Pub-talk rules and englishness

So. What have we learnt? What do the rules of pub-talk tell us about Englishness?

The sociability rule confirms the characteristic revealed by the weather-speak rules of context and reciprocity – namely the ingenious use of ‘facilitators’ to overcome our natural reserve and inhibitions. But this rule has added a couple of new twists to this theme. First, we find that in promoting sociability, the English are very careful to avoid sacrificing privacy. Second, the strict limits and caveats to the sociability rule indicate that even when we depart from convention, we do so in a controlled, orderly manner.

In the invisible queue rule, we find another example of ‘orderly disorder’, and evidence of the importance of queuing, which itself could be an indication of the importance of ‘fairness’ (this makes me wonder if perhaps the traditional English reverence for ‘fair play’ is still stronger than the doom-mongers would have us believe). In the pantomime rule, we see again the precedence of etiquette over logic – along with a marked dislike of fuss, noise and drawing attention to oneself, confirming earlier evidence indicating that social inhibition might be among the defining characteristics of Englishness.

The rules of Ps and Qs confirm the supreme importance of courtesy, and our squeamishness about calling attention to class and status differences. The ‘And one for yourself?’ rule exposes both the hypocrisies and the virtues of English ‘polite egalitarianism’.

The deviations from convention involved in the rules of regular-speak provide a particularly rich source of indicators of Englishness. The excessive use of names (and nicknames) prescribed by the greeting rules contrasts sharply with mainstream English conversation-codes, in which over-use of names is frowned upon as too cloyingly familiar. It occurs to me that perhaps our official, snooty, well-bred contempt for such familiarity masks a secret need for it, expressed only in liminal zones.

As well as facilitating uncharacteristic sociability, the rules of coded pub-talk highlight another ‘deviation’: the escape from mainstream social hierarchies. We see that although sociability and egalitarianism are universal features of drinking-places, the contrast with conventional norms is particularly striking in the English case (only matched by the Japanese, also a culture noted for reserve, formality and acute sensitivity to status differences and also, perhaps significantly, a society inhabiting a small, overcrowded island). In coded pub-talk and in the pub-argument rules, we also find that undercurrent of humour that characterizes much English conversation, along with a sharp wit and linguistic inventiveness. Finally, the free-association rule provides yet another example of regulated deregulation, ordered disorder, method in (apparent) madness.

We’ll tot all this up later, when we’ve examined enough different aspects of English culture to build up a representative sample of its unspoken rules, from which we can distil our ‘quintessences of Englishness’. In our exploration of the minutiae of conversation codes, we are already starting to see some recurring themes, but we must be ruthless: will these themes appear again in other contexts, such as the way we decorate our homes, our behaviour on trains and buses, the customs and rituals of the workplace, the rules of eating and drinking, sex and shopping?

21. See Fox, K. (2000) Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking. The Amsterdam Group, London

22. The ‘social micro-climate’ is a concept I introduced in The Racing Tribe, where I suggested that just as certain geographical locations (islands, valleys, oases, etc.) are said to ‘create their own weather’, some social environments (e.g. racecourses, pubs, universities, etc.) also have a distinctive ‘micro-climate’, with behaviour patterns, norms and values that may be different from the cultural mainstream.

23. Nicknames can also, of course, often be used for less friendly purposes, including expression of hostility, social division and social control, but this is not their function in the pub.

24. Females do sometimes participate in these bantering pub-argument games, but much less frequently and usually with considerably less enthusiasm than males. When women argue, it tends to be ‘for real’.

25. Of course, some arguments in pubs do escalate into physical violence, but pub-arguments of the type described here take place constantly, and our research has shown that physical violence is very unusual, occurring only on the rare occasions when the rules outlined here are broken. The issues of aggression and violence, and their relationship with drinking, will be covered in more detail later.