I was a little confused by this as well.
The more I ask around, the more certain I am that chatting unnecessarily in a crowded rail car, calling and gesticulating for service at the bar, and (definitely!) sitting at a stranger’s table and talking to them without invitation, are all not polite behaviors in the US.
I find a lot of what ascenray has said on these topics puzzling.
I wouldn’t say this is a self-stereotype among USAicans, but it is in fact a fact of life–if there’s pressure to talk, and it’s not clear what there is to talk about, weather is pretty much what gets talked about. And everybody (almost everybody) hates it–and no one can escape without being rude!
Not that I know of. But nobody has said that it is.
This is the comment I’m reacting to:
Fox is saying that if there were no pub bar counters, English people would never be able to talk to strangers. In the United States there are few places where it’s completely socially unacceptable to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. People have started conversations with me in nearly any public place. The only time I thought it intrusive was when it happened while I was using a urinal in the men’s room.
That’s not really how Fox presents her material. She starts the book by reviewing her qualifications as a genuine social anthropologist and throughout the book reaffirms that her conclusions are drawn from actual observation. It invites the reader to take her observations (though presented with humour) as reliable.
This one is borne of your fevered imagination. I said nothing of the kind.
And despite your personal discomfort with being spoken to on public transportation, I see it happening all the time without much suffering. And people who aren’t interested in interaction usually also have the social skills to avoid extended conversation.
Specific questions for the English participants in this thread:
Ah, now this is a very British (not just English) thing. The wiki page goes into great detail about what it is and you should be able to here the latest bulletin on this page. I very often fall asleep listening to the 00:48 bulletin, it’s preceded by a little tune called “Sailing by”. It’s just comforting, and always leaves me thinking about the crews of ships out on the ocean, particularly when there are storms. The evocative names of the sea areas and the cadence of the formal weather jargon is almost poetic.
A cool snippet from the Shipping Forecast wiki article:
It’s where Hyacinth Bucket lives.
A Ford Mondeo is a good, but totally generic sedan. No one would notice if it was a Honda Accord. Not suitable for me, but I drive a Jag 
I’m dumbfounded. In my experience, subways are practically silent (conversationwise). Public buses less so, but for the most part what happens on buses (in my experience) is that one person says something addressed to no one in particular and then if someone else replies, then a conversation happens. Aside from this, in my experience, people on buses who don’t know each other just don’t talk to each other.
Except, well, to put it indelicately, a few weirdos.
There’s no skill involved with that. It’s a simple binary choice. Either I respond with a noncomital grunt (with maybe a polite smile) or I respond with more than that. If my response was a noncomital grunt or polite smile, and you keep talking to me, then the lack of skill was not on my part.
ETA: Admittedly, this is one of my buttons. I have a thread around here somewhere recounting the tale of a freaking librarian in a library who would. not. shut. up. even though all I was doing in response to anything he said was saying something like “hmm” while trying to go about my business reading my computer screen.
I eventually turned to squarely face him and started literally simply repeating the last phrase of everything he said, just kind of to entertain myself to see how he would react. I don’t now remember what happened after that.
But look–what is one supposed to do? Remain stone still and silent? That’s not really an option. A noncomital noise or gesture of some kind is practically required to avoid being a jerk. But then if someone takes just that as an invitation for them to keep on talking, then I really am stuck. I either have to be a jerk or I have to have a convesation with them I’m not interested in and have no independent obligation to engage in. The lack of skill comes from the person not noticing he’s in a one-sided conversation.
Overall, any one train car is relatively silent, but I almost always see at least one pair of strangers voluntarily interacting verbally.
It occurs to me that on the trains that I ride on, almost all the passengers are white-collar commuters, students, and middle-class tourists. If there were significant class differences among riders, I wonder if there would be more hostility to interaction.
It’s rare to see one person carrying on a conversation while the other one clearly isn’t interested. In those cases, the first person usually seems to have some kind of social-based deficiency, is really old, or is from a very different cultural background. You can’t count crazy people, old people, and foreigners when you’re generalizing about what’s considered socially acceptable.
I generally agree: based on what I’ve heard here the book takes some basically true observations, and then exaggerates them in order to form some broad conclusions and come across as funny.
WRT ordering at a bar, I think the thing is that if the server is doing something else, then it’s perfectly normal to speak to them. But if they’re serving someone they saw at the bar before you, then overtly drawing attention to yourself (speaking, gesturing, etc) looks like you want to be served first, but making eye contact and nodding says “it’s ok, get to me as soon as I can” and then they’ll get to you when they’ve served everyone else. It doesn’t make any difference at a quiet bar, but does at a busier one, and then it certainly is a little hard to get the hang of. But it does stem from perfectly natural assumptions.
Fox goes on and on about class differences and how they affect language, interpersonal interaction, taste in apparel and decoration, and choice of automobiles. I think most of this stuff is pretty much the same in other societies. The details will be different, of course. We don’t have Ford Mondeos in America.
Ahh, OK got where you’re coming from. Simply put IMHE(xperience) her observation is horseshit. Strangers will chat in a multitude of places. I am quite an antisocial person, I spend al day having to talk to and answer peoples questions, so when I go out I quite enjoy having a lot of people around that I can ignore.
Off the top of my head though I’ve struck up conversations with complete strangers at concerts, sporting events, parties held by mutual aquaintances, queues at checkouts or entrances, parks, castles… Basicaly anywhere that involves close proximity. I think that’s why she focuses on people taking at the bar. They’re going to be stood relatively close together, which gives an oportunity to converse. Or maybe the only folk in the pub who wanted to talk to her were the two old soaks who prop up the corner from noon 'til close (but that says more about her, than them :D)
I read most of the online article posted earlier, and while the book may have a significantly different tone, if her tongue isn’t firmly panted in her cheek then I’d hate to live in her world.
I think it’s a radio broadcast about weather conditions for ships. I’m not sure. Never heard it, not being a sailor.
Haven’t the faintest.
Walk across it on my way out.
It’s OK, I guess, a bit boring. No strong opinion on it.
Did I pass your test? I’m beginning to feel like this thread is “English people, justify your existence to acsenray!”
No, that’s not it at all. I’m trying to see to what extent these cultural touchstones as described by Fox are real. Your responses are genuinely educational to me.
I have travelled a fair amount in the UK over the years, and there are a couple of things that have happened to me I wish I had been warned about in advance:
This was over twenty years ago, when smoking was allowed in pubs and more people smoked. I learned after the fact that it’s rather rude to take out a pack of cigarettes and light one up without offering one to everybody at your table. It’s much along the line of buying a round, and presumably things even out at the end since you’ve been offered smokes as much as you’ve offered them to others. These days, of course, smoking isn’t even allowed in most pubs.
I had NO IDEA that an inverted peace sign or “V for victory” sign (i.e., holding your index and middle finger up in a V with the back of your hand facing outward) was an obscene gesture! Apparently, if you hold those two fingers up with the back of your hand facing you, it can mean “peace,” “V for victory,” or, in answer to the question, “how many in your party?” it can mean “two.” But turn your hand around and it’s the equivalent of flipping someone off! My wife and I walked into to little restaurant in Northumberland and the host asked, “How many are you?” I answered “two,” holding up my fingers, but holding them the wrong way. The host looked at me aghast, and said, “that’s quit rude!” It was literally months later I learned what it was I had done wrong.
Little things like that in Fox’s book would actually be useful!
I presume you bring up the Ford Mondeo because the pop-sociological category “Mondeo man” or something like it is mentioned in the book. The Mondeo is one of the archetypal “repmobiles” (company cars of sales reps and similar middle-ranking white-collar types), a very common sight on British roads. The idea is that driving a Mondeo means you are a kind of boring everyman, with 2.1 kids and a decent enough job, but hardly a high-flier. Again, a slightly broad-brush and dated idea.
Well, I think we’ve made it clear now, haven’t we? Or do you plan to list every single one of them?
That’s hilarious! Yup, it’s similar to using the middle finger. I hope you didn’t do it too often!
Only once that I was aware of!
Didn’t John Cleese have a brilliant little rant about the avoidance of embarrassment being the driving cultural force of the English in A Fish Called Wanda?