Watching the English

The Core: Social Dis-ease

‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’; ‘Nice day, isn’t it?’; ‘Oi -what you looking at?’; ‘Mind your own business’; ‘I don’t like to pry, but . . .’; ‘Don’t make a fuss/scene’; ‘Don’t draw attention to yourself’; ‘Keep yourself to yourself’; ‘’Ere we go, ’ere we go’; ‘Enger-land! Enger-land! Enger-land!’.

Reflexes

Humour

Key phrases include: ‘Oh, come off it!’ (Our national catchphrase, along with ‘Typical!’) Others impossible to list – English humour is all in the context, e.g. understatement: ‘Not bad’ (meaning outstandingly brilliant); ‘A bit of a nuisance’ (meaning disastrous, traumatic, horrible); ‘Not very friendly’ (meaning abominably cruel); ‘I may be some time’ (meaning ‘I’m going to die’ – although, come to think of it, that one was possibly not intended to be funny).

Moderation

Key phrases include: ‘Don’t rock the boat’; ‘Don’t go overboard’; ‘Don’t overdo it’; ‘For the sake of peace and quiet’; ‘Can’t be bothered’; ‘All very well, in moderation’; ‘Safe and sound’; ‘Order! Order!’; ‘A nice cup of tea’; ‘If it was like this all the time, we wouldn’t appreciate it’; ‘Over-egging the pudding’; ‘Too much of a good thing’; ‘Happy medium’; ‘What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!’

Hypocrisy

politeness/modesty/fairness is hypocritical

on average, at least every other ‘please’, ‘thank-you’, ‘sorry’, ‘nice’, ‘lovely’ (plus smiles, nods, etc.) is hypocritical

Outlooks 观点

Our worldview. Our way of looking at, thinking about, structuring and understanding things. Our sociocultural ‘cosmology’.

Empiricism

Key phrases include: ‘Oh, come off it!’ (overlap with Humour – English humour is very empiricist); ‘At the end of the day’; ‘As a matter of fact’; ‘In plain English’; ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’; ‘Typical!’ (overlap with Eeyorishness, also very empiricist).

Eeyorishness

Key phrases include: ‘Huh! Typical!’; ‘The country’s going to the dogs’; ‘What did you expect?’; ‘I could have told you’; ‘There’s always something’; ‘Mustn’t grumble’; ‘Better make the best of it’; ‘Never mind’; ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed’.

Class-consciousness

Key phrases include: ‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate him or despise him’; ‘That sort of background’; ‘Don’t say “serviette”, dear: we call it a napkin’; ‘Mondeo Man’; ‘A bit naff/common/nouveau/flashy/vulgar/unsmart/uncouth/Sharon-and-Tracey/suburban-semi/petitourgeois/mock-Tudor . . .’; ‘Stuck-up posh tart (hooray/upper-class twit/old-school-tie/snob/publicschool yahyah/green-wellie/Camilla . . .) thinks s/he’s better than us’; ‘What do you expect from a jumped-up grocer’s daughter?’; ‘That nice little man from the shop’.

Fair play

Much of English morality is essentially about fair play. Key phrases include: ‘Well, to be fair . . .’; ‘In all fairness . . .’; ‘Given a fair chance’; ‘Come on, it’s only fair’; ‘Fair’s fair’; ‘Fair enough’; ‘Firm but fair’; ‘Fair and square’; ‘Wait your turn’; ‘Take turns’; ‘Be fair’; ‘Fair cop’; ‘That’s not cricket/not on/out of order!’; ‘Level playing-field’; ‘Don’t be greedy’; ‘Live and let live’; ‘On the other hand’; ‘There’s always two sides’; ‘On balance’; ‘Let’s just agree to disagree, shall we?’

Courtesy

We are not naturally socially skilled; we need all these rules to protect us from ourselves. Key phrases include: ‘Sorry’; ‘Please’; ‘Thank-you/Cheers/Ta/Thanks’ (every culture has these words, but we use them more); ‘I’m afraid that . . .’; ‘I’m sorry, but . . .’; ‘Would you mind . . . ?’; ‘Could you possibly . . . ?’; ‘I don’t suppose . . .’; ‘How do you do?’; ‘Nice day, isn’t it?’; ‘Yes, isn’t it?’; ‘Excuse me, sorry, but you couldn’t possibly pass the marmalade, could you?’; ‘Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry but you seem to be standing on my foot’; ‘With all due respect, the right honourable gentleman is being a bit economical with the truth’.

Modesty

English modesty is often competitive – ‘onedownmanship’ – although this game may involve a lot of indirect boasting. English displays of modesty (whether competitive, hypocritical or genuine) are distinctive for the degree of humour involved. Our modesty rules act as a counterbalance to our natural arrogance, just as our courtesy rules protect us from our own aggressive tendencies. Key phrases include: ‘Don’t boast’; ‘Stop showing off’; ‘Don’t blow your own trumpet’; ‘Don’t be clever’; ‘Don’t be pushy’; ‘I do a bit of sport’ (meaning I’ve just won an Olympic medal); ‘Well, I suppose I know a bit about that’ (meaning I’m the acknowledged world expert on it); ‘Oh, that’s all a bit over my head, I’m afraid) (ditto); ‘Not as hard as it looks/just lucky’ (standard response to any praise for personal achievement).

Working-class Rites As a general rule, working-class rites of passage are the most lavish (in terms of expenditure relative to income). A working-class wedding, for example, will nearly always be a big ‘do’, with a sit-down meal in a restaurant, pub ‘function room’ or hotel; a big fancy car to take the bride to the church; the full complement of matching bridesmaids in tight, revealing dresses; a huge, three-tiered cake; guests in glamorous, brand-new, Sunday-best outfits and matching accessories; a specialist wedding-photographer and a professional wedding-video firm; a big, noisy evening party with dancing and free-flowing booze; a honeymoon somewhere hot. No expense spared. ‘Nothing but the best for our princess.’

The Sour-grapes Rule

If they cannot afford a big wedding (or funeral, Christmas, birthday, anniversary) the upper-middles and upper classes will often make a rather sour-grapey virtue of this, saying that they ‘don’t want a big, flashy production, just a simple little family party with a few close friends’, rather than running up credit-card debts like the working classes, or dipping reluctantly into savings like the lower- and middle-middles. The English modesty rule, with its associated distaste for ostentatious displays of wealth, serves the impecunious higher echelons well: anything they cannot afford can be dismissed as ‘flashy’ or ‘vulgar’. Big, glamorous weddings are regarded as decidedly ‘naff’, as Jane Austen pointedly reminds us by describing her upper-class heroine Emma Woodhouse’s wedding as a small, quiet one in which ‘the parties have no taste for finery or parade’, and having the ghastly, pretentious, jumped-up Mrs Elton exhibit typically middle-class poor taste when she complains that the proceedings involved ‘Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!’

The invisible-puberty rule is a more straightforward example of English social dis-ease.

The intimate, private transitional rites represent one of our very few genuine escapes from our debilitating social dis-ease. (The other main escape is sex, also a private matter.) Our fanatical obsession with privacy may be a symptom of our social dis-ease, but we also value privacy because it allows us some relief from this affliction. At home, among close family, friends and lovers, we can be warm and spontaneous and really quite remarkably human. This is the side of us that many visitors to this country never see, or only catch rare glimpses of. You have to be patient to witness it – like waiting for giant pandas to mate.

This kind of magic works in other cultures as well – and drinks themselves can be used to define and ‘dictate’ the nature of an occasion, without the need for words, magic or otherwise. Certain types of drink, for example, may be so strongly associated with particular forms of social interaction that serving them in itself acts as an effective indicator of expectations, or even as an instruction to behave in a specified way. In most Western cultures, for instance, champagne is synonymous with celebration, such that if it is ordered or served at an otherwise ‘ordinary’ occasion, someone will invariably ask ‘What are we celebrating?’ Champagne prompts festive, cheerful light-heartedness, which is why it would be inappropriate to serve it at funerals. In Austria, sekt is drunk on formal occasions, while schnapps is reserved for more intimate, convivial gatherings – the type of drink served defining both the nature of the event and the social relationship between the drinkers. The choice of drink dictates behaviour to the extent that the mere appearance of a bottle of schnapps can sometimes prompt a switch from the ‘polite’ form of address, sie, to the intimate du. In England, although we do not have the same clear linguistic distinctions, beer is regarded as a more informal, casual drink than wine, and serving beer with a meal indicates expectations of informal, relaxed behaviour – even guests’ body language will be more casual: slumping a bit rather than sitting up straight, adopting more open postures and using more expansive gestures.

There is effectively an unwritten rule prescribing ‘bah-humbug’(语出狄更斯的圣诞欢歌), anti-Christmas moaning rituals at this time of year, and it is unusual to encounter anyone over the age of eighteen who will admit to unequivocal enjoyment of Christmas. This does not stop those who dislike Christmas taking a certain pride in their distaste, as though they were the first people ever to notice ‘how commercial the whole thing has become’ or how ‘it starts earlier every year – soon there’ll be bloody Christmas decorations in August’ or how it seems to get more and more expensive, or how impossibly crowded the streets and shops are

The term ‘rites de passage’ was coined in 1908 by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, who defined them as ‘rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position and age’. Van Gennep had noticed that while all animals are born, reach maturity, reproduce and die, only humans seem to feel the need to make an almighty song-anddance over each of these life-cycle transitions – and quite a few calendrical ones as well64 – surrounding them with elaborate rituals and investing every biological and seasonal change with deep social significance. Other animals also struggle for dominance and status within their herd or other social group, and form special bonds and alliances with selected peers. Again, humans make a big production number out of such matters, marking every rise in rank or affiliation to a sub-group with yet more rites and rituals and ceremonies.

‘I’d always thought the English were supposed to be good at ritual – you know, pomp and ceremony and all that. And you are: there’s no-one better when it comes to the really big public occasion – royal weddings, state funerals, that kind of thing; but when you go to ordinary private weddings and so on everyone just seems so . . . uncomfortable and stiff and stilted. Or they get completely drunk and stupid. There doesn’t seem to be much in between’

It is just that as a culture we do not seem to value children as highly as other cultures do. We love them as individuals, but we do not ritually welcome them into the social world with the same degree of enthusiasm. It is often said that the English care more about their animals than their children. This is an unfair exaggeration, but the fact that our National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was not founded until some sixty years after the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gives some indication of the cultural order of priorities.