Watching the English

HUMOUR RULES

Spend a day in any English workplace, from a street-market to a merchant bank, and you will notice that one of the most striking features of English working life is the undercurrent of humour. I do not mean that all English workers and businessmen spend their time telling raucous, thigh-slapping jokes, nor that we are 'good-humoured' in the sense of happy or cheerful: I am talking about the more subtle forms of humour - wit, irony, understatement, banter, teasing, pomposity-pricking - which are an integral part of almost all English social interaction.

Actually, I lied in that first sentence: if you are English, you could easily spend a day among English workers and business people without noticing the omnipresent humour - in fact you probably do this every day. Even now that I've prompted you to be conscious of it, the humour in your workplace interactions will be so familiar, so normal, so ingrained that you may find it hard to 'stand back' far enough to see it. Foreigners, on the other hand, tend to notice it straight away - or rather, to notice something, not always immediately identifiable as humour, which they find baffling. In my discussions with immigrants and other foreign informants, I found that the English sense of humour, in various guises, was one of the most common causes of misunderstanding and confusion in their dealings with the English at work. All of the unwritten rules of English humour contributed in some measure to this confusion, but the biggest stumbling blocks appeared to be the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule and the rules of irony.

The Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule

Our acute sensitivity to the distinction between seriousness and solemnity, between sincerity and earnestness, is not always fully understood or appreciated by foreign visitors, whose cultures tend to allow rather more blurring of these boundaries than is permitted among the English. In most other cultures, taking oneself too seriously may be a fault, but it is not a sin - a bit of self-important pomposity or over-zealous earnestness is tolerated, perhaps even expected, in discussion of important work or business matters. In the English workplace, however, the hand-on-heart gusher and the pompous pontificator are mercilessly ridiculed - if not to their faces, then certainly behind their backs. There are such people, of course, and the higher their status, the less likely they are to be made aware of their errors, but the English in general tend to be subconsciously sensitive to these taboos, and usually avoid overstepping the invisible lines.

The Importance of Not Being Earnest rule is implicit in our whole attitude to work. The first 'guiding principle' I mentioned was that we take work seriously, but not too seriously. If your work is interesting, you are allowed to be interested in it - even to the point of being 'a bit of a workaholic'; but if you are too much of a workaholic, or overzealous about an intrinsically uninteresting job, you will be regarded as 'sad' and pathetic and it will be suggested that you should 'get a life'. It is not done to be too keen.

Training in Not Being Earnest starts early: among English schoolchildren, there is an unwritten rule forbidding excessive enthusiasm for academic work. In some schools, working hard for exams is permitted, but one must moan about it a lot, and certainly never admit to enjoying it. Even at the most academically-minded establishments, the over-earnest 'swot' or teacher's pet - currently known as a 'geek', 'nerd', 'suck' or 'boffin' - will be unpopular and subject to ridicule. Pupils who actively enjoy studying, or find a particular subject fascinating, or take pride in their academic prowess, will carefully conceal their eagerness under a mask of feigned boredom and cynical detachment.

The English are often accused of being anti-intellectual, and while there may be a grain of truth in this, I am inclined to think that it is a slight misinterpretation: what looks like anti-intellectualism is often in fact a combination of anti-earnestness and anti-boastfulness. We don't mind people being 'brainy' or clever, as long as they don't make a big song-and-dance about it, don't preach or pontificate at us, don't show off and don't take themselves too seriously. If someone shows signs of any of these tendencies (all unfortunately rather common among intellectuals), the English respond with our cynical national catchphrase 'Oh, come off it!'

Our instinctive avoidance of earnestness results in a way of conducting business or work-related discussions that the uninitiated foreigner finds quite disturbing: a sort of offhand, dispassionate, detached manner - always giving the impression, as one of my most perceptive foreign informants put it, 'of being rather underwhelmed by the whole thing, including themselves and the product they were supposed to be trying to sell me'. This impassive, undemonstrative demeanour seems to be normal practice across all trades and professions, from jobbing builders to high-price barristers. It is not done to get too excited about one's products or services - one must not be seen to care too much, however desperate one may in fact be to close a deal: this would be undignified. This dispassionate approach works perfectly well with English customers and clients, as there is nothing the English detest more than an over-zealous salesman, and excessive keenness will only make us cringe and back off. But our unexcitable manner can be a problem when dealing with foreigners, who expect us to show at least a modicum of enthusiasm for our work, particularly when we are trying to persuade others of its value or benefits.

Irony and Understatement Rules

The English predilection for irony, particularly our use of the understatement, only makes matters worse. Not only do we fail to exhibit the required degree of enthusiasm for our work or products, but we then compound the error by making remarks such as 'Well, it's not bad, considering' or 'You could do a lot worse,' when trying to convince someone that our loft conversions or legal acumen or whatever are really the best that money can buy. Then we have a tendency to say 'Well, I expect we'll manage somehow,' when we mean 'Yes, certainly, no trouble' and 'That would be quite helpful,' when we mean 'For Christ's sake, that should have been done yesterday!'; and 'We seem to have a bit of a problem,' when there has been a complete and utter disaster. (Another typically English response to, say, a catastrophic meeting where a million-pound deal has fallen through, would be 'That all went rather well, don't you think?')

It takes foreign colleagues and clients a while to realise that when the English say 'Oh really? How interesting!' they might well mean 'I don't believe a word of it, you lying toad'. Or they might not. They might just mean 'I'm bored and not really listening but trying to be polite'. Or they might be genuinely surprised and truly interested. You'll never know. There is no way of telling: even the English themselves, who have a pretty good 'sixth sense' for detecting irony, cannot always be entirely sure. And this is the problem with the English irony-habit: we do sometimes say what we mean, but our constant use of irony is a bit like crying wolf - when there really is a wolf, when we do mean what we say, our audience is not surprisingly somewhat sceptical, or, if foreign, completely bewildered. The English are accustomed to this perpetual state of uncertainty, and as Priestley says, this hazy atmosphere in which 'very rarely is everything clear-cut' is certainly favourable to humour. In the world of work and business, however, even one of my most staunchly English informants admitted that 'a bit more clarity might be helpful,' although, he added, 'we seem to muddle through well enough.'

An Indian immigrant, who has been valiantly trying to do business with the English for many years, told me that it took him a while to get to grips with English irony because although irony is universal 'the English do not do irony the way Indians do it. We do it in a very heavy-handed way, with lots of winks and raised eyebrows and exaggerated tones to let you know we are being ironic. We might say "Oh yes, do you think so?" when we don't believe someone, but we will do it with all the signals blazing. In fact, most other nations do this - give lots of clues, I mean - in my experience. Only the English do irony with a completely straight face. I do realise that is how it should be done, Kate, and yes it is much more amusing - Indian irony is not funny at all, really, with all those big neon signs saying "irony" - but you know the English can be a bit too bloody subtle for their own good sometimes'.

Most English workers, however, far from being concerned about the difficulties it poses for foreigners, are immensely proud of our sense of humour. In a survey conducted by a social psychologist friend of mine, Peter Collett, experienced Euro-hopping British businessmen perceived the business climate in this country to be more light-hearted and humorous than in any other country in Europe, except Ireland (it was not entirely clear whether we felt the Irish had a better sense of humour, or just that we found them funnier). Only the Spanish even came close to matching us, and the poor Germans got the lowest humour-score of all, reflecting the popular stereotype in this country that Germans have absolutely no sense of humour - or perhaps that we find them difficult to laugh at, which is not quite the same thing.