Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior

by Kate Fox

Somewhat to my surprise, and slight anxiety, it seems that many Americans in the UK are using the book as a kind of ‘how to be English’ manual, never venturing out to a pub, an English home, or a business meeting without consulting the relevant chapters for ‘instruction’ on what to expect and how to behave. Some even go so far as to carry my book with them at all times – and one couple told me they now refer to it simply

Several correspondents claim that Watching the English has saved their marriages.

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

For the entire 6 years that we lived in the US, I refused to adopt even a hint of an American accent. The New Jersey twang offended my aesthetic sensibilities (‘sounds horrid,’ was how I phrased it – ghastly little prig that I was).

As the daughter of an anthropologist, I really should have been rather better at adapting to native customs. My father was already training me to be an ethnographer, a ‘participant observer,’ but I was by nature much more of an observer than a participant.

‘So, what do you think of America, then?’ I gave the matter due frowning consideration for a moment or two before replying, ‘Well, I think it will probably be all right when it’s finished.’ My father tells this little story with great pride, fondly imagining that this was some sort of profound cultural insight on my part. I suspect, however, that I was merely being obnoxious.

It is somewhat unusual for an anthropologist’s work to be critically scrutinized by the ‘tribe’ she is writing about,

An American friend pointed out to me that ‘American readers will enjoy this book even more, as we get to laugh without wincing!’

I can only assume that an awful lot of other people are equally perplexed by the English – including hundreds of thousands of English people.

I was rather taken aback to find that Watching the English was being taught on the anthropology syllabus at a number of distinguished universities (and not, as I initially suspected, as a dire-warning example of how not to do anthropology).

But I firmly believe that any anthropological insight of genuine value or interest can, and should, be expressed in terms that a non-academic can understand – and ideally even enjoy.

The ‘defining characteristics’ of Englishness remain essentially unchanged, but there are now some qualifications to add, some subtle nuances I hadn’t noticed before, some emerging behaviour codes that need deciphering

I hope that this updated new edition will continue to make strange things familiar, and vice versa.

I really, really do not want to do this. I want to adopt my usual method of getting an unsuspecting research assistant to break sacred social rules while I watch the result from a safe distance. But this time, I have bravely decided that I must be my own guinea pig.

What exactly is the point of all this ludicrous bumping and jumping (not to mention all the equally daft things I’ll be doing tomorrow)?

It is perhaps not surprising that anthropologists are notorious for their frequent bouts of ‘field-blindness’ – becoming so involved and enmeshed in the native culture that they fail to maintain the necessary scientific detachment. The most famous example of such rose-tinted ethnography was, of course, Margaret Mead,

I described the bitchy squabbles in which these two Inner voices engaged every time a conflict arose between my roles as honorary member of the tribe and detached scientist. (Given the deadly serious tones in which this subject is normally debated, my irreverence bordered on heresy,

You try your best to be a maverick iconoclast, and they turn you into a textbook.)

‘There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.’

It is impossible to talk about class without reference to homes, gardens, cars, clothes, pets, food, drink, sex, talk, hobbies, etc., and impossible to explore the rules of any of these aspects of English life without constantly bumping into big class dividers, or tripping over the smaller, less obvious ones.

But this book is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I am interested in understanding Englishness as it is, warts and all. It is not the anthropologist’s job to moralise and pontificate about how the tribe she is studying ought to treat its neighbours or its members.

(I am referring here to real, born-and-bred Scots, Welsh and Irish by the way, not English people – like me – who like to boast of their drop of Welsh, Scottish or Irish ‘blood’ when it suits them.)

because ‘Britishness’ seems to me to be a rather meaningless term: when people use it, they nearly always really mean ‘Englishness’

This comment seemed to reflect an assumption that a stereotype is almost by definition ‘not true’, that the truth lies somewhere else – wherever ‘beyond’ might be.

my standard reply was to say that I would try to get inside the stereotypes.

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

English weather-speak rituals often sound rather like a kind of catechism, or the exchanges between priest and congregation in a church: ‘Lord, have mercy upon us’, ‘Christ, have mercy upon us’; ‘Cold, isn’t it?’, ‘Yes, isn’t it?’, and so on.

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

Nobody will tell you that there is a rule about this – they are not even conscious of following a rule: it just simply isn’t done.

No one will actually complain or make a big scene about it (we have rules about complaining and making a fuss), but they will be offended, and this will show in subtle ways.

This sort of gracious fudging

Any English thespian who dares to break these unwritten rules, as Kate Winslet has done, is mercilessly ridiculed and condemned in our newspapers and other media.

While the majority of us (72 per cent) will say that expressing emotion is ‘healthy’, only a minority – less than 20 per cent – had actually expressed any emotion in the previous 24 hours, and 19 per cent could not even remember the last time they had expressed any emotion.

The sentimental patriotism of leaders and the portentous earnestness of writers, artists, actors, musicians, pundits and other public figures of all nations are treated with equal derision and disdain by the English, who can spot the slightest hint of self-importance at twenty paces, even on a grainy television picture and in a language we don’t understand.

The very first thing I overheard was a joke: ‘I didn’t realise the French were such sore losers!’ (The day before the bombings, London had been chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games, although Paris had been widely expected to win, and the French were clearly surprised and disappointed at the result

if a country or culture could be said to have a catchphrase, I would propose ‘Oh, come off it!’ as a strong candidate for England’s

‘That’s it! How do you do that? How do you know to do that? How do you know when to do it?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said my father, apologetically. ‘I can’t explain. We just do it. It just comes naturally.’

We cannot very well then say, ‘No, hey, wait a minute, you’re supposed to give me a sort of knowingly sceptical smile, showing that you realise I’m being humorously self-deprecating, don’t believe a word of it and think even more highly of my abilities and my modesty.

(most English comedy is essentially about embarrassment).

Almost all of the best English comedy seems to involve laughing at ourselves.

All English people, whether they admit it or not, are fitted with a sort of social Global Positioning Satellite computer that tells us a person’s position on the class map as soon as he or she begins to speak.

A handkerchief in working-class speech is ‘’ankercheef’, but in upper-class pronunciation becomes ‘hnkrchf’. Upper-class vowel-dropping may be frightfully smart, but it still sounds like a mobile-phone text message, and unless you are used to this clipped, abbreviated way of talking, it is no more intelligible than lower-class consonant-dropping.

The very upper-class i may become a long a, such that ‘I am’ sounds like ‘Ay am’. But the upper class don’t say ‘I’ at all if they can help it: one prefers to refer to oneself as ‘one’.

are common mistakes, in both senses of the word ‘common’.

Trying to do a throaty French r in ‘en route’, for example, or saying ‘Barthelona’ with a lispy Spanish c, or telling everyone that you are going to Firenze rather than Florence – even if you pronounce them correctly – is affected and pretentious, which almost invariably betrays lower-middle or middle-middle origins. The upper-middle, upper and working classes usually do not feel the need to show off in this way.

If what is really meant is that being working class has become more acceptable in many formerly snobby occupations, then that is what should be said, rather than a lot of mealy-mouthed polite euphemisms about regional accents.

Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as ‘Pardonia’.

Does ‘come for tea’ mean four o’clock or seven o’clock? To be safe, you will have to ask what time you are expected. The answer will help you to place your hosts on the social scale.

if the item in question is part of a brand-new matching three-piece suite, which also matches the curtains, its owners are likely to call it a settee.

(Actually, I would recommend that the higher classes stop being such ghastly hypocritical snobs and learn some respect, but that won’t happen.)