MATCH UP DIALOGUE PARTS
PART 1 (first sentence)
| Her sartorial choices are quirky and rather tarty. And she wears a wig. What kind of impression does she aspire to? | Don poke fun at him for showing off his gadgetty side! | What a daring dress! Look how much cleavage it shows! | This bread is over-baked. |
| What’s his political affiliation? I wasn’t able to pick up on it when we were talking. | She’s pretty, she’s like a diluted version of Marilyn Monroe. | A cherished memory from my childhood is the one of my father coming home in full colonel regalia. | The word “mettle” is derived from “metal”. |
| I can’t cope without my cell phone! I inadvertently left it at home. | His speech was infused with audacious remarks. | Why is his expression so sombre? And he’s bewilderingly quiet. | He said (and I quote him verbatim) “Comprehensive education is the way of the future”. |
| Sarah liked James. Now she is jumping at every chance to speak to him. | The First Commandment of any driver is “do not hurt anybody”. | This metal cannot withstand severe frost. | I don’t eat animal flesh. |
PART 2 (reply, reaction)
| And every linguist knows this? | Oh, you are a vegetarian then? | His son is suspected to have stolen a car. | I have a hunch he’s a wannabe Republican. |
| Well, he is a university professor, what did you expect? | This is woeful news. It looks almost like deliberate sabotage on the part of engineers who designed this tool knowing we’d take it to the North Pole. | I know I should not have allowed Jenny free rein in the kitchen. | Yes, the creator of this garment shows remarkable deadness to the rules of propriety. |
| As for me, I always thought officers’ uniforms macabre and their professions morbid. | True, the number of road deaths is inversely correlated with the speed the driver drove with. | Yet he completely missed the point of the topic. He was supposed to talk about ciphers and ways to break them. | OK, but his daft speech about the wonders of his new laptop needs to be stopped. |
| She just wants to fit into the marginally Goth social circle. | Maybe, but she’s over-coiffed AND she wears hair extensions. | You know, unlike you I don’t care a hoot about whether I am connected to the world or not. | No wonder. He was at his best at the party, his personality really stood out. |
DRESS CODES
Before we can even begin to examine the rules of English dress, we need to be clear about a few cross-cultural universals. Apart from the obvious need for warmth in cold climates, and for protection from the elements, dress, in all cultures, is essentially about three things: sex differentiation, status signals and affiliation signals.
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THE RULES RULE
The English have an uneasy, difficult and largely dysfunctional relationship with clothes, characterized primarily by a desperate need for sartorial rules, and a woeful inability to cope without them. This meta-rule helps to explain why the English have an international reputation for dressing in general very badly, but with specific areas (pockets, you might say) of excellence, such as high-class gentlemen’s tailoring, sporting and ‘country’ clothes, ceremonial costume and innovative street-fashion. In other words, we English are at our sartorial best when we have strict, formal rules and traditions to follow – when we are either literally or effectively ‘in uniform’. Left to our own devices, we flounder and fail, having little or no natural sense of style or elegance – suffering from, as George Orwell put it, an ‘almost general deadness to aesthetic issues.’
THE ECCENTRIC-SHEEP RULE
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that I seem to be including ‘innovative street-fashion’ in the category of ‘uniform’ – and you might perhaps be questioning my judgement. Surely this is a contradiction? Surely the quirky, outlandish, sub-culture street-fashions – cockatoo-haired punks, Victorian-vampire Goths, scary-booted skinheads – for which the English are renowned are evidence of our eccentricity and originality, not conformist, conservative rule-following? The idea that English street-fashion is characterized by eccentricity and imaginative creativity has become a universally accepted ‘fact’ among fashion writers – not only in popular magazines but also in academic, scholarly works on English dress.
Designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen pick up on these street-fashion trends and interpret and glamorise them on the international catwalks, and everyone says, ‘Oooh how eccentric, how English,’ but really there is nothing terribly eccentric about a diluted copy of a uniform. Street-fashions do not even function for very long as effective sub-cultural affiliation signals, as these styles invariably and rapidly become ‘mainstream’: no sooner do youth sub-cultures invent some daft new tribal costume than the avant-garde designers pick it up, then a somewhat more muted interpretation appears in the high-street shops and everyone is wearing a version of it, including one’s mother. This is infuriating for the young originators of these street-styles. English youth tribes spend a lot of time and energy trying to avoid being ‘mainstream’ – a dirty word, used as an insult – but this does not make them eccentric, anarchic individualists: they are still conformist sheep, all disguised in the same wolf’s clothing.
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THE AFFECTED INDIFFERENCE RULE
This is partly because of another set of unwritten rules about dress, which derive in part from the humour rules that are so deeply ingrained in the English psyche. In particular, our attitude to dress is governed by the omnipresent Importance of Not Being Earnest rule. Dress, like pretty much everything else, is not to be taken too seriously. It is not done to be too intensely interested in one’s clothes – or rather, one should not be seen to be overly concerned about being fashionable or well dressed. We admire eccentricity, because genuine eccentricity means not caring a hoot about the opinion of others. This state of perfect indifference may never in fact be achieved, except perhaps among the clinically insane and some elderly aristocrats, but it is an ideal to which we all aspire. We make do with the next best thing: affected indifference – we pretend that we do not care very much about what we wear or how we look.
EMBARRASSMENT RULES
I had a hunch that the rest of us, whether we admit it or not, share these concerns, and that observing the affected-indifference rule helps us to hide a deep-seated insecurity about dress, a desperate need to ‘fit in’ and an acute fear of embarrassment. My most perceptive informant on matters of dress was the fashion ‘agony-aunt’ Annalisa Barbieri, whose ‘Dear Annie’ column in the Independent on Sunday attracted hundreds of anxious letters every week from the sartorially challenged English. She had interviewed me a few times for features she was writing on a variety of subjects, and when I found out that she was ‘Dear Annie’, I jumped at the chance to interrogate an expert on the real, usually hidden, dress concerns and problems of the English – particularly as her international background meant that she could compare these with other cultures’ preoccupations.
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She confirmed that the English are much more worried about our clothes and appearance than the affected-indifference rule allows us to admit. And her postbag indicates that our main concern is indeed about ‘fitting in’, being acceptably dressed and, above all, that perennial English preoccupation: avoiding embarrassment. Yes, we want to look attractive, to make the most of our physical assets and disguise our flaws, but we do not, like other nations, want to stand out or show off – quite the opposite: most of us are scared of any form of ostentation, or even of seeming to make too much effort, to care too obviously. We just want to fit in. The overwhelming majority of the questions addressed to Dear Annie are not about whether a certain garment or outfit is beautiful or glamorous, but whether it is socially acceptable, suitable, appropriate. ‘It’s all “Is it OK to wear X with Y?” “Can I wear such-and-such to a wedding?” “Is this suitable for the office?” “Is that too tarty?”’ Annalisa told me. ‘Up to the 1950s, there were lots of official rules about dress – there were uniforms, really – and the English dressed well. Since the 1960s, there have been fewer formal rules, and lots of confusion and embarrassment, and the English dress very badly, but there is still an obsession with etiquette. What they really want is more rules.’
MAINSTREAM RULES AND TRIBAL UNIFORMS
Our solution is to invent more rules. The rigid dress codes of the past have not given way to complete sartorial anarchy. Although fashion magazines regularly proclaim that ‘Nowadays, anything goes’, this is clearly not the case. What is now known as ‘mainstream’ dress certainly does not conform to the same kind of official, universal dress codes of the pre-1960 eras – when, for example, all women were supposed to wear hats, gloves, skirts of a particular length and so on, with only relatively minor, and well-defined, class and sub-cultural variations. But there are broad-brush rules and fashion trends that most of us still obey: show a crowd-scene photograph from the 1960s, 70s, 80s or 90s, and anyone can immediately identify, just from the clothing and hairstyles, the decade in which it was taken. The same will no doubt be true of the current decade, although as usual we imagine that this one is more bewilderingly anarchic and fast-changing than any previous period. Even a photograph featuring ‘retro’ fashions, recycling the style of, say, the 1970s in the 1990s, or the 1960s and 1980s in the year 2003, would not fool us, as these styles are never simply repeated ‘verbatim’, but always piecemeal, with many subtle changes, and different hairstyles and make-up. Look at a few crowd-pictures, or just flip through some family photo albums, and you realise not only that dress is far more rule-governed than you might have thought but also that you are far more aware of the detail and nuances of current dress codes than you imagined – even if you think you have no interest in fashion. You are obeying these rules unconsciously, whether you like it or not, and will, when future people see you in a photograph, be identifiable as a typical example of your decade.
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The Collective Distinctiveness Rule
So you get to rebel against the mainstream culture, and proclaim your non-conformist individual identity, but with the comforting security of belonging to a structured, rule-governed social group, with shared tastes, values and jargon, and well-defined boundaries and behaviour codes. And no risk of sartorial mistakes or embarrassment, because, unlike the mainstream culture where you only have rather vague guidelines, there are clear and precise instructions on what to wear. No wonder so many English teenagers choose this form of rebellion.
The dress codes of youth sub-cultures are ‘codes’ in both senses of the word: rules, but also ciphers. The tribes’ sartorial statements, like the verbal ones in the reviews quoted above, are delivered in dialect, a private code that is difficult for outsiders to decipher. These coded dress codes are highly prescriptive – strict to a degree that would feel oppressive if these were rules imposed by parents or schools. Deviation from the uniform is not tolerated, as anyone who has tried to get into a popular sub-culture night-club wearing the wrong thing will know. And it’s not just what you wear but precisely how you wear it. If woolly hats are being worn pulled right down to the eyebrows and completely covering the ears, then that is how you wear your woolly hat. The fact that it makes you look like a six-year-old dressed by an over-anxious mother is neither here nor there. If hooded sweatshirts are worn zipped to the neck with the hoods up – again somehow looking curiously vulnerable and childlike – then that is how you wear your sweatshirt. If you are a Goth, you wear a lot of black clothes, with white make-up, heavy black eyeliner and dark lipstick. And long hair. Even with all the correct funereal fancy-dress and make-up, short hair will mark you out as a novice or ‘baby’ Goth. Either grow it quickly, buy a wig or get extensions.
HUMOUR RULES
The coded language of sub-cultural sartorial statements is, like all English communication, infused with humour. I have already mentioned the role of the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule (the First Commandment of English humour) in mainstream English attitudes to dress, but I was surprised to find that this rule was equally powerful and as strictly observed among youth sub-cultures.
I had fully expected these sub-cultures to be an exception to the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule and the irony rules. I assumed that members of youth tribes would be, understandably, unable or at least very reluctant to stand back and laugh at their cherished sartorial affiliation signals.
But I was wrong. I had underestimated the sheer strength and pervasiveness of the English humour rules. Even among those whose sub-cultural identity is most closely bound up with their tribal uniform, such as Goths, I found an astonishing degree of ironic detachment. Goths, in their macabre black costumes, might look as though they are taking themselves very seriously, but when you get into conversation with them, they are full of typically English self-mockery. In many cases, even their clothes are deliberately ironic. I was chatting at a bus stop to a Goth in full vampire regalia – with chalk-white face, deep-purple lipstick, long black hair and all – when I noticed that he was also wearing a t-shirt with the legend GOTH printed in large letters on the front. ‘So, what’s that about?’ I asked, indicating the t-shirt. ‘It’s just in case you missed the point,’ he replied, mock-seriously. ‘I mean, I couldn’t have people thinking I was just a boring, mainstream, normal person, right?’
Some Goths, for example, poke fun at the whole sombre, morbid, black-only colour rule by wearing bright, girly pink – a colour that is traditionally despised by this sub-culture. ‘The pink thing is a joke,’ explained a young female Goth with pink hair and pink gloves, ‘because pink is like totally against the whole Goth ideology.’
CLASS RULES
Youth Rules and Yoof Rules
Class indicators are most difficult to detect among the young, as young people of all classes tend to follow either tribal street-fashions or mainstream trends (which are in any case usually diluted versions of street-fashions). This is annoying for class-conscious parents, as well as class-spotting anthropologists. One upper-middle-class mother complained, ‘Jamie and Saskia look just like those yobbos from the council estate. Honestly, what is the point?’ Meaning, presumably, what is the point of taking the trouble to give your children ‘smart’ upper-middle-class names and send them to expensive upper-middle-class schools, when they insist on dressing exactly like Kevin and Tracey from the local comprehensive.
But a more observant mother might have noticed that Jamie and Saskia do not, in fact, look exactly like Kevin and Tracey. Jamie may have his hair cut very short and often gelled into spikes, but Kevin will go one step further and have his shaved off almost entirely, leaving just a few millimetres of fuzz. Saskia’s multiple ear-piercings may horrify her parents, and the more audacious Saskias may even have their belly-buttons pierced, but most Saskias will not, like the Traceys, have rings and studs in their eyebrows, noses and tongues as well. Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara, had a tongue-stud, but this was a breach of the rules shocking enough to make front-page headline news in all the tabloids. The upper class and aristocracy, like those at the bottom end of the social scale, can ignore the unwritten dress codes because they don’t care what the neighbours think. They do not suffer from middle-class class anxiety. If middle-class Saskia gets her tongue pierced, she is in danger of being thought ‘common’: if aristocratic Zara does it, it is daring and eccentric.
Adult Class Rules
Grown-up sartorial semiotics are marginally less complex than the teenage rules and signals, and the class indicators are somewhat clearer.
Female Class Rules
Too much jewellery (especially gold jewellery, and necklaces spelling out one’s name or initials), too much make-up, over-coiffed hair, fussy-dressy clothes, shiny tights and uncomfortably tight, very high-heeled shoes are all lower-class hallmarks, particularly when worn for relatively casual occasions. Deep, over-baked tans are also regarded as vulgar by the higher social ranks.
Among adult English females, the amount of flesh on display can also be a class indicator. As a rule, the amount of visible cleavage is inversely correlated with position on the social scale – the more cleavage revealed by a garment, the lower the social class of its wearer (a daytime garment, that is – party dresses and ball gowns can be more revealing). For the middle-aged and over, the same rule applies to upper arms.
Male Class Rules
There is far less variety in adult male clothing, particularly work-clothes, which means less choice, which means fewer opportunities to make either deliberate or inadvertent sartorial class-statements.
Jewellery and accessories are a better guide. Size is important. Large, bulky, ostentatious metal watches, especially gold ones, are a lower-class signal – even if they are frightfully expensive Rolexes (or those James-Bond-wannabe gadgetty ones that tell you what time it is in six countries and will work at the bottom of the sea and withstand a small nuclear attack). Upper-middles and above tend to wear more discreet watches, usually with a simple leather strap. A similar principle applies to cufflinks: big, flashy, show-off cufflinks are lower class; small, simple, unobtrusive ones are higher. Again, the cost of the items is irrelevant.
Casual clothes are a bit more revealing, in both the physical and class-indicator sense, than suits, as there is more variety and men have to exercise more choice. The trouble is that when allowed free rein to choose what to wear – without the rules and constraints of the suit – adult English men of all classes tend to dress rather badly.
A man who is too well dressed is automatically suspected of being gay. English men are concerned about being correctly or appropriately dressed, but this is because they do not want to stand out or draw attention to themselves. They just want to fit in, to blend, to look pretty much like any other unquestionably heterosexual male. The result is that they all look very much alike. When they are not wearing the work uniform of suit and tie, they all wear more or less the same undistinguishing and undistinguished dress-down uniform of jeans and t-shirt/sweatshirt or casual trousers and shirt/jumper.
There is also the same inverse correlation between amounts of visible flesh and position on the social scale. Shirts unbuttoned to display an expanse of chest are lower class – the more buttons undone, the lower the class of the wearer (and if a chain or medallion round the neck is also revealed, take off another ten class points).
WRITE A DIALOGUE WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW. TOPIC: YOU AND YOUR FRIEND ARE DISCUSSING A NEW HOBBY
quirky
woeful
to cope without
be at someone’s best
sartorial
jump at the chance to
don’t care a hoot about
have a hunch
pick up on smth
a wig
show off
tarty
WRITE A COMPOSITION WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW.
TOPIC: THE BEST HOBBY EVER
verbatim
cipher
reluctant
First Commandment
stand out
cherished
miss the point
poke fun at
comprehensive
cleavage
macabre
regalia
audacious
over-coiffed
CHAPTER 12
FOOD RULES
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