Watching the English

by Kate Fox

But this book is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I

partly out of sheer laziness partly because England is a nation, and might reasonably be expected to have some sort of coherent and distinctive national culture or character, whereas Britain is a purely political construct, composed of several nations with their own distinctive cultures partly because although there may be a great deal of overlap between these cultures, they are clearly not identical and should not be treated as such by being lumped together under ‘Britishness’ and finally because ‘Britishness’ seems to me to be a rather meaningless term: when people use it, they nearly always really mean ‘Englishness’ – they do not mean that someone is being frightfully Welsh or Scottish.

I only have the time and energy to try to understand one of these cultures, and I have chosen my own, the English.

ditto

stereotypes about English national character might possibly contain at least a grain or two of truth. They do not, after all, just come out of thin air, but must have germinated and grown from something

tells us something about a culture’s self-image, and therefore about its beliefs and values.

sequence

the English cultural genome – to identify the cultural ‘codes’ that make us who we are.

Sequencing the English Cult...

three stages:

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.

histrionics

English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our social inhibitions and actually talk to each other.

‘grooming talk’ – the human equivalent of what is known as ‘social grooming’ among our primate cousins,

as a means of social bonding.

weather-talk for purely social purposes.

gauge

hapless

breach

rules of privacy and reserve override those of sociability: talking to strangers is never compulsory.)

reciprocity is the point, not the content.

mumbled

catechism,

congregation

‘choreographed’ exchanges,

unwritten but tacitly accepted rules.

sloppy

cockatoo.

agree

Which brings us to another important rule of English weather-speak: always agree.

intone

not even conscious of following a rule: it just simply isn’t done.

huffy.

will be offended, and this will show in subtle ways.

frostily,

idiosyncrasy,

You must always agree with ‘factual’ statements about the weather

because they require a social response, not a rational answer),

blatant

emphatic.

rueful

indulge

Eeyorish,

rejoinder

fodder,

bookmakers

deplored.

fretting

doom-laden

slithers