Plan

Since the start of this essay and the blog that comes along with it I had the issue of finding a proper plan for it.
Thanks to Paul Slater, my tutor and teacher for this module, we've managed to identify what were the core elements which were of interest in this subject.
So what is exactly preventing people to get along when one is a foreigner and the other a british?

To make sure we are doing it right, it is best to "scoop large". So i believe that at first, we need to understand what is exactly friendship, since what comes between english and foreigners actually prevent it to happen.
There is a point in looking at what does people see as friendship, throughout their cultures, their age, their social class, or anything else that could be relevant.
My teenage cousin might say that she has 20 friends, my second year classmate at uni will probably venture for 50 or 60, while I'd say I've 10 at the best.
Are we more or less sociable?
Or is it that we define friendship differently?

Secondly, a huge influence in friendship making is the actual bonding process where people get together and start having "common sympathetic feelings" for each other. Usually this implies a feeling of communality (they share something together: they went to the same school, love the same sport, have the same humor...). However you may share commonalities with other people that you may not be friend with: You just don't happen to be friend with everybody at work, or with people that went to holidays to Corfou.
This implies that there is more to it than meet the eye.

This bond making seems quite specific in the British context: It happens mostly in pub, while clubbing, having BBQs, or through absorbing drinks and drugs.
This is obviously a major difference with the foreigners, since their societies do not put such limitations. This particularity is likely to become my third part of study in this essay.

In fact i will probably be looking in part two at how does the British view themselves in terms of friendship-making, while the third part will focus on the differences between this approach, the foreigner's one, and what confusion comes out of it.

Watching the English: Conversation

As part of our module's work we were requested to read Fox's "Watching the english". While sometime tedious to read, it is otherwise the perfect reference for the types of work i am focusing on.

The way i understand my subject, is that one of the main elements of the Glass Wall is conversation. Even though I've been now living in this country for nearly 3 years I often find myself at loss when it comes to random chat with a British guy of my age.
So K. Fox comes up with a detailed analysis of random conversations and look at the rules that rules them. It is sometime a tad bit too deep away in her own professional field for us to understand, but she otherwise comes up with great example such as this social marker:
Do you say:

• A settee in the lounge
• A couch in the living room
• A sofa in the sitting/waiting room

It shows your social class, from working (settee/lounge), to upper (sofa/sitting room).

You'll hear again from her!

Delicious

If you look carefully on the side column of this blog, you will see a box bearing the title "My delicious links". This will basically publish automatically any links that i will refer as relevant to my research on this subject.

Delicious is what is called a social bookmarking service. After creating an account, you basically bookmarks pages and assign them "tags" relevant to how you would use them. Since millions of other users are doing the same, this allow to create a literal directory of adequate and relevant information for those who search it.
The links that will appear here are only those tagged as EL312.

EL312: Why this blog

As a start to pretty much every blog is the founding motivation for starting a "public diary":
This page will be used as part of a university module called EL312: Aspects of Culture and Society. I will post most of my progresses and findings throughout the next two months.

We are hoping (in conjunction with my lecturer) to get other students to jump in the blog-wagon and to form a "blog-ring", possibly mash RSS feeds in our intranet, and potentially boost cooperation both inside and outside our group. As such any commentaries will be very warmly welcomed, since you people are the fodders for our dissertations.

I am currently reflecting on a potential topic of study which has given this blog its name:
In this upcomming paper i would like to explore the glass wall that seems to separate foreigners and the English. This is based on my 3 years experience in UK, and me living abroad: Wherever i went, most of my friends were locals, even in places as different as Taiwan, India, or the US, EXCEPT in England. I can't seem to reach out to a common experience and a feeling of togetherness with the English man, and even after all this time i barely have an idea of what to talk about in a conversation with most english people.
Questions:

• What topics are part of the average english man's conversation?
• What does the english man try to convey through conversation?
• What does the foreigner try to convey in his conversation?
• What is the purpose of "small chat"?
• What are each parties reaction after a conversation? What is expected socially speaking from a conversation?
  

Sources:

• Fox, K. (2005) Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder
• Polling companies
• Media Materials:
• TV Series
• Movies