Humour
Rules
The heading can be read both in the straightforward sense of 'rules about
humour' and in the graffiti sense of 'humour rules, OK!'*)
The latter is in fact more appropriate, as the most noticeable and important 'rule'
about humour in English conversation is its dominance and pervasiveness. Humour
rules. Humour governs. Humour is omnipresent and omnipotent. I wasn't even going
to do a separate chapter on humour, because I knew that, like class, it
permeates every aspect of English life and culture, and would therefore just
naturally crop up in different contexts throughout the book. It did, but the
trouble with English humour is that it is so pervasive that to convey its role
in our lives I would have to mention it in every other paragraph, which would
eventually become tedious - so it got its own chapter after all.
There is an awful lot of guff talked about the English
Sense of Humour, including many patriotic attempts to prove that our sense of
humour is somehow unique and superior to everyone else's. Many English people
seem to believe that we have some sort of global monopoly, if not on humour
itself, then at least on certain 'brands' of humour - the high-class ones such
as wit and especially irony. My findings indicate that while there may indeed be
something distinctive about English humour, the real 'defining characteristic'
is the value we put on humour, the central importance of humour in
English culture and social interactions.
In
other cultures, there is 'a time and a place' for humour; it is a special,
separate kind of talk. In English conversation, there is always an undercurrent
of humour. We can barely manage to say 'hello' or comment on the weather without
somehow contriving to make a bit of a joke out of it, and most English
conversations will involve at least some degree of banter, teasing, irony,
understatement, humorous self-deprecation, mockery or just silliness. Humour is
our 'default mode', if you like: we do not have to switch it on deliberately,
and we cannot switch it off. For the English, the rules of humour are the
cultural equivalent of natural laws we obey them automatically, rather in
the way that we obey the law of gravity.
At
the most basic level, an underlying rule in all English conversation is the
proscription of 'earnestness'. Although we may not have a monopoly on humour, or
even on irony, the English are probably more acutely sensitive than any other
nation to the distinction between 'serious' and 'solemn', between 'sincerity'
and 'earnestness'.
This distinction is crucial to any kind of
understanding of Englishness. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: if you
are not able to grasp these subtle but vital differences, you will never
understand the English and even if you speak the language fluently, you will
never feel or appear entirely at home in conversation with the English. Your
English may be impeccable, but your behavioural 'grammar' will be full of
glaring errors.
Once you have become sufficiently sensitized to these
distinctions, the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule is really quite simple.
Seriousness is acceptable, solemnity is prohibited. Sincerity is allowed,
earnestness is strictly forbidden. Pomposity and self-importance are outlawed.
Serious matters can be spoken of seriously, but one must never take oneself too
seriously. The ability to laugh at ourselves, although it may be rooted in a
form of arrogance, is one of the more endearing characteristics of the English.
(At least, I hope I am right about this: if I have overestimated our ability to
laugh at ourselves, this book will be rather unpopular.)
To
take a deliberately extreme example, the kind of hand-on-heart, gushing
earnestness and pompous, Bible-thumping solemnity favoured by almost all
American politicians would never win a single vote in this country we watch
these speeches on our news programmes with a kind of smugly detached amusement,
wondering how the cheering crowds can possibly be so credulous as to fall for
this sort of nonsense. When we are not feeling smugly amused, we are cringing
with vicarious embarrassment: how can these politicians bring themselves to
utter such shamefully earnest platitudes, in such ludicrously solemn tones? We
expect politicians to speak largely in platitudes, of course ours are no
different in this respect it is the earnestness that makes us wince. The
same goes for the gushy, tearful acceptance speeches of American actors at the
Oscars and other awards ceremonies, to which English television viewers across
the country all respond with the same finger-down-throat 'I'm going to be sick'
gesture. You will rarely see English Oscar-winners indulging in these
heart-on-sleeve displays their speeches tend to be either short and
dignified or self-deprecatingly humorous, and even so they nearly always manage
to look uncomfortable and embarrassed. Any English thespian who dares to break
these unwritten rules is ridiculed and dismissed as a 'luvvie'.
And Americans, although among the
easiest to scoff at, are by no means the only targets of our cynical censure.
The sentimental patriotism of leaders and the portentous earnestness of writers,
artists, actors, musicians, pundits and other public figures of all nations are
treated with equal derision and disdain by the English, who can spot the
slightest hint of self-importance at twenty paces, even on a grainy television
picture and in a language we don't understand.
Kate Fox, Watching the English, The Hidden Rules of
English Behaviour, 2004, London, pp. 61 63
LINKS:
a few reviews:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/jul/24/highereducation.news1
http://www.sirc.org/news/watching_the_english.shtml
http://www.thememorybank.co.uk/2006/05/11/kate-foxs-watching-the-english/
http://www.york.ac.uk/ipup/projects/britishness/discussion/fox.html
http://www.popularscience.co.uk/reviews/rev367.htm
http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com/2007/04/50-books_30.html
http://www.abebooks.com/Watching-English-Kate-Fox/1150964006/bd
*) x rules, OK:
http://ask.metafilter.com/25979/AskMe-Rules-OK
*) Chelsea rules, OK!
http://www.google.de/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_deDE310DE310&q=Chelsea+rules%2c+OK%21