Silence Speaks

tipped toes whispering leaves dancing waters settled postures

moody faces dry throats kissed tears pondering minds

shorter strides entwined fingers united hearts reluctant byes

unuttered thoughts peeping lights penned papers

silence speaks

Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour - Kate Fox

I moved to England on the day of my fifteenth birthday. The culture shock hit and passed but even at 21, having spent six years in England I still felt somewhat out of place, something didn’t sit quite right. There were certain nuances I did not understand and being the inquisitive person that I am, I was very much interested in learning and exploring these things.

Apart from my inquisitive nature playing a part, I am of the school of thought that if I am to live in a place for a certain period, I should understand the culture, the people and their ways as much as I can. I think that’s what life is about - being grounded in yourself and in your own culture yet being able to humbly immerse yourself in other people’s cultures and in doing so, blurring the lines of division, leading to us all realising that we are part of one big family. We are all human. So, when I came across ‘Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour’ at the Waterstones bookshop in Wimbledon, I knew I was getting the book.

Title: Watching the English.

Author: Kate Fox.

Genre: Anthropology, British Literature.

Number of Pages: 568.

Favourite Part: ‘My father also provided me with the perfect role-model of scientific detachment. When my mother told him she was pregnant with me, their first child, he immediately started trying to persuade her to let him acquire a baby chimp and bring us up together as an experiment – a case study comparing primate and human development. My mother firmly vetoed the idea, and recounted the incident to me many years later, as an example of my father’s eccentric and unhelpful approach to parenthood. I failed to grasp the moral of the story, and said, ‘Oh, what a great idea, it would have been fascinating!’ My mother told me, not for the first time, that I was ‘just like your bloody father’. Again, missing the point, I took this as a compliment.’

A couple of days ago, while scrolling through my tweeter feed, a tweep I follow (of African descent) posted a tweet about how he has sat opposite the same woman on his commute to work for the past ten years but they have never acknowledged each other’s presence much not to talk about having a conversation. It was obvious from the tone of his tweet that he found it a bit odd and wished he had some sort of rapport with the lady. When I read the tweet, I giggled because I could relate to that. I remember asking my mother why everyone on the tube was always quiet after our first couple London underground experiences. I also remember trying to make conversation with a girl I met at the bus stop on the way to school every single day, it was clear she found it uncomfortable as she started staying at arm’s length with her iPod earphones plugged firmly into her ears, avoiding every form of eye contact.

With the passing of time, I naturally settled into the way things were in London and just went with the flow, but I still wanted to understand ‘the why’ of it all. I needed some explanations and Kate Fox’s book gave them to me. I have better insight (well, I hope!) into why English people behave in certain ways and I’d like to share some things I learnt about the English from reading ‘Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour’.

Kate Fox is an anthropologist who for this particular book, used the participant-observation method to gain a true outlook and perspective on the customs and conduct of the English people. For the participant-observation method to be successful, she needed to gain an insider’s perspective while at the same time, possessing a detachment that avoided her from being too familiar thus enabling her to have an objective, well-adjusted view of the issues she chose to study. Kate Fox believes that her status as an English native gave her an edge when it came to the fulfilment the participant part of the participant-observant theory. She also trusts that spending her formative years between the ages of five and sixteen outside the United Kingdom in addition to having a father who was an anthropologist; who trained her since she was a baby and was the perfect role model of scientific detachment helped prepare her for the observation part of the theory and frankly, judging from how the book was written to provide a thorough research case study encapsulated by detailed experiences, principles and ideologies, I would say she had a good participation-observation balance.

Here are 3 things I learnt about from the book; Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of British Behaviour.

The Weather: Everyone who has spent some time in England knows that the English talk about the weather A LOT. Phrases like ‘Nice morning, eh?’, ‘it’s very cold, isn’t it?’, ‘Beautiful day, huh?’ are very common. A lot of foreigners have come to learn that it is quintessentially British to talk about the weather but most times, the motive for the phatic weather-speak is often misunderstood. Most people think that the English people talk about the weather because they are fascinated by the weather or interested in it. The weather in England is not interesting and the fluctuating nature of the weather (trust me you can have four seasons in one day) confuse foreigners and most times they wonder what exactly makes the English captivated by the weather. The truth is the weather-speak according to Kate Fox serves as ritual greetings, conversation starters or default fillers. So, if an English person starts talking about the weather with you, it is a way of them saying hello to you. A good examination of the weather-speak would lead to the realisation that it is usually a question that requires an answer. The weather-speak is a way of the English saying, ‘I would like to talk to you, will you talk to me?’.

Public Transport Behaviour: This part of the book made me laugh and explained a lot to me at the same time – “Our main coping mechanism on public transport is a form of what psychologists call ‘denial’: we try to avoid acknowledging that we are among a scary crowd of strangers, and to maintain as much privacy as possible, by pretending that they do not exist – and, much of the time, pretending we do not exist either … It is common, and considered entirely normal, for English commuters to make their morning and evening train journeys with the same group of people for many years without ever exchanging a word.”

Based on the book, there are three main instances when commuters step out of their bubble to speak other passengers:

- During incidents when they need to be polite e.g. after bumping into someone.

- When they need more information on the transport services.

- For a moan such as when the train is delayed.

Social Class: “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.”- Kate Fox. According to Watching the English, when it comes to terminologies, there are seven deadly sins. They are pardon, toilet, serviette, dinner, lounge and sweet; most of these words would not be uttered by the upper classes. For those that can be uttered, the problem lies in not the actual usage of the words but how and when they are used. The lower classes omit consonants in their words e.g. be’er instead of better and sometimes pronounce ‘th’ as ‘f’ while the upper classes omit vowels. An upper-class person would not refer to themselves as ‘posh’, they would refer to themselves as ‘smart’. What people refer to as ‘BBC English’ is a kind of educated speech that is different from the upper-class and lower-class speeches. The upper classes care about the arcane ranks and the distinction between old money and new money while the lower classes care about the distinction between the respectable working class and the chavs.

Although I have concentrated mainly on linguistic class codes, it is important to stress that social class permeates every aspect of the English society.

This book is packed with so much insight and information about English living. Garden rules, dress codes, humour rules, rules of sex, pub talk, behaviour at work and rites of passage are some of the other points discussed in the book. Watching the English is packed with a lot of information about how the English live and I would recommend it to anyone interested in understanding English behaviour.