Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

by Kate Fox (Author)

541 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0340818862

ISBN-10: 0340818867

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Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior
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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. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more ...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.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder & Stoughton (April 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 424 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0340818867
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340818862
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 1.1 x 7.72 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,713,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,916 in General Great Britain Travel Guides
- #2,480 in Customs & Traditions Social Sciences
- #10,348 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
541 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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I have found my people!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2011

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In Watching the English, social anthropologist Kate Fox takes a look at her own tribe with a view to coming up with a "grammar of Englishness." She watches the English quite literally, observing how they behave when in line at a coffee shop or on a train or while using a cellphone, eavesdropping on their conversations, performing experiments or testing hypotheses on unwitting strangers when she's out in public. Sometimes she'll even outright interview them:

"A researcher with a notebook is a nuisance, of course, but much less scary than a random stranger trying to start a conversation for no apparent reason. If you simply start chatting to English people on trains or buses, they tend to assume you are either drunk, drugged or deranged. Social scientists are not universally liked or appreciated, but we are still marginally more acceptable than alcoholics and escaped lunatics."

Watching the English is absolutely fascinating and sometimes very funny. The author's writing is lively and lucid, but beyond her intentional humor there is humor inherent simply in taking a (relatively) detached look at behavior which most of the time we take for granted. (Just so, comedians like Jerry Seinfeld make us notice the humor in our everyday behavior.)

Fox neatly ties up her findings in the end with a diagram showing the ten English characteristics she's tracked throughout the book: at the core of it all is social dis-ease, but other characteristics include humor (i.e., humour), class consciousness, "Eeyorishness" (that is, a tendency to moan about things), and modesty. In sum, I loved the book, and I love the English, with whom--it seems clear to me now--I have much in common.

-- Debra Hamel

6 people found this helpful

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Emi Bevacqua

A bit dated for 2019

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2019

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I bought this in preparation for moving to London, it wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped - while it's an entertaining overview, it's a bit dated by 2019. I felt this book was written for the English to read and nod along to, rather than an instructional guide for foreign residents.

And as someone who's just lived 3 years in Germany, it bothered me she'd mention the toilet shelf without bothering to discern its purpose. It's not a closely guarded secret, I learned about it and I'm not even an anthropologist.

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Sergiusz Kalinowski

by the English, on the English, for the English...

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2014

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... and those non-English who want to get in the minds of same.
Kate Fox does an adequate* job of trying to dissect the national character / mindset of her compatriots and boiling their many peculiarities down to 15 or so key terms. The real beauty of the book is that while she does all that, she *is* writing from an English perspective, and so - knowingly - falls prey to the self-same mind patterns. Really, I don't see how it could be any more meta :)
"Watching the English" is full of humour, understatement, irony, self-jabs, and a whole lot of mock-moaning; in other words, just what a proper English book should be.
Yes, I loved it. While it does get a bit laboured at times, it is punctuated by so many pearls of wit that the "labour" bit is easily forgiven.

* notice my cack-handed attempt at understatement. Translated for non-English, it means "splendid".

2 people found this helpful

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Diego Zlotogora

The English exposed

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2012

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I wish there were more books like "watching the English" to understand the people and culture of all countries. It is simply a portrait of the main aspects of English society, written by an anthropologist in a very entertaining (and sometimes hilarious) way.
There are several chapters that cover most of the social interactions among the English. Of course, there is a dedicated chapter about weather conversartion (which the author says it can be used either as a simple greeting, or an ice-breaker or as a displacement subject when conversation on other matters falters). But she goes much beyond that distinctive classic of Englishness, such as 'the long goodbye rule', 'the self-deprecation rule', 'the seven words' that will demote you to working class, 'the invisible queue rule', 'pub talk rules', 'shopping as saving rule', 'the underdog rule' and many other that not only will descibe you the way the English behave but also how you can blend easily among them.
I recommend it to anyone interested in knowing and understanding English society.

2 people found this helpful

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VickyN

Wish I'd read it 17 years ago

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2011

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I am English and moved to America in 1994; if this book had been around then I would have saved myself a lot of offended silences and quizzical looks. Or is that quizzical silences and offended looks? For instance, Kate explains to me exactly why telling people that 'I'm going to sell my kids back to the gypsies' doesn't go down very well over here, and why my American family think I'm mad or very unhappy when I play down how my house/car/clothes/job/hair looks. When I enter into a little enjoyable moaning, Kate tells me why it's not enjoyable for those around me. Now I'd like her to write a book about Americans; if I have any quibbles it's that she sometimes says Americans don't do something 'English' when I know they do, all the time (viz. home improvement). But generally, Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ms. Fox. Even my mother-in-law, whose parents were off-the-boat English, has learned where her own self-effacing and moderate nature has come from, and made me give her copy back! I had to buy my own! Typical!

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ben

Hilarious and insightful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 6, 2021

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A hugely enjoyable read. Even my second reading made me laugh out loud, and even more frequently. If you want to be really cheered up and entertained with some well-crafted observation of the embarrassingly familiar then do read this book - its a joy. The author is an anthropologist who has turned her non-judgemental attention to examining the unconscious rules we live by in our daily social interactions. Why we rarely launch into conversation with neighbours when commuting but do when washing the car or tending the hedge; how one actually gets served in a busy pub; and whether we shake hands, embrace, or just smile stupidly when we meet; and what happens when someone jumps a queue. How following the rules is more important than being sensible; and how some courteously lightly smooth things over when others make a perceived social gaffe.

Well researched and surprisingly original given the topic. Written with flare, and impossible to put down. I wonder whether the author's interest was kindled by living several years abroad. This book will fascinate the English as well as those from other nations, all of whom will recognise only too well some of the seemingly absurd behaviour that clearly fills some sort of social function within English society. I now want to hear similar works written about the Welsh, Scottish, French, Italians, Norwegians, Russians, Australians...

2 people found this helpful

jacw2000

Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over - except when they are different.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2015

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"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."

The author is just such an anthropologist living among a curious tribe and reporting back to civilisation. Herself English, she explores the rich humour of exposing the bizarre irrationality of the tribe. She holds up a mirror to reflect and expose (among many other things ) queueing, pub banter, self-deprecation, moaning, fair play, work, rites of passage and so on. She also exposes anthropologists and their working methods - the toolkit of participant observation and questionnaires - to be used by both the pop anthropologist and the intrepid mud hut variety.

Curiously the man who started Mass Observation 70 years ago was a mud hut anthropologist who gave it up to study Brits in their natural environment. He had Bolton in mind but his quote is remarkably similar to the one at the top of this review.

Somehow I imagine a bloke in Papua New Guinea googling his village and guffawing with laughter as he finds a learned examination of his everyday life...

5 people found this helpful

Liz Scully

I often quote from this with clients

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2017

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Stunningly good. Funny, deep and unpacking English society with care. The section on the 'invisible queue at the bar' is uncommonly perceptive and I find myself discussing it with natives and non-natives regularly. I've given this book as a gift to people moving to the UK or feeling homesick for it at least 5 times.

If you know the country well but aren't from here you'll find answers to nagging questions and find yourself nodding with 'so that's what's going on' moments. If you're from the UK, you'll find explanations for things that are so part of the wallpaper they didn't appear to even be odd...

7 people found this helpful

Wallis and Gromitte

A cracking read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2018

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Almost embarrassing to see how we are! Very good easy-to-read summary of years of research. These sorts of things you could otherwise only come to learn about your own culture if you go traveling for a long while. It is fun to "play" some of her "games" esp the ones at the check-out or when buying an ice-cream

4 people found this helpful

Stephen Griffiths

Good humoured observations of native English behaviour.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2014

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This was recommended by a friend who lent me her paperback copy. Rather than keep it for too long I decided to buy it for my Kindle.
I've not finished reading it yet. It's the sort of book to read in installments dipping in for a chapter between reading something else.
However I must say that although I have never met the author, she seems to know a lot about me! Worrying!
It is a well observed and written with some dry humour, which I like.
If you are English you may be very familiar with and amused by the observations.
If you are not, it is a useful guide to some otherwise puzzling behaviour found in natives of this Isle.

2 people found this helpful

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