Karen Hewitt: Understanding Britain Today

Our love for the specific, for what actually works, means that we are not made comfortable by emphatic and assertive language about our individual rights. After all, the notion of 'the individual' can be as theoretical as the notion of 'the people'. If you compare us with Americans, you will find that they are taught daily to speak of 'the American people' in a public language that is positive, and to talk of themselves as individuals in language which is quite lacking in irony. In England, we find it unfriendly and rude to say anything directly. Circumlocutions, often ironic circumlocutions are almost essential.

For example: Foreign students learn that you must not use a simple imperative when you are in England. 'Sit down' sounds very rude. But strangely, 'Sit down please,' does not sound much better! Both of them are orders, and we resist orders just as we resist trying to order other people to do things. So I might say, 'Would you like to sit down?' or 'Why don't you try that chair which is more comfortable than it looks'. Each sentence is shaped to allow the other person to say, 'Thank you but I don't want to sit down' or 'I would prefer a more comfortable chair'. In other words, my conversation, at a subconscious level is always taking into account the fact that the other person may not wish to do what I suggest and that therefore that person should be offered a polite way to refuse my proposal.

Such speech is not worked out deliberately. It is how we have learned to speak and understand each other from childhood. But to foreigners, including other native speakers of English such as Americans or Australians, the speech of the English sounds long-winded, insincere and hypocritical. In fact it is extremely difficult for us to speak or write in any other way. If I write emails to foreigners who are struggling with the language I have to go through the message cutting out all those 'woulds' and 'mights' and 'perhapses'. At the end I feel as if I have written a very rude message, even if it is clear and unambiguous. Why do we use language in this way?

The answer - and here we are getting to the heart of the matter - is because the English are trained from an early age to judge and assess social responses. This is perhaps the most difficult characteristic to explain because it is so deep-rooted as to be instinctive. Russians who are feeling unhappy or bad-tempered or confused do not hesitate to tell people what they feel. They are comfortable communicating their private worlds to others. And when their mood changes, what they say changes too. From the Russian point of view this is being emotionally honest. Humans beings are changeable creatures, so why should they try to disguise their emotions? Such openness co-exists with that Russian willingness to accept social conformity when told what to do by their leaders. In England, the opposite happens.

From babyhood, English children are taught that other people want their privacy. 'Other people do not want to hear about your plans or your unhappiness, or about what happened to you at nursery or school or with your friends. It is fine for the family to know, but you should not 'impose' yourself on other people.' (Parents are rarely conscious that they are teaching these rules, because the rules have been deeply internalised.) So the English hesitate to talk to people whom we do not know until we are sure that they want to talk to us. If two or three people with this rule somewhere deep in their minds meet and do not know each other, they may be silent or unwelcoming for a long, long time! Even if each of them individually would love to talk to the others, they would need one of those three to be unusually bold in order to get the conversation started. (Personally, I enjoy the culture of Russian trains where people who do not know each other readily exchange life stories, opinions and confessions. Most English people would be much more wary of engaging the attention of a stranger because they would be forcing him to answer politely in return.)

When someone - say, a child in the school playground - does not know the rules and loudly declares what she feels, even cries, the other children will feel embarrassed for her. And because of their embarrassment they may not rush to comfort her. Poor lonely child! you may say. Yes, this is the origin of that reputation of the English for heartlessness. But there is another side to this social training.

Nobody can decide and announce: 'You must not behave like that!' Part of our training is not to impose on other people even when we think they are behaving bizarrely or stupidly. So this explains the other observed truth about England - that we tolerate eccentrics, difficult people, nonconformists in social behaviour. Indeed we do. (A trivial example. In Russia elderly women come up to me and tell me how to dress - they insist that I put a scarf around my throat. It is inconceivable that an English elderly woman would do the same. She may think I am being foolish, but if I want to be cold, that is my affair!)

You should be able to see that this culture of emotional privacy also leads to strong resistance to leaders - or anyone else - who tells us that we are all agreed in the next steps. We learn to compromise, we may dislike but we obey the law, but we do not expect or encourage uniformity.

One example of our socially inhibited training is often commented on by foreigners. The English are not a very hospitable nation. I wish we were but I know that only a minority of us find it easy or comfortable to invite others to our homes. I believe the reason is closely allied to the previous discussion. 'If I invite someone he or she may want to refuse. How can I help him or her to avoid accepting my invitation? Well, the simplest way is not to ask in the first place.' Again, I do not think this is carefully thought-out; it is an instinctive avoidance of intimacy with others who may not want to be intimate - especially with foreigners who may not want our invitations but who will not know how to refuse them. (If you believe that this is crazy, so do I. But I understand in a way that I do not understand for example, your version of social conformity. It's a question of culture.)

Another example: Russian hosts lay the most beautiful tables. Why, they wonder, are English hosts so sloppy, so untroubled by the grand effect? The answer is that those who do invite you to their home do not feel that they are on display. Some English people enjoy showing off their tableware and crystal glass as much as you do, but that no English person feels that he (or she) has to behave just like everyone else. Many are simply informal and see no reason why they should impose on themselves an artificial formality; others will devote hours to cooking but quite forget to wipe the table, others will be offering round drinks while everyone prepares the meal. Oh yes, it happens in Russia; but it happens much more often in England. This kind of casualness is simply a manifestation of the fact that we do not see why we should copy other people or follow a formula. We like to be ourselves. It is a different aspect of our sense of privacy.

And yet - and yet - cultures do change. The stereotype of the reserved Englishman and Englishwoman is in so many ways out of date. In the 1960s (fifty years ago!) we were for a few years the most obviously demonstrative people on earth - or so we said. In more recent decades the success of much of our multi-cultural world means that we have absorbed cultural assumptions from other ethnic groups such as the splendours of street carnivals, open-air eating and drinking, greater demonstrativeness with our children, and greater public expressions of emotion - in sport, in grieving at death, and in reporting on disasters.