- •Kate Fox
- •Watching the English
- •Watching the english
- •Contents
- •Introduction – Anthropology at Home
- •Introductionanthropology at home
- •The ‘grammar’ of englishness
- •Participant observation and its discontents
- •The Good, the Bad and the Uncomfortable
- •My Family and other Lab Rats
- •Trust me, I’m an anthropologist
- •Boring but important
- •The nature of culture
- •Rule making
- •Globalization and tribalization
- •Class and race
- •Britishness and englishness
- •Stereotypes and cultural genomics
- •Part one conversation codes the weather
- •The rules of english weather-speak The Reciprocity Rule
- •The Context Rule
- •The Agreement Rule
- •Exceptions to the Agreement Rule
- •The Weather Hierarchy Rule
- •Snow and the Moderation Rule
- •The Weather-as-family Rule
- •The Shipping Forecast Ritual
- •Weather-speak rules and englishness
- •Grooming-talk
- •Humour rules
- •The importance of not being earnest rule
- •The ‘Oh, Come Off It!’ Rule
- •Irony rules
- •The Understatement Rule
- •The Self-deprecation Rule
- •Humour and comedy
- •Humour and class
- •Humour rules and englishness
- •Linguistic class codes
- •The vowels vs consonants rule
- •Terminology rules – u and non-u revisited
- •The Seven Deadly Sins
- •Serviette
- •‘Smart’ and ‘Common’ Rules
- •Class-denial Rules
- •Linguistic class codes and englishness
- •Emerging talk-rules: the mobile phone
- •Pub-talk
- •The rules of english pub-talk The Sociability Rule
- •The Invisible-queue Rule
- •The Pantomime Rule
- •Pub-talk rules and englishness
- •Part two behaviour codes home rules
- •The moat-and-drawbridge rule
- •Nestbuilding rules
- •The Territorial-marking Rule
- •Class rules
- •Matching and Newness Rules
- •The Brag-wall Rule
- •The Satellite-dish Rule
- •The Eccentricity Clause
- •House-talk rules
- •The ‘Nightmare’ Rule
- •Money-talk Rules
- •Improvement-talk Rules
- •Class Variations in House-talk Rules
- •The Awful Estate-agent Rule
- •Garden rules
- •‘Your Own Front Garden, You May Not Enjoy’
- •The Front-garden Social-availability Rule (and ‘Sponge’ Methodology)
- •The Counter-culture Garden-sofa Exception
- •The Back-garden Formula
- •The nspcg Rule
- •Class Rules
- •Class Indicators and the Eccentricity Clause
- •The Ironic-gnome Rule
- •Home rules and englishness
- •Rules of the road
- •Public transport rules
- •The Denial Rule
- •Exceptions to the Denial Rule
- •The Politeness Exception
- •The Information Exception
- •The Moan Exception
- •The Mobile-phone Ostrich Exception
- •Courtesy rules
- •‘Negative-politeness’ Rules
- •Bumping Experiments and the Reflex-apology Rule
- •Rules of Ps and Qs
- •Taxi Exceptions to the Denial Rule – the Role of Mirrors
- •Queuing rules
- •The Indirectness Rule
- •The Paranoid Pantomime Rule
- •Body-language and Muttering Rules
- •The Unseen Choreographer Rule
- •The Fair-play Rule
- •The Drama of Queuing
- •A Very English Tribute
- •Car rules
- •The Status-indifference Rule
- •Class Rules The ‘Mondeo Test’
- •The ‘Mercedes-Test’
- •Car-care and Decoration Rules
- •The Mobile Castle Rule
- •The Ostrich Rule
- •Road-rage and the ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be’ Rule
- •Courtesy Rules
- •Fair-play Rules
- •Road rules and englishness
- •Work to rule
- •The muddle rules
- •Humour rules
- •The Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule
- •Irony and Understatement Rules
- •The modesty rule – and the ‘bumpex’ school of advertising
- •The polite procrastination rule
- •The money-talk taboo
- •Variations and the Yorkshire Inversion
- •Class and the Vestigial Trade-prejudice Rule
- •The moderation rule
- •Safe, Sensible, Bourgeois Aspirations
- •Future Stability More Important Than Fun
- •Industrious, Diligent and Cautious with Money
- •The Dangers of Excessive Moderation
- •The fair-play rule
- •Moaning rules
- •The Monday-morning Moan
- •Dress codes and englishness
- •Food rules
- •The ambivalence rule
- •Anti-earnestness and obscenity rules
- •Tv-dinner rules
- •The novelty rule
- •Moaning and complaining rules
- •The Silent Complaint
- •The Apologetic Complaint
- •The Loud, Aggressive, Obnoxious Complaint
- •The ‘Typical!’ Rule Revisited
- •Culinary class codes
- •The Health-correctness Indicator
- •Timing and Linguistic Indicators Dinner/Tea/Supper Rules
- •Lunch/Dinner Rules
- •Breakfast Rules – and Tea Beliefs
- •Table Manners and ‘Material Culture’ Indicators Table Manners
- •‘Material Culture’ Indicators
- •The Knife-holding Rule
- •Forks and the Pea-eating Rules
- •The ‘Small/Slow Is Beautiful’ Principle
- •Napkin Rings and Other Horrors
- •Port-passing Rules
- •The meaning of chips
- •Chips, Patriotism and English Empiricism
- •Chip-sharing Rules and Sociability
- •Food rules and englishness
- •Rules of sex
Car-care and Decoration Rules
But class distinctions, and class anxieties, don’t stop with the make of car you choose to drive. The English will also gauge your social rank by the appearance and condition of your car – the way in which you care for it, or do not care for it.
The unwritten class rules involved in car care are even more revealing than those governing our choice of car, because we are less consciously aware of following them. The English all know, although we won’t admit it, that our car choice is a class indicator; and we all know, although we pretend not to, exactly which cars are associated with which classes. But many people are unaware that the state and condition of their car may be broadcasting even more powerful class signals than its make.
How clean and shiny – or dirty and scruffy – is your car? As a crude rule of thumb: spotless, shiny cars are the hallmark of the middle-middle, lower-middle and upper-working classes; while dirty, neglected cars are characteristic of the uppers, upper-middles and lower-workings (or in many cases ‘not-workings’ – the deprived, unemployed, underclasses). In other words, dirty cars are associated with both the highest and very lowest ends of the social scale, clean cars with the middle ranks.
But it’s not quite as simple as that. More specific class distinctions depend not only on the cleanliness of your car, but also on precisely how it got that way. Do you wash and polish the car yourself, lovingly and religiously every weekend, in the driveway or street outside your house? Then you are almost certainly lower-middle or upper-working. Do you take it frequently to a car-wash? Then you are probably either middle-middle or lower-middle with middle-middle aspirations (if you are upper-middle, your car-care habits betray middle-middle origins). Do you simply rely on the English weather to sluice off the worst of the grime for you, only resorting to a car-wash or bucket when you can no longer see out of the windows, or when people start finger-writing graffiti in the dirt on the boot? Then you are either upper class39, upper-middle or lower-working/underclass.
This last rule might seem to suggest that one cannot distinguish between an upper-class car and an under-class one. In terms of degree of neglect, it is indeed impossible to tell the difference, but this is where one has to take the make of car into consideration as well. At the higher end of the social scale, the filthy car is likely to be a Continental make (or, if British, either a ‘country’ four-wheel drive, a Mini or something grand such as an old Jaguar, Bentley or Daimler); while at the lower end, the grubby vehicle is more likely to be British, American or Japanese.
More or less the same principle applies to the state of the interior of the car. A scrupulously tidy car indicates an upper-working to middle-middle owner, while a lot of rubbish, apple cores, biscuit crumbs, crumpled bits of paper and general disorder suggests an owner from either the top or the bottom of the social hierarchy. And there are still smaller clues and finer distinctions. If you not only have a tidy car, but also hang your suit-jacket carefully on the little hook thoughtfully provided for this purpose by the car manufacturers, you are lower-middle or possibly at the lower end of middle-middle class. (All other classes simply sling their jacket on the back seat.) If you hang your jacket on a coat-hanger attached to the little hook, you are definitely lower-middle. If you also hang a neatly-ironed shirt on a coat-hanger from the little hook, to change into before arriving at your ‘important meeting’, you are lower-middle of working-class origins, and anxious to proclaim your white-collar status.
There are minor variations to the interior car-care class rules, relating mainly to sex-differences. Women of all classes generally tend to have somewhat less tidy cars than men – they are rather more prone to scattering sweet-wrappers and tissues, and leaving stray gloves, scarves, maps, notes and other paraphernalia strewn over the seats. Men are usually a bit more ‘car-proud’, a bit more anal about keeping such things in the glove-compartment or side-pockets, rather less tolerant of clutter and muddle. Having said that, the upper and upper-middle classes of both sexes have a high tolerance of dog-related dirt and disorder (an immunity they share, again, with the lower-working/under class). The interiors of their cars are often covered in dog hair, and the upholstery scratched to bits by scrabbling paws. The middle-middles and lower-middles confine their dogs to a caged-off section behind the back seats.
The lower-middles might even hang a flat, tree-shaped, scented dangly-thing from their rear-view mirror to counteract any doggy smells, or indeed any smells. Their houses also tend to be full of air-fresheners, loo-fresheners, carpet-fresheners and other deodorizers – as are those of the middle-middle class, but the middle-middles know that hanging scented tree-things or any other dangly objects from your rearview mirror is lower class. In fact, you will not see any decorative objects anywhere in cars belonging to the middle-middle and higher social ranks. Nodding dogs on the back shelf, Garfields clinging to windows and other cutesy animal motifs are lower-middle and working-class indicators, as are bumper-stickers and windscreen-stickers informing you of the car’s occupants’ taste in holiday destinations and leisure activities. There are only two exceptions to the no-sticker rule, and these are virtuous animal-charity stickers and smugly safety-conscious ‘Baby on Board’ notices, which you will see on the rear windscreens of both lower-middle and middle-middle cars – although the middle-middle notices are less likely to sport the logo of a nappy-manufacturer. (A few borderline upper-middles may also display ‘Baby on Board’ signs, but they are sneered at by the majority of upper-middles, particularly the intelligentsia.)