The importance of speech in this context may point to another English characteristic: our love of words. It has often been said that the English are very much a verbal rather than a visual culture, considerably more noted for our literature than for our art. We are also not particularly ‘tactile’ or physically expressive, not given to much touching or gesticulating. Words are our preferred medium, so it is perhaps significant that they should be our primary means of signalling and recognising social status.
