Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  Among ourselves, this system works perfectly well: everyone understands that the customary self-deprecation probably means roughly the opposite of what is said, and is duly impressed, both by one’s achievements and by one’s reluctance to trumpet them. (Even in my case, when it barely counts as self-deprecation, being all too sadly true, people often wrongly assume that what I do must surely be somewhat more impressive than I make it sound.) The problems arise when we English attempt to play this game with people from outside our own culture, who do not understand the rules, fail to appreciate the irony, and therefore have an unfortunate tendency to take our self-deprecating statements at face value. We make our customary modest noises, the uninitiated foreigners accept our apparently low estimate of our achievements, and are duly unimpressed. 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.’ They don’t know that this is the prescribed English response to prescribed English self-deprecation. They don’t know that we are playing a convoluted bluffing game. They inadvertently call our bluff, and the whole thing backfires on us. And, frankly, it serves us right for being so silly.

  If you think I may be inflating the importance of humorous self-deprecation in English everyday life – or if you are among those who believe that we English exaggerate the differences between English and American culture – try comparing the personal ads in the New York Review of Books and its exact English equivalent, the London Review of Books. This is a perfect ‘natural experiment’, as the readers of these two publications are demographically identical: same average age, socioeconomic class, level of education, professional achievements, etc. In the New York version, those seeking love and marriage invariably present themselves as flawless paragons, describing their physical, intellectual, professional, social and moral perfections at great length and with overwhelming earnestness. ‘Slender, Sexy Professor and Poet’ is a typical headline, plucked at random from my latest copies, along with ‘Vital, Slender, Life-Affirming Woman’, ‘Exceptionally Beautiful’, ‘Smart and Beautiful’, ‘Million-Watt Smile, Remarkable’ and the even more breathlessly braggy ‘Sensual, Witty, Warm, Fit, Smart and Pretty’. The men are all ‘Handsome, Youthful, Intellectual’, ‘Extremely Handsome, Distinguished’, ‘Handsome, Gifted’, ‘Tall, Striking Gentleman’ and so on.

  The NYRB advertisers all boast of their wit and sense of humour – and even their modesty. In the typical ad I’m looking at, a woman describing herself as ‘modest’ is also, apparently, ‘slender, athletic, fun, funny, very easy on the eyes, innovative, charitable, adventurous, curious, an accomplished photographer, former CEO, passionate hiker, laid-back and easy to talk to yet cosmopolitan and sophisticated . . .’ She possesses ‘casual elegance’, a ‘ready smile’ and ‘irreverent wit’ – and is, above all, ‘never full of herself’. Another woman, who headlines herself as ‘Passionate, Smart, Always Interesting’, also has a ‘slim, sexy figure, blue, blue eyes, lots of depth, sophistication’ as befits a ‘non-profit executive director, writer, educator, also budding cabaret singer’ who is, of course, ‘good-looking, curious, athletic’ and an ‘independent non-traditional thinker’ who ‘values equality and fairness at all levels’. Most of all, she ‘brings intelligence and humor to everything’, has a ‘definite mischievous and irreverent side’ and, believe it or not, a ‘touch of irony’.

  The ‘irreverent’ wit, humour and irony professed by the NYRB advertisers might be sorely tested by the personal ads in its London counterpart, where their English demographic equivalents attract life-partners with ads describing themselves as ‘fat, 47-year-old moody bitch’, ‘hostile and high-maintenance’, ‘clingy, over-emotional and socially draining’, ‘paranoid, jealous and often scary’, ‘serial divorcee’, ‘shallow’, ‘obsessive’, ‘menopausal’, ‘bulimic’ and ‘desperate’. The men typically describe themselves as ‘bald, short, fat and ugly’, ‘run-of-the-mill beardy physicist’, ‘lonely, desperate and emotionally draining’, ‘lacklustre, melancholic and depressive’, ‘sinister-looking man with a face that only a mother would love’ and ‘man with low sperm count seeks woman in no hurry to see the zygotes divide’.

  The London advertisers’ impressive career achievements and recherché interests include ‘care assistant and weekend league bowler’, ‘post-divorce comfort-eater and sex therapist’ and ‘my hobbies include crying and hating men’; and the delightful personal qualities they offer potential dates and mates are summed up in phrases such as ‘tell me I’m pretty, then watch me cling’.

  Incidentally, not one of the LRB advertisers ever claims to be modest. Neither do they ever describe themselves as sparkling with irreverent wit, mischievous humour or even a touch of irony.

  HUMOUR AND COMEDY

  Because the two are often conflated and confused, it is worth pointing out that I am talking here specifically about the rules of English humour, rather than English comedy. That is, I am concerned with our use of humour in everyday life, everyday conversation, rather than with the comic novel, play, film, poem, sketch, cartoon or stand-up routine. These would require another whole book to analyse – and a book written by someone much better qualified than I am.

  Having said that, and without pretending to any expert knowledge of the subject, it seems clear to me that English comedy is influenced and informed by the nature of everyday English humour as I have described it here, and by some of the other ‘rules of Englishness’ identified in other chapters, such as the embarrassment rule (most English comedy is essentially about embarrassment). English comedy, as one might expect, obeys the rules of English humour, and also plays an important social role in transmitting and reinforcing them. Almost all of the best English comedy seems to involve laughing at ourselves.

  While I would not claim that English comedy is superior to that of other nations, the fact that we have no concept of a separate ‘time and place’ for humour, that humour suffuses the English consciousness, does mean that English comic writers, artists and performers have to work quite hard to make us laugh. They have to produce something above and beyond the humour that permeates every aspect of our ordinary social interactions. Just because the English have ‘a good sense of humour’ does not mean that we are easily amused – quite the opposite: our keen, finely tuned sense of humour, and our irony-saturated culture probably make us harder to amuse than most other nations. Whether or not this results in better comedy is another matter, but my impression is that it certainly seems to result in an awful lot of comedy – good, bad or indifferent; if the English are not amused, it is clearly not for want of effort on the part of our prolific humorists.

  I say this with genuine sympathy, as the kind of anthropology I do is not far removed from stand-up comedy – at least, the sort of ‘observational’ stand-up routines that involve a lot of jokes beginning ‘Have you ever noticed how people always . . .?’ The best stand-up comics invariably follow this with some pithy, acute, clever observation on the minutiae of human behaviour and social relations. Social scientists like me try hard to do the same, but there is a difference: the stand-up comics have to get it right. If their observation does not ‘ring true’ or ‘strike a chord’, they don’t get a laugh, and if this happens too often, they don’t make a living. Social scientists can talk utter rubbish for years and still pay their mortgages. At its best, however, social science can sometimes be almost as insightful as good stand-up comedy.

  HUMOUR AND CLASS

  Although elsewhere in this book I scrupulously identify class differences and variations in the application and observance of certain rules, you may have noticed that there has been no mention of class in this chapter. This is because the ‘guiding principles’ of English humour are classless. The taboo on earnestness, and the rules of irony, understatement and self-deprecation transcend all class barriers. No socia
l rule is ever universally obeyed, but among the English these humour rules are universally (albeit subconsciously) understood and accepted. Whatever the class context, breaches are noticed, frowned upon and ridiculed.

  The rules of English humour may be classless, but it must be said that a great deal of everyday English humour is preoccupied with class issues. This is not surprising, given our national obsession with class, and our propensity to make everything a subject for humour. We are always laughing at class-related habits and foibles, mocking the aspirations and embarrassing mistakes of social-climbers, and poking gentle fun at the class system.

  HUMOUR RULES AND ENGLISHNESS

  What do these rules of humour tell us about Englishness? I said that the value we put on humour, its central role in English culture and conversation, was the main defining characteristic, rather than any specific feature of the humour itself. But we still need to ask whether there is something distinctive about English humour apart from its dominance and pervasiveness, whether we are talking about a matter of quality as well as quantity. I think the answer is a qualified ‘yes’.

  The Importance of Not Being Earnest rule is not just another way of saying ‘humour rules’: it is about the fine line between seriousness and solemnity, and it seems to me that our acute sensitivity to this distinction, and our intolerance of earnestness, are distinctively English.

  There is also something quintessentially English about the nature of our response to earnestness. The ‘Oh, come off it!’ rule encapsulates a peculiarly English blend of armchair cynicism, ironic detachment, a squeamish distaste for sentimentality, a stubborn (empiricist?) refusal to be duped or taken in by fine rhetoric, and a mischievous delight in pin-pricking the balloons of pomposity and self-importance.

  We also looked at the rules of irony, and its sub-rules of understatement and humorous self-deprecation, and I think we can conclude that, while none of these forms of humour is in itself unique to the English, the sheer extent of their use in English conversation gives a ‘flavour’ to our humour that is distinctively English. And if practice makes perfect, the English certainly ought to have achieved a somewhat greater mastery of irony and its close comic relations than other less compulsively humorous cultures. So, without wanting to blow our own trumpet or come over all patriotic, I think we can safely say that our skills in the arts of irony, understatement and self-mockery are, on the whole, not bad.

  29. Update: the first edition became a big bestseller. I rest my case.

  30. President Obama is an exception – still often rather too earnest for English tastes, but with flashes of dry wit that have endeared him to us.

  31. A fee we all have to pay for driving into central London, designed to reduce traffic congestion in the city.

  32. Admittedly none of these little parodies represents the height of erudite wit: I am quoting them here to illustrate a typically English reaction to earnestness, not as examples of brilliant comic writing.

  33. To be fair, our reasons for not flying the English flag are only partly rooted in these qualities. Although it has now been ‘reclaimed’, at least to some extent, the flag has in the fairly recent past been a symbol of the political far right and racism. (It is now gradually becoming more closely associated just with football fans, but this in itself is off-putting to many, for whom the flag is now tainted with a ‘chavvy’, lower-class image.) Still, the English flag was only ‘available’ for appropriation by extremists in the first place because the rest of the population already shunned it.

  34. A significantly larger number of English people get excited (and even visibly patriotic) about big sporting events, for reasons that I’ll explain later in Rules of Play (page 352).

  35. In my recent national survey on patriotism, our pride in the English sense of humour was significantly greater than our pride in qualities others might see as rather more admirable, such as our sense of fair play and our reputation for courtesy and tolerance. The English do value and take pride in these other qualities, but humour rules.

  36. The playwright Alan Bennett – or, to be precise, a character in one of his plays (The Old Country).

  37. I will examine the role of irony in business culture-clashes in more detail in Work to Rule (page 274).

  LINGUISTIC CLASS CODES

  One cannot talk about English conversation codes without talking about class. And one cannot talk at all without immediately revealing one’s own social class. This may, to some extent, apply internationally, but the most frequently quoted comments on the issue are English – from Ben Jonson’s ‘Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee’ to George Bernard Shaw’s rather more explicitly class-related ‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate him or despise him.’ We may like to think that we have become less class-obsessed in recent times, but Shaw’s observation is as pertinent now as it ever was. 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.

  There are two main factors involved in the calculation of this position: terminology and pronunciation – the words you use and how you say them. Pronunciation is a more reliable indicator (it is relatively easy to learn the terminology of a different class), so I’ll start with that.

  THE VOWELS VS CONSONANTS RULE

  Perhaps the most significant class indicator concerns which type of letter you favour in your pronunciation – or, rather, which type you fail to pronounce. Those at the top of the social scale like to think that their way of speaking is ‘correct’, as it is clear and intelligible and accurate, while lower-class speech is ‘incorrect’, a ‘lazy’ way of talking – unclear, often unintelligible, and just plain wrong. Exhibit A in this argument is the lower-class failure to pronounce consonants, in particular the glottal stop – the omission (swallowing, dropping) of t – and the dropping of h. But this is a case of the pot calling the kettle (or ke’le, if you prefer) black. The lower ranks may drop their consonants, but the upper class are often equally guilty of dropping their vowels. If you ask them the time, for example, the lower classes may tell you it is ‘’alf past ten’ (which may even come out sounding like ‘ah pass ten’), but the upper class will say ‘hpstn’. 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 only advantage of this SMS-speak is that it can be done without moving the mouth very much, allowing the speaker to maintain an aloof, deadpan expression and a stiff upper lip.

  The upper classes at least pronounce their consonants correctly – well, you’d better, if you’re going to leave out half of your vowels – whereas the lower classes often pronounce th as f (‘teeth’ becomes ‘teef’, ‘thing’ becomes ‘fing’) or sometimes as v (‘that’ becomes ‘vat’; ‘Worthing’ is ‘Worving’). A final g can become k, as in ‘somefink’ and ‘nuffink’.

  Pronunciation of vowels is also a helpful class indicator. The upper class only ‘drop’ some of their vowels: others are drawled, such that, for example, the upper-class o becomes or, as in ‘naff orf’, and the a in, say, ‘plastic’, becomes aah (plaahstic). The upper class a may also become a short e, so that ‘actually’ sounds like ‘ectually’ (or the even more vowel-economical ‘eckshly’). The lower-class a is often pronounced as a long i – ‘Dive’ for Dave, ‘Tricey’ for Tracey. (Working-class northerners tend to elongate the a, and might also reveal their class by saying ‘Our Daaave’ and ‘Our Traaacey’.) 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’.
In fact, they are not too keen on pronouns in general, omitting them, along with articles and conjunctions, wherever possible – as though they were sending a frightfully expensive telegram. Despite all these peculiarities, the upper classes remain convinced that their way of speaking is the only proper way: their speech is the norm, everyone else’s is ‘an accent’ – and when the upper classes say that someone speaks with ‘an accent’, what they mean is a working-class accent.

  Although upper-class speech as a whole is not necessarily any more intelligible than lower-class speech, it must be said that mispronunciation of certain words is often a lower-class signal, indicating a less-educated speaker. For example: saying ‘nucular’ instead of ‘nuclear’, and ‘prostrate’ for ‘prostate’, are common mistakes, in both senses of the word ‘common’. There is, however, a distinction between upper-class speech and ‘educated’ speech – they are not necessarily the same thing. What you may hear referred to as ‘BBC English’ or ‘Oxford English’ is a kind of ‘educated’ speech – but it is more upper-middle than upper: it lacks the haw-haw tones, vowel swallowing/drawling and pronoun-phobia of upper-class speech, and is certainly more intelligible to the uninitiated. The younger members of the Royal Family, including Princes William and Harry, and Princess Anne’s daughter Zara, have deliberately toned down their speech to something much closer to BBC English, with the result that they now sound more upper-middle than upper class. Even the Queen’s speech has gradually morphed into a more ‘educated’ than gratingly upper-class accent.