First, I used a variety of research methods (including observation studies, participant observation, interviews, discussion groups, national surveys, field experiments, etc., over the course of about two decades) to try to identify distinctive patterns or regularities in English behaviour. Then I tried to detect the unwritten social rules governing those behaviour patterns and, where possible, to ‘test’ or ‘verify’ these rules, mainly using field experiments, discussions and interviews. And, finally, I tried to figure out what these rules can tell us about Englishness.
