Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour [Kindle Edition] Author: Kate Fox | Language: English | ISBN:
B00486UF52 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Download Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour
Free download Download Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour [Kindle Edition] from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link Why must they talk about the weather? Witty and wise, Kate Fox reveals the quirks, habits and foibles of English people. Putting the English national character under her anthropological microscope, she finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior. Through a mixture of cultural analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Fox discovers what these codes tell us about Englishness. She demystifies the peculiar cultural rules that baffle us: The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex-apology rule. Class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more. Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look at English Society. Direct download links available for Download Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour [Kindle Edition]
- File Size: 852 KB
- Print Length: 427 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1857885082
- Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing (May 25, 2008)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00486UF52
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,523 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Customs & Traditions - #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Europe > Great Britain - #35
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Cultural
- #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Customs & Traditions - #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Europe > Great Britain - #35
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Cultural
"Really, I don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to remote corners of the world and get dysentery and malaria in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when the weirdest, most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep." - Kate Fox
WATCHING THE ENGLISH, by social anthropologist Kate Fox, is an engaging, perceptive, informative, and entertaining treatise on English (as opposed to "British") behavior in all aspects of life. At times, the author's style seems tongue-in-cheek. However, as she herself is English, this is simply a manifestation of her tribe's trait not to be seen as being too earnest and, while the subject is to be taken seriously, not too seriously.
In what must have been a prodigious research effort (yielding 416 pages of small type), Fox characterizes English behavior and attitudes as they relate to weather, social small talk, humor, linguistics, pubs, mobile phones, home, queues, transportation, work, play, dress, food, sex, secondary education, marriage, funerals, religion, and recurring "calendrical rites" (e.g. birthdays and holidays). Within these categories, Kate addresses everything from the pets and jam to the furniture that the English favor. And, since class consciousness is irrevocably embedded in the national social fabric, all is explained relative to the various classes: lower- and upper-working, lower-, middle- and upper-middle, and upper. As an example, when it comes to one's automobile:
"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.
I started this book 3 days after returning from my first trip to America. Whilst in America I became aware of the huge cultural difference between the friendly people of the USA and traditional Brits amongst whom I've lived almost my whole life - I found much of American behaviour inexplicable and rather rude and personal towards someone they didn't know. I breathed a sigh of relief when returning to England, back amongst normal people who aren't continually nosy and telling you what they think about politics, religion and anything else the whole time.
I wish I'd read this book before I went. Not that I wouldn't have found a lot of American behaviour strange after reading it (I would still have done) but I would have been more aware of my cultural disabilities and how weird I must seem to them.
That's the power of this book - you can dip into almost any page, read a paragraph and say "that's me!" Kate Fox has studied the English for 10 years with remarkable acuity and she is able to identify behaviours that, to us, are entirely normal but are actually just part of our collective odd English behaviour patterns. When a man I had just been introduced to in America said "So, tell me all about yourself" I was left gaping at him in horror; `Watching The English' describes how people in the UK never share personal information unless they know someone particularly well - and in fact most people don't even introduce themselves to start with - my horror was expected and justified as I had never before been called upon to `blow my own trumpet' and it is completely counter to British reserve and our self-effacing nature.
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