’: Cool and Socially Aware Positions in the Talk of Private School Girls

Abstract

This chapter offers a discourse analytic exploration of the spoken interaction of four London private school girls with a particular focus on the practices, discourses and types of knowledge that are central to the girls’ positioning in their friendship group. Although the self-recorded talk contains rich evidence of the girls’ privileged social background, it also highlights their considerable efforts to differentiate themselves from their ‘sheltered’, that is, privileged and socially unaware, peers at their ‘posh’ ‘middle-class’ school, seeking to align themselves with what they call ‘real people’ instead. In addition to presenting themselves as ‘socially aware’ and ‘real’, the four friends frequently also aim to display non-mainstream or streetwise knowledge, particularly in their talk about drugs and music. I argue that this display allows the girls to adopt street-wise and non-conformist stances, and therefore to position themselves as ‘cool’.