Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior

by Kate Fox

England and America are, as George Bernard Shaw famously remarked, ‘two countries divided by a common language’.

Native speakers can rarely explain the grammatical rules of their own language. In the same way, those who are most ‘fluent’ in the rituals, customs and traditions of a particular culture generally lack the detachment necessary to explain the ‘grammar’ of these practices in an intelligible manner. That is why we have anthropologists.

Or as Oscar Wilde put it: ‘There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.’

Every human activity, without exception, including natural biological functions such as eating and sex, is hedged about with complex sets of rules and regulations, dictating precisely when, where, with whom and in what manner the activity may be performed. Animals just do these things; humans make an almighty song and dance about it. This is known as ‘civilisation’.

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

The ‘brash American’ approach: ‘Hi, I’m Bill, how are you?’, particularly if accompanied by an outstretched hand and beaming smile, makes the English wince and cringe.

Should you reach the end of a long, friendly evening without having introduced yourself, you may say, on parting, ‘Goodbye, nice to meet you, er – sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’ as though you have only just noticed the omission. Your new acquaintance should then divulge his or her name, and you may now, at last, introduce yourself – but in an offhand way, as though it is not a matter of any importance: ‘I’m Bill, by the way.’ One perceptive Dutch tourist, after listening attentively to my explanation of this procedure, commented: ‘Oh, I see. It is like Alice Through the Looking Glass: you do everything the wrong way round.’ I had not thought of recommending Alice as a guide to English etiquette, but on reflection it seems like quite a good idea.

It can be most amusing to listen to the tortured and devious lengths to which English people will go to ascertain a new acquaintance’s profession without actually asking the forbidden question. The guessing game, which is played at almost every middle-class social gathering where people are meeting each other for the first time, involves attempting to guess a person’s occupation from ‘clues’ in remarks made about other matters.

Importance of Not Being Earnest rule is really quite simple. Seriousness is acceptable; solemnity is prohibited. Sincerity is allowed; earnestness is strictly forbidden. Pomposity and self-importance are outlawed.

To take a deliberately extreme example, the kind of hand-on-heart, gushing earnestness and pompous, Bible-thumping solemnity favoured by almost all American politicians30 would never win a single vote in this country.

What is unique about English humour is the pervasiveness of irony and the importance we attach to it. Irony is the dominant ingredient in English humour, not just a piquant flavouring.

According to George Mikes: ‘An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.’

For example, it is not customary in English pubs to tip the publican or bar staff who serve you. The usual practice is, instead, to buy them a drink. To give bar staff a tip would be an impolite reminder of their ‘service’ role, whereas to offer a drink is to treat them as equals.

The most striking example of this was a series of television advertisements for Marmite81 in which people were shown reacting with utter revulsion – to the point of gagging – to even the faintest trace of a Marmitey taste or smell. The campaign was so successful that Marmite have been running variations on the same theme ever since.

He suggested that instead of ‘slavishly imitating the American style of breathless superlatives’ the English should evolve their own style of advertising, recommending, ‘Try your luck on Bumpex fruit juice. Most people detest it. You may be an exception,’ as a suitably un-boastful English way of trying to sell a product.

In all cultures, alcohol is used as a symbolic punctuation mark – to define, facilitate and enhance the transition from one social state or context to another. The transitional rituals in which alcohol plays a vital role range from major life-cycle ‘rites of passage’ such as birth, coming-of-age, marriage and death to far less momentous passages, such as the daily transition from work-time to play-time or home-time.

English workers like to talk about their annual office parties as though they were wild Roman orgies, but this is largely titillation or wishful thinking. The reality, for most of us, is that our debauchery consists mainly of eating and drinking rather too much; singing and dancing in a more flamboyant manner than we are accustomed to; wearing skirts cut a bit too high and tops cut a bit too low; indulging in a little flirtation and maybe an illicit kiss or fumble; speaking to our colleagues with rather less restraint than usual, and to our bosses with rather less deference – and perhaps, if we are feeling really wanton and dissolute, photocopying our bottoms.

Sit-com Rules Much the same warty-realism rules apply to English situation-comedy programmes. Almost all English sit-coms are about ‘losers’ – unsuccessful people, doing unglamorous jobs, having unsatisfactory relationships, living in, at best, dreary suburban houses. They are mostly working class or lower-middle class, but even the more well-off characters are never successful high-flyers. The heroes – or rather, anti-heroes, the characters we laugh at – are all failures.

This is not to say that there are no losers in American sit-coms: there are losers, but they tend to be a rather better class of loser; less irredeemably hopeless, squalid, grubby and unappealing than the English variety. One or two of the characters in Friends, for example, did not have successful careers, but neither did they ever have a hair out of place. The girls in 2 Broke Girls may be broke, and working as waitresses, but perfect features and permanently flawless make-up must be some consolation.

Jeremy Paxman, whose own Orwellian list of quintessential Englishnesses includes ‘quizzes and crosswords’, calls the English ‘a people obsessed by words’, and cites the phenomenal output of our publishing industry (150,000 new books a year, more per head than any other country), more newspapers per head than almost any other country, our ‘unstoppable flow of Letters to the Editor’, our ‘insatiable appetite’ for all forms of verbal games and puzzles, our thriving theatres and bookshops.

Given an opportunity for a pointless whinge – such as a MORI researcher showing interest in our opinions – we will complain about pretty much anything.

There is a difference in style between the ‘popular’ and the ‘quality’ press, but the skill of the writers is equally outstanding. This is not surprising as they are often the same writers: journalists move back and forth between tabloids and broadsheets, or even write regularly for both.