- •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
Napkin Rings and Other Horrors
Napkins are useful and versatile objects – as class indicators, that is. We have already seen that to call them ‘serviettes’ is a grave social solecism – one of the ‘seven deadly sins’ unmistakably signalling lower-class origins. But there are many other ways in which napkins can set off English class-radar bleepers, including, in chronological order from the beginning to the end of a meal:
setting the table with napkins folded into over-elaborate, origami-like shapes (‘smart’ people just fold them simply);
standing folded napkins upright in glasses (they should be placed either on or next to the plates);
tucking one’s napkin into waistband or collar (it should be left loose on the lap);
using one’s napkin to scrub or wipe vigorously at one’s mouth (gentle dabbing is correct);
folding one’s napkin up carefully at the end of the meal (it should be left carelessly crumpled on the table);
or, even worse, putting rolled-up napkins into napkin rings (only people who say ‘serviette’ use napkin rings).
The first two of these napkin-sins are based on the principle that over-fussy, ‘genteel’ daintiness is a lower-middle-class trait. Inelegant use of the napkin – tucking and scrubbing – is working class. The last two napkin-sins are abhorrent because they indicate that the napkins will be used again without being washed. Smart people would rather be given a paper napkin than a used cotton or linen one. The upper-middle classes joke about ‘the sort of people who use napkin rings’ – meaning lower/middle-middles who think they are being elegant and dainty, but are in fact being rather grubby.
While there is some point to these napkin rules (at least, the objection to re-using napkins strikes me as perfectly reasonable), the prejudice against fish knives is harder to justify. At one time, quite a number of middle-class and even upper-class English people used special knives (and forks) for eating fish. Some may have regarded this practice as a bit over-dainty and pretentious, but the outright taboo seems to date from the publication of John Betjeman’s ‘How to Get On in Society’, in which he lampoons the affectations and pretensions of a lower-middle-class housewife preparing for a dinner party. The poem begins:
Phone for the fish knives, Norman
For cook is a little unnerved
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served
Fish knives, possibly always a bit suspect, were from that moment irrevocably associated with people who say ‘pardon’ and ‘serviette’ and ‘toilet’ – and use napkin rings. Now, fish knives are also seen as hopelessly old-fashioned, and are probably only used by lower/middle-middle people of older generations. Steak knives are regarded as equally suburban, as are doilies, pastry-forks, anything gold, salt-and-pepper ‘cruets’, coasters and hostess trolleys (hotplates on a sort of wheeled table, used for keeping food warm in the dining room).
You would have thought that finger bowls – little bowls of tepid water for washing your fingers when eating food by hand – would come into the same category of precious, twee, affected, suburban daintiness, but for some reason they are acceptable, and are still seen at upper-middle and upper-class dinners. There is very little logic to any of this. Tales are often told of ignorant lower-class guests drinking from finger bowls – and of ultra-polite hosts then drinking from the bowls themselves, so as not to embarrass the guests by drawing attention to their error. You are supposed to dip your fingers briefly in the finger bowl, then pat them gently dry with your napkin – not wash and scrub and rub as though it were a bathroom sink, unless you want to activate your hosts’ class-radar systems.