Subtle differences between the US and the UK that baffle me/you/us. - by SubJeff
gunsmoke on 7/1/2013 at 08:06
I wash dishes the Brit way, apparently. The all-in-one-sink method, I mean. I do, however, rinse. God, I miss my dishwasher.
faetal on 7/1/2013 at 13:11
Quote Posted by demagogue
There are countless little differences that come out in the use of language. I think there's a refined since of what's "lovely" in an English way of thinking... people biking around in early autumn beside a well-kept grass commons, or a child politely saying "not at all" when you say "oh thank you" for something kind they did. Things are "nice" to Americans, but there isn't like a definite sensibility to it that I ever noticed; it's just like their personal feelings of what happens to be nice, like going to some nice restaurant, "oh, well, this is a nice place".
I'm guessing the Brits you've been hanging out with were assigned to you by the ministry of cultural stereotypes then. I think the problem with these kinds of discussions are that it is difficult to compare and contrast two wildly diverse things to one another. What is an American? I'm guessing one from Louisiana would be more different to someone from New York than someone from London might be. Likewise if you flip the scenario and swap Louisiana for e.g. Glasgow.
SubJeff on 7/1/2013 at 14:24
It sounds like a class thing to me, but overall I agree with dema's take on the Brits.
I say this as someone who only moved to the UK permanently in 1993 though, despite coming to the UK for at least 6 weeks every year before that.
The working classes don't seem to have the same "sensibilities" but there are some universal habits I've found and putting the kettle on is one of them.
When I was in Taiwan I met a lot of Americans (and Canadians) and one difference between them and Brits was how relaxed they were. Brits abroad are as uptight as Brits in Britain and I almost had a fight with... another Brit. It was unreal; you're in a bar, watching the World Cup and someone from back home wants to start a fight with you over a football disagreement. I was meeker then, and less handy; if it happened now he'd have had a good hiding from me.
I also found the Americans much more open and much more interested. They don't speak like us (as per dema's post) but it was refreshingly not so stuck up.
Of course the Canadians were my favourites and my best buds out there were Canadians. They were like the Americans in that they were relaxed, but like the Brits in that they were sensible. All the foreign idiots (apart from that one Scot) were Americans.
Disclaimer: based on my 4 month stint in Taiwan in the 90s. Doesn't apply to EVERYONE.
nickie on 7/1/2013 at 18:35
According to (
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20813371) this we're much more sociable than we used to be.
Quote:
It used to be the case that British people had a reputation for buttoned-up restraint.
Today we are some of the most active social networkers in the world - sharing our party pictures, our music playlists and our deepest secrets with hardly a moment's thought. More than 60% of online users actively maintain a Facebook profile, and social networking is our favourite activity online in terms of time spent.
Still, that is all online and not face-to-face so doesn't really count to me. Perhaps we need the safety of a screen between us and the rest of the world.
demagogue on 8/1/2013 at 06:18
Of course what I said was just a generalization I noticed, nothing ever applies universally without exception. I thought about it less as how people act and more the things people recognize. Brits recognize certain things from situations, what's funny or interesting about them, than Americans.
Also in the back of my mind were, again, Japanese taking it to a whole other level. The whole "culture of cute" (kawaisa) isn't really about anime being everywhere (in day-to-day Japan it isn't around much), but it's definitely there in the way people talk or what they notice is cute in a situation, flowers, babbies, cute ideas people have, and hearing a chorus of high-pitched "kawaiiii!" isn't uncommon. But even some stoic gruff old oji-san with a deep gravelly voice, while he won't be chiming along, still recognizes what they're seeing and smiles, while a new westerner would just be oblivious. That started me thinking that all cultures have that to some extent, things they collectively recognize in a situation -- the kawaisa in Japan, the lovely in England, the joie de vivre in France maybe? -- even if they don't act on it, or even if they don't themselves think it's all that cute or lovely or joyeux. I'm maybe too close to my own culture to know what it is for us though. The practically expedient and "neat" maybe?
BTW here's another difference. If you try to talk about class differences in the US, people might not follow. In my experience, almost everybody talks of themselves as middle class and make a show of it even if they're poorer or richer. If we have a cultural difference, it's not really by class but like between suburban and rural, rednecks vs. fratboy preps, or by race and even that's not as much as it was, both of which don't really translate to "class" like they used to talk about it. I have friends that are lawyers and plumbers or military and while there are trends, I never thought of them as constitutionally different kinds of people that wouldn't get the same kinds of jokes or flip between talking about high-art or low-art indistinguishably or whatever -- for one because not a few of my lawyer friends used to be things like plumbers and military, and some of the "working" friends are making a lot more money than the so-called highbrow ones. I wouldn't say class is a totally dead concept in the US, it's just not really a thing that makes sense of most situations compared to just talking about someone's direct background.
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 10:30
Quote Posted by demagogue
If we have a cultural difference, it's not really by class but like between suburban and rural, rednecks vs. fratboy preps, or by race and even that's not as much as it was, both of which don't really translate to "class" like they used to talk about it. I have friends that are lawyers and plumbers or military and while there are trends, I never thought of them as constitutionally different kinds of people that wouldn't get the same kinds of jokes or flip between talking about high-art or low-art indistinguishably or whatever -- for one because not a few of my lawyer friends used to be things like plumbers and military, and some of the "working" friends are making a lot more money than the so-called highbrow ones. I wouldn't say class is a totally dead concept in the US, it's just not really a thing that makes sense of most situations compared to just talking about someone's direct background.
How about people who can afford a nice house with one job versus people who work 2 or more jobs and barely afford rent? I know many Americans in the latter category. It's unusual that the developed nation with the highest rich vs. poor disparity has no recognition of class. Perhaps it is just categorised in a different way. Class in the UK is more often than not used in discussion of various social inequalities.
demagogue on 8/1/2013 at 10:52
In my experience it just gets so mixed up. Struggling people I know, and maybe it's my limited experience, came from families where some kid went into some suit job and another partied a lot and is struggling now, and it's not like anything intrinsic to their family or "class" that made the difference. If somebody comes from a broken home, the dad drinks too much or abandoned the family & the mother isn't that educated, they're more likely to be struggling... Maybe they watch more Nascar(?) but I wouldn't find them so different to me class wise, we still went to the same school & had the same world around us (me especially since my family went briefly ghetto homeless in highschool) and I know too many people that came from that background and did very well for themselves too. (For that matter, people that watch Nascar, the kind of thing I'd think of as a token of "working class", are a conservative base that also seem very much focused on setting suburban roots & getting a car and house.)
In Texas right now, the seemingly biggest sweep of people buying houses in the suburbs right now are ostensibly "cheap Mexican labor", so it's hard to say they're in a lower "class" anymore. But I know there's still certain neighborhoods that are perpetually struggling, like some urban minority neighborhoods in a lot of cities, and you can feel the difference in culture walking around them... But they used to say that about New York and by the time I got there in the mid 2000s, the ethnic neighborhoods really weren't all that scary anymore and I didn't feel like people living there were a different class, so I imagine even neighborhoods like that have a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's not like people don't get the idea of class. You can say it and people know what you're talking about of course. But it just seems ... like it doesn't explain very much. People are more likely to observe something about Mexicans or a broken family than working class per se.
Well, there's also this: (
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159029/americans-likely-say-belong-middle-class.aspx)
I think a bigger part of it isn't that people don't think of themselves as working class, a good number still do, but *nobody* thinks of themselves as upper class. There's this myth that all Americans are self-made and come from nothing, and they keep their roots in their humble backgrounds, that people like to keep, even when their lifestyle is far removed from it.
Thirith on 8/1/2013 at 11:50
I'd imagine that it's also largely about self-definition vs defining/being defined by others. Talk about "white trash" and "the 1%" is talk about class, but it's not couched in the same terms. I wonder whether there's this American myth of classlessness that's due to not having nobility, which means that pretending there's no class issues is a way of being in denial about very clear social divisions that can't all be reduced to ethnicity.
Which I'd have to say, being the die-hard neo-Marxist (which means that when faced with Marxist thinking, I go "Whoa.") that I am... :joke:
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 12:00
Dema - most of the research I've seen shows a strong causal link between family income and social mobility. This brother-that brother anecdotes aside (exceptions versus rules), the chances of doing well for yourself increase drastically with your family's income.
[EDIT] Here is a relatively recent study which outlines it: (
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf)
The big effect seems to be on family income affecting education opportunities.
demagogue on 8/1/2013 at 14:09
I definitely believe that too, and if I didn't mention it in my last post it was from stuff I cut for space. People from broken families or certain backgrounds might not go to college because they're not brought up to have that ambition or consistently discouraged or held back by their surroundings. I just don't think that has much to do with any sense of "class" really. They're just put off going to college or don't get the ambition because they're brought up thinking it's not right for them maybe, or they don't know how to get there from their current place in life if they did.
Re: the class rhetoric that does go on in politics. I heard all that, but I never knew who they were actually referring to. What could be a more arbitrary number than the 99% vs. the 1%. What about the 62% or the 13%? What are these numbers supposed to even mean? Upper class people think they're entitled to vacations to the Bahamas for entertainment, and working class people watch more King of Queens, so there's this vast gulf of cultural misunderstanding and smoke-filled room conspiracy going on? More to myself, am I supposed to feel low class because I grew up in a trailer & duplex or upper class because I couldn't have been more obscenely wall street lawyer establishment? The whole concept there's some natural social strata people just fall into that determines the kind of person they are & their prospects in life just doesn't click with me at all, and anything scenting of Marxism has always seemed like the most alien thing ever. It's referring to society on some other planet I can't recognize. "Sorry my good man, you're just not well-bred enough for this college/career. Careful you don't starve to death on the patio" wtf? It's not some conspiracy. Anyone really can go to college, if just they get the resources in their area, good schools and mentors encouraging them to have the ambition (sans mental illness issues or issues with abuse or addiction, which isn't a class thing either).
