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When pub-goers are in free-association mode, which is much of the time, attempts to get them to focus on a particular subject for more than a few minutes are fruitless, and only serve to make one unpopular.
The free-association rule is not just a matter of avoidance of seriousness. It is a licence to deviate from conventional social norms, to let one’s guard down a bit.
In any case, it must be understood here that people who regularly frequent the same pub are not necessarily, or even normally, close friends in the usual sense of the term.
It is very rare for fellow regulars to invite each other to their homes, for example, even when they have been meeting and sharing their random thoughts every day for many years.
But when I looked a bit closer, and listened a bit more carefully, the boundaries and restrictions emerged. I discovered that this was yet another example of strictly limited, and closely regulated, cultural remission. The free-association rule allows us to deviate from the normal codes of ‘public’ conversation, and to enjoy some of the looseness of ‘private’ or ‘intimate’ talk – but only up to a point.
wry humour
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But earnest heart-to-heart outpourings are frowned upon. Such
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First, we find that in promoting sociability, the English
are very careful to avoid sacrificing privacy. Second, the strict limits and caveats to the sociability rule indicate that even when we depart from convention we do so in a controlled, orderly manner. In the invisible-queue rule, we find another example of ‘orderly disorder’, and evidence of the importance of queuing, which itself could be another indication of the importance of ‘fairness’ (this makes me wonder if perhaps the traditional English reverence for ‘fair play’ is still stronger than the doom-mongers would have us believe). In the pantomime rule, we see again the precedence of
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frowned
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racing has more right, in demographic terms, to be called our national sport than football,
Like the pub, race-meetings attract people of all ages and all social classes.
In the case of racing, however, this microclimate is characterised by a highly unusual combination of relaxed inhibitions and exceptional good manners.
people will either shed their inhibitions and let rip or be frightfully polite and well behaved; you don’t normally see both extremes at the same time.
This is still England, though, so you will not be entirely surprised to learn that such conversations are conducted in accordance with strict and quite complex rules. They
‘What do you fancy in the next?’ is, of course, a grooming-talk conversation-starter with the same ‘grammatical’ function as ‘Nice day, isn’t it?’ in weather-speak.
In other words, it is not really a request for information or opinions on the likely winner of the next race, but a friendly greeting – code for: ‘I’d like to talk to you: will you talk to me?’
By ensuring expression and reaffirmation of shared values in this way, the rules of moaning help to reinforce solidarity and social bonding among racegoers.
Moaning is, of course, not an activity peculiar to the English. Woody Allen once said, in response to Noam Chomsky, ‘Language may be innate, but whining is acquired.’ Actually, whining is innate or, at least, certainly universal. But there does seem to be something distinctively English about the kind of whining involved in both weather-speak and racing-talk moaning rituals – a sort of grumpy and apathetic stoicism; complaining endlessly about unsatisfactory states of affairs, but in a resigned manner, without any real expectation that things could be improved, and certainly without any
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mentioned earlier that someone once said that the English have satire instead of revolutions (or something to that effect): we complain bitterly, and often wittily, but we do not actually do anything about it.
English squeamishness about money matters is equally evident in conversation codes.
Where Irish racegoers enquire after your betting success with a brash ‘Are you making money?’, English racegoers say, ‘Had any winners yet?’
They insisted, on the contrary, that the taboo allows hosts and guests to get to know each other better, and to build closer, friendlier relationships, which in turn is good for business. Not one could provide any hard financial evidence to show a return on their hospitality ‘investment’, and
Among the English, there are suitable times and places for money-talk: in the wrong place, such as the races, even euphemisms like ‘sales’ and ‘trade’ are so repugnant that they cannot be pronounced without a wince.
While the unusual sociability of racegoers is an example of conventionalised deviation from English convention, the modesty rule and courtesy rules represent amplifications or exaggerations of ‘mainstream’ cultural constraints.
The degree of modesty and courtesy required by racecourse etiquette verges on the absurd, but this is balanced by very un-English disinhibition – a combination that I feel shows us the English at their best. At
the races, we shed some of our more tiresome stuffiness and awkwardness, but without going to the usual opposite extreme of becoming boorish and aggressive.
at the races, we somehow manage to combine relaxed inhibitions with good manners.
both alcohol and gambling are among the factors influencing good behaviour at the races.
When people speak of ‘English modesty’, what they are really saying is not that we are naturally humble or self-effacing but that we have distinctive rules about modesty – rules that require us to affect an air of modesty, to deflect praise with an embarrassed shrug and a self-deprecating joke, even if we are actually feeling quite proud and pleased with ourselves.
The English have been described as stoical and uncomplaining: this is not true, we complain constantly – it is just that we rarely address our complaints to the sources of our dissatisfaction.
But our bellyaching rituals are not at all pointless in a social or psychological sense, as we thoroughly enjoy our Eeyorish moans,
that these rituals promote a sense of solidarity and social bonding.
Among squaddies, we see the English rules of humour taken to their logical extreme – and applied more strictly and obeyed more scrupulously than in any other group or subculture.
You can take your duties and responsibilities as a soldier seriously, but if you take yourself too seriously, and become too humourlessly earnest, over-zealous, self-important or pompous about your soldiering, you will be branded a ‘Green’ (or ‘Bleeds Green’) – other terms have included ‘Army Barmy’ or ‘Cabbage Head’ – the military equivalents of a school ‘swot’ or teacher’s pet.
An important element of the squaddie modesty rule is the ability to ‘take’ mockery of this kind – the ability to swallow one’s pride, laugh at oneself, learn a lesson and quietly mend one’s ways without making a fuss.
Humour of this sort can be a highly effective didactic tool: ridicule is often the quickest and most efficient way of teaching the unwritten rules – letting someone know exactly where the invisible lines are drawn, and conveying disapproval when they are overstepped.
The principal rules of the fair-play code are those prohibiting the following: shirking of responsibility failure to ‘pull one’s weight’ or do one’s ‘fair share’ excessive ‘borrowing’ and/or failure to return items or favours
In ‘rider-talk’, I am lumping together two English subcultures, bikers57. and horse-riders,
The terminology was new, but the patterns, structure and tone of the bikers’ conversations, and the unspoken rules and tacit understandings I was starting to detect, kept reminding me of something; I had the strange sense of somehow having ‘been here before’. It took me a while to realise what it was because I was suffering from ‘ethnographic dazzle’ – blinded by trivial surface differences – but eventually I twigged: bike-talk was exactly like horse-talk.
We talk ‘through’ the bikes or horses, facing them, not each other: looking at them, standing back and admiring them, touching them, asking questions about them.
In both cases, the content of the endless questions and answers is not really important. Yes, there is often genuine interest, but these initial exchanges of technical information are more about conveying that one is a bona fide member of the biker or horsey ‘tribe’, by demonstrating knowledge and correct use of biker or horsey ‘dialect’.
At an initial encounter, you are more likely to be judged and classified by the make of bike or the breed/type of horse you ride than by any indicators of your class or status in wider English society.
Whether you are a doctor or a hairdresser is beside the point – the point being that you ride a Harley or a Honda, a hunter or a Hanoverian. Subculture conversation codes are not just about what is actually said, but also about the priorities implicit in what is said, and in what is not said.
I think it is safe to say that humour, modesty and fair play emerge as strong candidates, but the squaddie-talk rules, in which all of these characteristics are taken to extremes, add some new dimensions to our understanding of them.
award-winning soldier in
Remember, he broke no official rules – quite the opposite, he was a model soldier – but this breach of the unwritten modesty and humour rules cost him his career.
collective moaning is prescribed, personal moaning is forbidden – suggesting (as had already been hinted in the racing context) that English moaning is more of a social ritual than a genuine expression of grievance.
My hunch at the moment is that the English are not ‘reserved’ in the sense of unsociable. We may suffer from social dis-ease, but a truly unsociable, reclusive culture would not generate so many varied and ingenious antidotes to this dis-ease.
But an Englishman’s home is more than just his castle, the embodiment of his privacy rules, it is also his identity, his main status-indicator and his prime obsession. And the same goes for English women. This is why a house is not just something that you passively ‘have’, it is something that you ‘do’, something that you ‘work on’.
