Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour - Softcover

Fox, Kate

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340752122 ISBN 13: 9780340752128

Publisher: Hodder And Stoughton, 2005

Synopsis

In WATCHING THE ENGLISH anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. Her minute observation of the way we talk, dress, eat, drink, work, play, shop, drive, flirt, fight, queue - and moan about it all - exposes the hidden rules that we all unconsciously obey.

The rules of weather-speak. The Importance of Not Being Earnest rule. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo. Humour rules. Pub etiquette. Table manners. The rules of bogside reading. The dangers of excessive moderation. The eccentric-sheep rule. The English 'social dis-ease'.

Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.

About this title

Review:

If you like this kind of anthropology (and I do) there is a wealth of it to enjoy in this book. Her observations are acute...fortunately she doesn't write like an anthropologist but like an English woman -with amusement, not solemnity, able to laugh at herself as well as us. (Daily Mail)

Book Description:

How does THE NAKED APE behave when he's dressed? The quirks and habits of the English laid bare.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder And Stoughton
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0340752122
• ISBN 13: 9780340752128
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 424