Chav

This is a stereotypical chav. Many people think about something like this when they hear or see the word "chav".

Chav (male) and chavette (female) are mainly negative, unkind slang words used in the United Kingdom for a subcultural stereotype of young underclass white people. Chav: "a young working class person who dresses in casual sports clothing or a baseball cap".[1][2]

They may wear fashion based on American hip-hop such as fake gold jewellery and designer clothing, combined with elements of working class British street fashion. Many are either school age or late teens/early twenties and may come from a family culture of social security claimants ("SS claimants"). The term first appeared in dictionaries in 2005.[3][4] They tend to listen to R&B, hip hop, UK garage, grime and reggae and drum & bass music.

Chavs are stereotypically narrow-minded and more often than not, below average intelligence. Chavs also tend to use slang language to appear "cooler" and more "edgy".

Chavs may be associated with criminality, including: assault, mugging, robbery, burglary and car crime. Anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos) were introduced to tackle such persistent offending.

“Chavette” is a term used to describe female chavs.

"Chav" has started to mean a variety of things. Due to increasing awareness of classism, the term seemed to be destined to fade away in the second decade of the twenty-first century. It has recently re-emerged on global social media and international catwalks in ways that appear to question previous notions.[5]

Pop culture

In 2011, Owen Jones published his first book, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. Jones says in it that 'chav' is a word used to make working-class people seem less human. In 2014, The Guardian's Suzanne Moore wrote an article calling R&B singer and songwriter Tulisa a chav.[6]

Chav Media

References

  1. Collins English Dictionary
  2. "Definition of chav in Oxford Dictionaries (British & World English)". Archived from the original on 2013-09-02. Retrieved 2013-05-30.
  3. 'Asbo' and 'chav' make dictionary. BBC News. 2005-06-08. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4074760.stm. Retrieved 2006-09-02. 
  4. Tweedie, Neil (2005-08-10). Don't be a plank. Read this and get really clueful. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/10/nwords10.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/10/ixhome.html. Retrieved 2006-09-02. 
  5. Di Martino, Emilia (2022). Indexing ‘Chav’ on Social Media. Transmodal Performances of Working-Class Subcultures. Palgrave Macmillan, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96818-2
  6. Moore, Suzanne (28 July 2014). "If Tulisa Contostavlos were middle class, she wouldn't face such scorn". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/28/tulisa-constostavlos-middle-class-media-chavl.