THE 'GRAMMAR' OF ENGLISHNESS

We are constantly being told that the English have lost their national identity - that there is no such thing as 'Englishness'. There has been a spate of books bemoaning this alleged identity crisis, with titles ranging from the plaintive Anyone for England? to the inconsolable England: An Elegy. Having spent much of the past twelve years doing research on various aspects of English culture and social behaviour - in pubs, at racecourses, in shops, in night-clubs, on trains, on street corners - I am convinced that there is such a thing as 'Englishness', and that reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. In the research for this book, I set out to discover the hidden, unspoken rules of English behaviour, and what these rules tell us about our national identity.

My aim, if you like, was to provide a 'grammar' of English behaviour. Native speakers can rarely explain the grammatical rules of their own language. In the same way, those who are most 'fluent' in the rituals, customs and traditions of a particular culture generally lack the detachment necessary to explain the 'grammar' of these practices in an intelligible manner. This is why we have anthropologists.

…Immigrants can, of course, choose to 'go native', and some in this country become 'more English than the English'. Among my own friends, the two I would most readily describe as 'very English' are a first-generation Indian immigrant and a first-generation Polish refugee. In both cases, their degree of Englishness was initially a conscious choice, and although it has since become second nature, they can still stand back and analyse their behaviour - and explain the rules they have learnt to obey - in a way that most native English find difficult, as we tend to take these things for granted.

My sister had much the same experience when she married a Lebanese man and emigrated to Lebanon (from America) about eight years ago. She became very quickly, to her Bek'aa Valley family and neighbours, a fully 'acculturated' Lebanese village housewife, but can switch back to Englishness (or Americanness, or indeed her teenage Frenchness) as easily as she changes languages - and often does both in mid-sentence. Her children are American-Arab, with a few hints of Englishness, and equally adept at switching language, manners and mores when it suits them.

Many of those who pontificate about 'acculturation' are inclined to underestimate this element of choice. Such processes are often described in terms suggesting that the 'dominant' culture is simply imposed on unwitting, passive minorities, rather than focusing on the extent to which individuals quite consciously, deliberately, cleverly and even mockingly pick and choose among the behaviours and customs of their host culture. I accept that some degree of acculturation or conformity to English ways is often 'demanded' or effectively 'enforced' (although this would surely be true of any host culture, unless one enters it as a conquering invader or passing tourist), and the rights and wrongs of specific demands can and should be debated. But my point is that compliance with such demands is still a conscious process, and not, as some accounts of acculturation imply, a form of brainwashing.

My only way of understanding this process is to assume that every immigrant to this country is at least as bright and clever as I was when we emigrated to France, just as capable of exercising free will and maintaining a sense of their own cultural identity while complying with the demands, however irrational or unfair, of the local culture. I could crank up or tone down my Frenchness, by subtle degrees, in an entirely calculated manner. My sister can choose and calibrate her Arabness, and my immigrant friends can do the same with their Englishness, sometimes for practical social purposes, including the avoidance of exclusion, but also purely for amusement. Perhaps the earnest researchers studying acculturation just don't want to see that their 'subjects' have got the whole thing sussed, understand our culture better than we do, and are, much of the time, privately laughing at us.

It should be obvious from all of this (but I'll say it anyway) that when I speak of Englishness I am not putting a value on it, not holding it up above any other '-ness'. When I say that some immigrants are more English than others, I am not (unlike Norman Tebbit with his infamous 'Cricket Test') implying that these individuals are in any way superior, or that their rights or status as citizens should be any different from those who are less English.

And when I say that anyone can - given enough time and effort - 'learn' or'adopt' Englishness, I am not suggesting that they ought to do so.

The degree to which immigrants and ethnic minorities should be expected to adapt to fit in with English culture is a matter for debate. Where immigrants from former British colonies are concerned, perhaps the degree of acculturation demanded should match that which we achieved as uninvited residents in their cultures. Of all peoples, the English are surely historically the least qualified to preach about the importance of adapting to host- culture manners and mores. Our own track-record on this is abysmal. Wherever we settle in any numbers, we not only create pockets of utterly insular Englishness, but also often attempt to impose our cultural norms and habits on the local population.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 2035