Watching the English

PUB-TALK

The pub is a central part of English life and culture. That may sound like a standard guidebooky thing to say, but I really mean it: the importance of the pub in English culture cannot be over-emphasized. Over three-quarters of the adult population go to pubs, and over a third are 'regulars', visiting the pub at least once a week. For many it is a second home. It also provides the perfect 'representative sample' of the English population for any social scientist, as pubs are frequented by people of all ages, all social classes, all education-levels and every conceivable occupation. It would be impossible even to attempt to understand Englishness without spending a lot of time in pubs, and it would almost be possible to achieve a good understanding of Englishness without ever leaving the pub.

I say 'almost' because the pub - like all drinking-places, in all cultures - is a special environment, with its own rules and social dynamics. My colleagues at SIRC and I have conducted quite extensive cross-cultural research on drinking-places21 (well, someone had to do it) which showed that drinking is, in all societies, essentially a social activity, and that most cultures have specific, designated environments for communal drinking. Our research revealed three significant cross-cultural similarities or 'constants' regarding such drinking-places:

1. In all cultures, the drinking-place is a special environment, a separate social world with its own customs and values

2. Drinking-places tend to be socially integrative, egalitarian environments, or at least environments in which status distinctions are based on different criteria from those operating in the outside world

3. The primary function of drinking-places is the facilitation of social bonding

So, although the pub is very much part of English culture, it also has its own 'social micro-climate'22. Like all drinking-places, it is in some respects a 'liminal' zone, an equivocal, marginal, borderline state, in which one finds a degree of 'cultural remission' - a structured, temporary relaxation or suspension of normal social controls (also known as 'legitimised deviance' or 'time-out behaviour'). It is partly because of this caveat that an examination of the rules of English pub-talk should tell us a lot about Englishness.