Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

by Kate Fox

Of all peoples, the English are surely historically the least qualified to preach about the importance of adapting to host-culture manners and mores.

How the hell are you supposed to know when “not bad” means “absolutely brilliant” and when it just means “OK”?

George Bernard Shaw’s rather more explicitly class-related: ‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate him or despise him’.

‘an English town is a vast conspiracy to mislead foreigners’,

Waiting for moan-worthy mishaps and disruptions may sound like a rather unsatisfactory and unreliable way to conduct field-research interviews – if you are unfamiliar with the vagaries of English public transport, that is.

If you are female, lone males may instead assume that you are chatting them up. They are therefore more than willing to break the denial rule and talk to you, but it can then be difficult to extricate yourself from the conversation. Even the ‘formal interview’ approach can be misinterpreted, so I tended to avoid speaking to unaccompanied males unless I was a) surrounded by other passengers and b) getting out at the next stop.

A schoolgirl of about 12 or 13 was filling in some medical form or other, with intermittent help from her mother. The daughter asked ‘Religion? What religion am I? We’re not any religion, are we?’ ‘No, we’re not,’ replied her mother, ‘Just put C of E.’ ‘What’s C of E?’ asked the daughter. ‘Church of England.’ ‘Is that a religion?’ ‘Yes, sort of. Well, no, not really – it’s just what you put.