Have you heard this sentence "I don't wanna get involved."? I have the feeling that sometime people are happy to have an informal chat ie talk about the weather or the train being late...again, just scraping the surface. However, they don't seem to be willing to give their point of view and speak out loud and clear. Paul, Xin and I were talking about peer pressure the other day. Are the English scared to look like "prats"?From my research and reflexion so far, I think this is the mark of an intrinsic component of being English: Be Independent, and avoid at any cost walking on somebody's else toes!
To make the idea more apprehensible, we can compare people's involvement in conversation with another extreme: The French.
Whenever discussing a random topic in France, it is considered a mark of politeness and respect to involve and say something interesting and meaningful. Otherwise, you could end up being considered as the lowest form of life walking on the pretty face of France (along with the fast-food eating American): The witless dumb average fucker (and you would start watching the TV channel TF1).
Now, compare with the English shortcut known as "The Weather Talk".
The Weather is a "conversation tool" used to show your politeness and respectability by following the first and most important rule of conversation ("Start talking about the weather"), but also to fill blanks in conversation, or to simply acknowledge somebody's presence ("Beautiful day isn't it").
Most aspects of relationships in this country are just so tainted with this major rule of independence that i see it as the major turnoff for any foreigner willing to make an English friend.
We can consider this practice as extreme politeness, which has forced the British to use an infinite rulebook of unspoken practices, aimed at getting as far as possible in NOT even taking the remotest risk to appear as impolite and minding someone's else business.
An example given by Fox in her book "watching the English" is that people try to guess each other's profession when meeting in a party, dinner... as for some reason it is not recommended to be asking straightaway "So what do you do for a living?".
So Mrs Fox goes on describing how conversations get shaped in a guessing-game where each participant make their best to ask questions that sounds as neutral as possible, but are in fact aimed at having you to uncover your activity.
This could sounds like a funny culture-related game, but for the foreigner coming to England and trying to make new friends, it presents a nightmare: How to actually make a meaningful contact with the locals?
The only locals you may stand a chance to make more of a meaningful contact are those who have lived abroad for some time, which, sadly, isn't that common nowadays.
That forces most of us, foreigners, to live with other foreigners, until we understand a few of the local friend making rules.
One of them is The Pub. I'll describe The Pub in a further post, but we could imagine the pub as the only place in the English life where "normal out-of-england" friend making rules apply.
Go to a pub. Get pissed. Brag with the other idiots. Sing.
You're English now.
2 comments:
I don't agree with this. If you know or get to know people you go out with (and this generally works a lot better if you're sober!!!), then you don't have to be drunk to be considered as a "cool" person. "cool lady": that's what my (young) floor manager ended up by saying to me last time we went out. The English can talk about interesting stuff in a serious manner. I think you may wanna talk to a few people who manage to make friends with the English since your views seem a little subjective.
Marianne,
Mostly i agree with you. What i meant is that in comparison with lots of other nationalities, people over here are a lot less likely to get implied in a cold start conversation, and it will take a while longer to build up a friendship. All of this in my view is coming from this taste for independence that these people have.
As for alcohol and the pub i don't see it as a matter of being cool or not, but more as a place where usual rules of politeness do not apply, as a way to actually bond more effectively.
In a way this relates to the practices in the Japanese work place, where workers go to a pub to get smashed together in order to bond, release pressure, and enjoy some time as a group. Back in 2002, i went to a few Japanese-only parties with the Japanese guy i was living with, and i was very surprised to see the look of reproach on people's face when one of the girl refused a drink. It was a bit like she had refused to take part of the general "relaxation" of the group.
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