Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  Whether the system works or not, ‘You’ve invited them to enjoy the races and the company,’ said one corporate host. ‘And you don’t spoil that by turning the thing into a vulgar sales-pitch. There is a time and a place for trade, and this is not it.’ This successful businessman’s mouth made a little downturned moue of disgust as he said the words ‘sales’ and ‘trade’. Which made me think of Mary Douglas, who famously defined ‘dirt’ as ‘matter out of place’ in her book about the concept of pollution. There is nothing intrinsically dirty, for example, about food or shoes – but food splattered on a tie or shoes on a dinner-table are dirty. 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.

  I was subsequently to find that the times and places considered appropriate for money-talk in English culture are few and far between, and that a degree of squeamishness and embarrassment about money is common even in those situations which are regarded as appropriate. The ‘sordid subject of money’, as it is commonly referred to among the English, will be covered in more detail in Work to Rule (page 288), but I should admit straight away that I am terribly English about money myself – and although I can laugh at our squeamishness, I found it very difficult to break the money-talk taboo, and my interviews on this subject were as embarrassing for me as they were for the unfortunate ‘suits’.

  RACING-TALK RULES AND ENGLISHNESS

  The combination of cultural remission and cultural amplification in this subculture’s social microclimate makes it a particularly rich source of insights on Englishness.

  Remission first. The introduction rules underline the now familiar theme of English social inhibition, and the ingenious use of props and facilitators to overcome our awkwardness and difficulties in initiating social contact. It would seem that we are not by nature reserved or unsociable, as some observers have suggested, but merely socially incompetent, self-conscious and easily embarrassed. When we have a clear set of rules to follow, with prescribed, ready-made opening lines and helpful props, such as the race-card, we can actually talk to each other. (I start at this point to wonder whether the English obsessions with ‘organised’ hobbies, clubs and sports – much remarked upon but never really explained by other commentators – might be in some way connected with our need for social facilitators of this kind. I’ll try to work this out when we get to Rules of Play (page 313), but perhaps it’s worth bearing in mind.)

  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. Both self-deprecation and politeness have cropped up as persistent themes in previous chapters, but here, at the races, we see them taken to extremes – the ‘behavioural equivalent of full national costume’, or cartoon-Englishness factor, that I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

  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. Normally, we seem to have a tendency to veer between these two almost equally unattractive modes; at the races, we somehow manage to combine relaxed inhibitions with good manners. I say ‘somehow’ because, despite having written a whole book on the racing subculture, I am still not sure that I completely understand the mechanisms behind this remarkable balancing act – or, at least, I have not yet explained them to my own satisfaction, although I am convinced, much to the annoyance of the neo-Puritan killjoys, that both alcohol and gambling are among the factors influencing good behaviour at the races.

  On the modesty question, it strikes me that the racing-talk data might help to clarify an issue that has become somewhat muddled in discussions of Englishness. It seems obvious from the examples here that we are not talking about ‘true’ or ‘genuine’ modesty – the sort of humility that springs from a real conviction that one is nothing very special, undeserving of any praise or admiration. 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. There does not seem to be too much difficulty in grasping this distinction when it comes to ‘courtesy’ – pretty much everyone53 understands that politeness is a matter of obeying cultural rules about good manners, whatever one’s natural inclinations may be.

  The rules of moaning highlight (again) our predilection for incessant and apparently pointless whingeing. Pointless, that is, in a practical sense, because as pragmatic solutions are banned from such discussions, they never result in any effective action. 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, and the rules involved (particularly the prescription of ‘token dissent on detail but consensus on wider principles’) ensure that these rituals promote a sense of solidarity and social bonding. The English are never so comfortably united and harmonious as when they are indulging in a collective grumble.

  The post-mortem rules bring us back to the recurring theme of English polite hypocrisy – in this case involving a great deal of verbal ingenuity. To avoid causing offence or admitting failure, an impressive range of inventive euphemisms, tactful smoothings, imaginative excuses and skilful evasions are employed. As with the hypocrisies of ‘polite egalitarianism’, this is not a matter of deliberate deception, but of collusion in collective self-deception – a practice for which the English seem to have a peculiar talent.

  Finally, the money-talk taboo provides a second example of the squeamishness about money first noted in Pub-talk (page 137). More evidence will be needed before we can include this characteristic in our definitive ‘grammar’ of Englishness, but it must surely be, as they say in racing, ‘one to watch’.

  Some of the other traits emerging from the racing-talk rules – the persistently recurring ones such as social inhibition/embarrassment, ingenious use of facilitators, modesty (affected), courtesy (ditto, by definition), humour, Eeyorish moaning and polite hypocrisy – begin to seem to me like strong contenders for inclusion in our ‘grammar’. But I’m trying to be scientific about this, so I’ll reserve judgement until we have some more data.

  50. The Racing Tribe: Watching the Horsewatchers (published in the USA as The Racing Tribe: Portrait of a British Subculture).

  51. The rules of behaviour on public transport will be covered in detail in Rules of the Road (page 217).

  52. To make sure that these findings were not biased by my sex or appearance, I bribed and bullied ‘guinea pigs’ of the opposite sex to perform the same experiments, with much the same results. Being small and female is certainly an advantage when asking for ‘help’, in any social context, but even my tall male friends and colleagues had little difficulty initiating conversation in this way.

  53. Apart from a few psychologists, who confuse cultural rules with personality traits.

  SQUADDIE-TALK AND TWO TYPES OF RIDER-TALK

  I will not attempt a complete conversational dissection of these three subcultures (soldiers, bikers and horse-riders) but just pick out some of their most distinctive features and their underlying rules, and see what these tell us about Englishness.

  THE RULES OF SQUADDIE54-TALK55

  The army. What does that make you think of? A highly controlled, hierarchi
cal, literally ‘regimented’ society, the epitome of Erving Goffman’s ‘total institution’. And the soldiers at the bottom of the hierarchy – the squaddies? One thinks of obedience, discipline, forced marches, drilling, constant supervision, petty punishments, stiff upper lips, barked orders – and perhaps the occasional ‘breakout’ from all this repression in drunken rampages. So, what would you imagine is the single most important distinguishing feature of English squaddie-talk? Deference? Rank-consciousness? Army jargon/slang? Swearing?

  Squaddie Humour Rules

  No. All these are important, but the most striking, pervasive and distinctive feature is humour. When they are not ‘speaking to order’, saying, ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir,’ and ‘Three bags full, Sergeant’ (and sometimes even when they are), almost every aspect of squaddies’ conversation is characterised by humour – jokes, ridicule, wit, puns, banter, irony, understatement, nicknames, satire, slapstick, mockery, teasing and, especially, black or ‘gallows’ humour. Rarely does an English soldier open his mouth to speak without showing at least a hint of humour – like a gold tooth, that little glint of humour is always there, even at serious moments, flashing and catching the light.

  I have already discussed at some length the central importance of humour in English culture, but the squaddie example is significant because, in this particular respect, squaddies are ‘like the rest of us only more so’. In squaddie humour, we see another ‘amplification’ of normal English conversation codes. 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.

  The Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule

  Earnestness, for example, is severely frowned upon. The subtleties of the First Commandment of English humour – the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule – are clearly understood by all squaddies. Any who initially fail to grasp the fine distinctions involved, and cross the line between permitted seriousness and forbidden solemnity, are soon made painfully aware of their error – by relentless and merciless ridicule. 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. At Sandhurst, the excessively keen are those trying to win an accolade known as the Sword of Honour, and are therefore called ‘Blade Runners’.

  The Rules of Teasing and Mockery

  Teasing and mockery, the most pervasive forms of squaddie humour, start from the moment of introduction – when raw trainee soldiers first meet each other on arrival at the barracks. Such introductions are, as we have seen, always a problem for the English: squaddies ingeniously overcome the usual painful awkwardness by the use of humour – in this case specifically teasing and mockery. The first question is usually ‘Where do you come from?’ often followed by ‘Who do you support?’ (meaning ‘which football team’ – it being automatically assumed among young working-class English males that everyone supports a football team). English regionalism and tribal football rivalries mean that the responses to these questions provide an instant basis for teasing, for the exchanges of mocking insults – ‘Geordie wanker!’, ‘Swindon are pathetic!’ and so on – that are the English male’s favoured means of establishing rapport. In no time at all, this mutual mockery has the desired effect: the ice is broken, and the vital group-bonding process has begun.

  Very quickly, the same humour rules become a means of reinforcing this in-group solidarity, by mocking and insulting other groups. The army is a highly tribal culture, with intricate systems of allegiances and loyalties at every level. A squaddie’s first loyalty is to his own small section or ‘squad’ – these are his immediate peers, his mates. Next comes identification with and allegiance to his platoon, then company, then battalion, then regiment, then to his branch of the army (infantry, artillery, etc.), then to the army as a whole, and finally, last and very much least, the official loyalty to ‘Queen and Country’. At each of these levels, there are endless opportunities to demonstrate one’s loyalty to the group, and strengthen the bonds between its members, by poking fun at other, rival, groups.

  The insults involved can be quite unpleasant, although often highly inventive – other types of infantrymen mock the Parachute Regiment, for example, by claiming that ‘Only two things fall out of the sky: Paras and bird shit’ – but they are, in the spirit of the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule, not to be taken seriously. John Hockey, in his excellent ethnography of squaddies, quotes a private explaining the nature of the rivalry between military units (in this case at ‘company’ level): ‘They’re all horrible, all the other companies are horrible . . . Well, they just are, they’re not your company, so they’re bound to be horrible. Not serious, like. I’ve got some good mates in them.’

  Irony Rules

  Squaddies are masters of irony, often remarkably skilled and witty satirists, and particularly good at laughing at themselves – poking fun at the army and its customs. In this context, rival military units often ridicule each other for breaches of the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule, and in particular for breaches of the sub-clause prescribing a strong sense of irony. Hockey cites a satirical article in the newsletter of an infantry battalion, the 3rd Battalion Royal Green Jackets, which mocks the over-zealous, excessively conformist and earnest approach to military appearance and discipline of a ‘rival’ battalion, the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, at the time serving alongside them:

  At Echelon they have a rather unorthodox regiment – 1 Para stationed with them. They look smart, have short hair, wear funny-coloured berets with badges above the left eye. The men without anything on their arms call the soldiers with stripes ‘Corporal’ or ‘Sergeant’ and hold their hand above their right eye when men with little marks on their shoulders pass. We are trying to find out when these quaint customs started.

  In this passage, the Royal Green Jackets56 combine mockery of a rival group with good-humoured ridicule of the orthodoxies of military dress and etiquette to which they are all required to conform. Their point is that they, the Royal Green Jackets, manage to do so while maintaining the proper degree of ironic detachment, while the Paras allegedly take the whole ludicrous business of smartness, deferential forms of address and saluting much too seriously. You could hardly wish for a more perfect illustration of the English anti-earnestness and irony rules.

  The Modesty Rule

  After humour, perhaps the most striking feature of squaddie-talk is the taboo on boastfulness. At one level, this can be seen as an extension of the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule: it is acceptable to be a genuinely dedicated, serious soldier, as long as one does not talk about it in solemn, pompous, self-important tones – one must never take oneself too seriously. Collective pride is quite a different matter. Boasting about one’s regiment is allowed, even prescribed: every soldier is expected to believe and loudly proclaim that his regiment is the best, and to disparage other rival regiments. (The humour rules, however, require that this be done with a degree of wit: the Paras are generally disliked by other regiments for being too arrogant and pompous about their alleged superiority. Their officers are aware of this, but believe that being disliked is good for them – that the constant need to ‘fight back’ makes them better soldiers.)

  Any hint of personal boasting or immodesty is absolutely forbidden, and the penalties for breaking this unwritten rule can be very harsh indeed. During my sister’s Ph.D. field-research with the army, a soldier who made ‘Best Recruit’ in Phase 1 training committed the cardinal sin of flaunting his new status, imagining that it gave him authority over his peers in Phase 2, and generally thinking rather too highly of himself. He was effectively ‘shunned out’ of the army – so utterly despised and rejected by his
fellow trainees that it became impossible for him to stay.

  This recruit might have got off more lightly had he responded appropriately to the initial scorn and ridicule provoked by his self-important manner. 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. Our unfortunate ‘Best Recruit’, though clearly a promising soldier in other ‘official’ respects, failed to learn the unofficial modesty rule and persisted in his self-aggrandising behaviour.

  The Fair-play Code

  The fair-play code is, strictly speaking, a behaviour code rather than a conversation code, but it has significant implications for conversation, and some of its rules specifically prohibit certain ways of talking, so I’m including it here. The importance of this unwritten code among squaddies cannot be overstated: it governs their entire existence, affecting every aspect of their interactions with each other and with those in charge of them. The principal rules of the fair-play code are those prohibiting the following: