british stereotypes essay

Craft and Criticism
Fiction and Poetry
News and Culture
Lit Hub Radio
Reading Lists

Literary Criticism
Craft and Advice
In Conversation
On Translation
Short Story
From the Novel
Bookstores and Libraries
Film and TV
Art and Photography
Freeman’s
The Virtual Book Channel
Behind the Mic
Beyond the Page
The Cosmic Library
The Critic and Her Publics
Emergence Magazine
Fiction/Non/Fiction
First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
The History of Literature
I’m a Writer But
Lit Century
Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
Write-minded
The Best of the Decade
Best Reviewed Books
BookMarks Daily Giveaway
The Daily Thrill
CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

Parsing the Endless Nuances of British Stereotypes

And what it means for writing british characters.

English people are hard to write, as an American novelist. I’ve lived in London now for most of the last 20 years, but I still hesitate to put them into fiction, mainly because it’s difficult to avoid slotting them into categories. “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth,” George Bernard Shaw famously wrote, “without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.” Which also means there are some advantages to being an American in Britain—you can operate vaguely outside class-cultural lines.

Of course, British people are also totally capable of despising Americans. All you have to do is say BernARD, for example, with the stress on that second syllable, or “Mos-cow,” to rhyme with “how,” and wait for the flicker of suppressed amusement. I should add that my exposure to Britishness is really to a fairly specific pocket of north London, and I don’t want to make grand claims. That’s the trouble. It’s very easy to get this stuff wrong.

Part of the puzzle of Brexit, for Americans, is that so many of the main players represent barely distinguishable but traditionally opposed British types. In American terms, both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May would probably belong to a generic upper middle class. Both were raised outside London, in comfortable country houses, and have a bit of private schooling in their backgrounds. Corbyn and May also spent time in state grammars, highly selective public schools, which have become a bone of contention between left and right wing views of progressive education policy.

Corbyn represents the borough next door to mine, Islington, which is the poster borough for a certain kind of cosmopolitan elite. Just the phrase “North London” tends to serve as code for various semi-contradictory things. It can mean “Jewish,” but it can also mean the sort of muesli-eating, Guardian -reading, Labour-voting lefties whose reasonable objections to Israeli policy sometimes shade uncomfortably into anti-Semitism. You can see these people in Mike Leigh movies. They keep allotments, ride bicycles, even into their seventies, and carry their groceries in Daunts Books tote bags, except that they would never say “tote,” which is an Americanism.

But the culture divide between Corbyn and May is stark—you have only to listen to their accents. Some of that can be put down to regionalism, even though it’s only two hours in the car between the towns where they went to school.

The pressures of class affect people in complicated ways. I’ve written before of my old Etonian roommate who refused to help me tie a bow-tie for an Oxford ball. His mother lives in a beautiful rambling 15th-century farmhouse in Berkshire, one of those commutable-to-London counties that still looks genuinely rural, if you squint a little. (Kate Middleton’s parents live there, too.) My English wife gets nervous when we visit them, because they’re “posh,” and she worries about doing or saying the wrong thing. This used to baffle me. Both of them went to private schools and Oxford, they have recognizable upper-middle-class accents… they seem equally posh to me. But Ned’s family reads The Telegraph , not The Guardian , cooks on an Aga, has pelmets over the curtains, and a carpeted house where it’s not a bad idea to take your shoes off. It turns out all of this is stressful for London liberals.

Two typically English phrases sum up the difference. Theresa May’s Tory colleague Ken Clarke—the sort of old-fashioned conservative who says what he thinks, independent of party lines—once called her a “bloody difficult woman.” That’s not the phrase I mean, though May has often repeated the remark, proudly, because it gives her a kind of vividness or identity; it places her in a tradition that includes Margaret Thatcher. It also suggests the natural evolution from the vicar’s daughter—dutiful, diligent, hard to distract, conventional in her way, but also single-minded. In other words, she’s the kind of woman who might have been described once as a “girly swot.”

To swot is to study hard for an exam, to sweat for it, to strive. “Girly swot” is a phrase I’ve most often heard women use about themselves. It’s a kind of humble-brag, though maybe it’s really the opposite, a form of boast whose real purpose is to self-deprecate. Because underneath the boast it also means, I only got where I am through extra hard work, I’m not necessarily talented or original, but I put my head down and plough on, especially when there’s a set task. And yet inside that self-deprecation is another level of boast. I do my job, I do my duty, I earn my success—and there’s also a hint of the implication that maybe things like creativity and originality are shallower virtues, not quite to be trusted.

This has been May’s line on the referendum from the beginning: we will honor it, we will finish the homework assignment we’ve been set by the British people, whether we believe in it or not. (May, of course, voted Remain.) We will pass the test.

Corbyn was not a girly swot. He left school with two E-grade A-levels, the lowest possible passing grade, and never finished university—he dropped out after a couple of semesters at North London Polytechnic. (May went to Oxford.) But in its own way, Corbyn’s background is just as conventional. He joined the CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), wrote for a local newspaper, got involved in union politics. And in his case, the phrase that comes to mind is “right on.”

It usually goes alongside some kind of left-wing cause, and, like “girly swot,” is hard to parse in terms of mockery or admiration. Partly because the people who use it often share to some extent the views they’re describing. To be “right on” shows enthusiasm, it shows energy, it suggests a kind of enviable thoroughness or depth or correctness of belief. Yet there’s a sting in the tail, too, because it also suggests a lack of irony or self-awareness or real self-doubt, and, like “girly swot”, indicates an excess of conventionality at the expense of true thought or feeling. To be “right on” is probably to go “by the book”—to accept received views and embrace them in a way that might be a little embarrassing, even to people who basically agree with you.

Both of these politicians, in other words, come straight from central casting. I can’t even tell if that’s an English phrase or not anymore, I’ve lived in the country too long. You really couldn’t make them up, because you don’t need to; they’re all stock cultural figures. From May to Corbyn, to Jacob Rees Mogg, the leader of the hard Brexiters, whose double-barrelled name belongs in a John Mortimer novel and makes him sound like the kind of privileged man-child, who goes straight from prep school, to boarding school, to Oxford, to the bar or some private bank, and still defers to Nanny at home.

I don’t mean to make fun of any of them, just to show how dense with types the culture is, and how the only reasonable response to that density is to retreat into subtleties or ironies. It makes satire easier, and realism harder for novelists, at least the kind of realism where you want your characters to wear a looser skin, to have a little room for maneuver underneath all the descriptions you throw at them. And I wonder if the fine grain of British class and culture mean something similar for non-writers, too—I mean, for the people who live it, and are going to have to get along with each other again, after Brexit happens or doesn’t happen, in whatever form.

Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Benjamin Markovits

Previous article, next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Follow us on Twitter

Going Deep into the Canadian Subarctic for Research

RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

The New York Times

The learning network | in ‘other’ words: writing gently humorous essays about stereotypes.

In ‘Other’ Words: Writing Gently Humorous Essays About Stereotypes

Language Arts

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

See all in Language Arts »
See all lesson plans »

Overview | How do stereotypes inform our ideas about others? How can we go beyond these misconceptions for a truer look at an “other”? In this lesson, students read a gently humorous essay examining British stereotypes about Americans, consider stereotypes and misconceptions of people in various groups and write lighthearted personal essays.

Warm-up | This lesson’s warm-up asks students to generate stereotypes they have about a specific “other.” Given the content of today’s featured piece from The Times, and depending on your curriculum, students might generate stereotypes about one of the following:

Europeans in general
The citizens of a specific country where a literary work or historical time period they are studying is set
A group of figurative “foreigners” – like people in a “rival” town or state, fans of a rival professional or school team, or something along those lines, as long as they are appropriately “foreign” to your students

To begin, ask students to list stereotypes they associate with the group you have decided to focus on. Then, invite students to share their stereotypical characteristics and write them on the board. Make it clear that you are focused on stereotypes as exactly that — oversimplifications, generalizations, usually based on limited or inaccurate information. You may also wish to set some ground rules to ensure that the discussion is honest yet respectful and appropriate.

As the list of stereotypes is generated, call upon other students to complicate the generalizations that begin to crop up. Aim to have one piece of information based on a real encounter with a member of this group for every generalization listed. Invite students to share their own stories of times when their misconceptions of this group were clarified or altered.

Ask: What are the limits of these stereotypes? Why do some of us tend to stereotype this group in this way? Why is it tempting to stereotype the “other”?

Finally, show students the illustration that accompanies The Times piece “Letter From London: My American Friends.” Ask: What stereotypes of Americans does this illustration highlight? From whose point of view does it come, do you suspect? Then ask students to list other stereotypes associated with Americans abroad , and to list these on the board, in the left-hand column of a T-chart (the other side will be filled in after reading the article). Why do you suppose Europeans stereotype Americans in these ways? What is your response to the list?

Related | In his “Letter From London” titled “My American Friends,” Geoff Dyer tells the story of how Americans have resisted and contradicted Europeans’ preconceived notions of them:

The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. Then, when I came across people who’d had direct contact with this ferocious-sounding tribe, I learned that they were actually rather friendly. At university, friends who had traveled in the United States came back with more detailed stories, not just of the friendliness of Americans but also of their hospitality (which, in our quaint English way, was translated into something close to gullibility). When I finally got to America myself, I found that not only were the natives friendly and hospitable, they were also incredibly polite. No one tells you this about Americans, but once you notice it, it becomes one of their defining characteristics, especially when they’re abroad.

Read the entire personal essay with your class, using the questions below.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

What are some of the preconceived notions Dyer identifies about Americans? To what extent are they true?
What exactly does Dyer mean in the second paragraph when he says “it says something strange about the way that perception routinely conforms to the preconceptions it would appear to contradict”? What is “it”? What is “strange”?
What do the loud voices of visiting Americans really signify, according to Dyer?
What is the answer to question Dyer poses mid-essay, “What is the relevance of this anecdotal trivia to a serious debate about the status of America in the world?”?
What techniques does Dyer use to prevent his essay from becoming barbed or sarcastic? How does he manage to keep it honest, yet lighthearted?

RELATED RESOURCES

From the learning network.

Lesson: A Rose By Any Other Name?
Lesson: Ambassadors of Annoyances?
Lesson: Conflicts of Interest

From NYTimes.com

Times Topics: Americans Abroad
Essay: “Still ‘Ugly’ After All These Years”
Op-Ed: “Yes, Like Obama”

Around the Web

Discovery Education: Understanding Stereotypes
Time Magazine: “Behavior: Breaking the American Stereotypes”
Teaching Tolerance

Activity | As a group, add to the left-hand column of the T-chart on the board any additional stereotypes that Europeans, particularly the British, have about Americans that were mentioned in Dyer’s essay. Then list the traits Dyer finds admirable in Americans in the other column.

Ask: How do the British apparently perceive Americans? What do these stereotypes reveal about Americans? About the British? What generalizations does Dyer paint of his own culture?

Ask students to consider the tone of Dyer’s essay. What purpose do you think he is trying to achieve? How does the use of anecdotes and humor help him achieve these purposes? How does he manage to avoid being offensive or cruel in discussing stereotypes? How does he manage to be humorous without being sarcastic?

Tell students that will now prepare to write essays like Dyer’s, in which they examine and perhaps shatter misconceptions they have held about a group of people, using humor and a personal, playful tone.

Here is a suggested process for essay writing preparation:

Choosing a Subject:

Stress that personal experience with the “other” being written about is essential.
To make this lesson more experiential, require students, for homework, to spend some time observing members of the “other” group, by doing something like going “undercover” at the evening’s basketball game to observe and mix with fans of the rival team. You may want to subject students’ plans to approval before they start out.
Once students have subjects for their essays, ask each of them to come up with a list of misconceptions or preconceived notions they have about that group. Teachers may wish to invite students choosing to write about the same group to brainstorm their misconceptions and preconceived notions together.

Prewriting:

Students create T-charts to compare the misconceptions with the reality, noting what observations would or would not support the misconceptions they held about their group before this activity.
Students should also free write about how experiences with the “other” group prompted them to reflect on their own culture, as it were, as Dyer does. Remind them to avoid clichés and generalizations and to be as specific as possible.
Encourage them to borrow Dyer’s first two lines as a starter:

The first thing I ever heard about _________ was _________. Then, when I came across people who’d had direct contact with [them], I learned that they were actually_________.

Pair students so that they can “test” some of their material on each other by sharing two telling anecdotes (like those employed by Dyer) that they might include in their essays and at least one humorous tidbit that would contribute to achieving a tone similar to that struck by Dyer. Have partners respond to what they hear and offer advice to one another on whether or not these elements work for them as members of the audience.

When essays are finished, hold a “read around” in which each student shares a crucial section from his or her essay, and invite students to respond to each other. Then hold a final discussion about the process and what they got out of it.

Going further | Students interview several members of the group they chose to write about, so that they are forced to see the group from an “insider’s” perspective. They then revise their essays to include reflections on these interviews.

Alternatively or in addition, students individually do our Culture Shot activity (teacher directions are here ), using a current print edition of The Times, the online Times multimedia and photo index and/or the Lens blog . After they share their choices, lead a discussion about what these images might convey about Americans to people from other countries and cultures. You might also repeat the activity using images of, say, Europeans.

Standards | From McREL , for grades 6-12:

Behavioral Studies 1 – Understands that group and cultural influences contribute to human development, identity and behavior 4 – Understands conflict, cooperation and interdependence among individuals, groups and institutions

Language Arts 1 – Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process 5- Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process 7- Uses the general skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts 8- Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes

Life Skills: Working With Others 1- Contributes to the overall effort of a group 4 – Displays effective interpersonal communication skills

Geography 10 – Understands the nature and complexity of Earth’s cultural mosaics

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but even though you are lying next to me right now, you are asleep. This and other stuff is on something the NYT calls the Learning Network.

Great nice writing and tips that you have proved…

Nice sort of information thanks for the post sharing…..

What's Next

British Stereotypes: Fact or Fiction?

Learning about a country’s culture is often the most interesting element of studying a foreign language. It is so much easier to learn when you can understand what makes a country tick - and communicate more easily with its people. Luckily for learners of British English , the culture of the United Kingdom is well known across the world. This is in part thanks to global hit TV shows and films like Downton Abbey and Harry Potter, musicians like The Beatles and Adele and public figures like Queen Elizabeth II or Winston Churchill. All these cultural legends have given way to a certain image, or stereotype, of the British.

Some of these stereotypes are very much true. Others less so! We decided to ask the resident Brits at Tandem about some of the most popular stereotypes about British people, and separate the fact from the fiction!

The Tandem app isn’t just about language exchange, it’s also about cultural exchange and fostering meaningful conversations with people from all over the world. Break down barriers and celebrate diversity by downloading the app now!

Brits love talking about the weather - FACT

“Brits love small talk and our favourite topic has to be the weather outside. Commenting on the rain or sunshine is always a great conversation starter for us. Great Britain is an island, and therefore blessed with an unpredictable maritime climate. This means there is always something to discuss! Snow in particular is a massive deal for us - a few inches can send the whole country into meltdown. Equally, we can’t cope with heat over 30 degrees, which usually only happens for a few days in the summer. Ultimately, much as we like to complain about it, we’re happiest with the mild, wet weather our country is most known for!”

It rains all the time - FICTION

“People are often surprised when they come to London or Edinburgh and it’s sunny! It can sometimes feel like it rains all the time, but actually we receive average rainfall when compared with the rest of Europe."

Brits love to drink tea - FACT

“Ooooh, put the kettle on, will you? Tea is definitely a key part of British culture. Making tea for other people is the ultimate form of British hospitality. People from abroad tend to think we only drink the finest tea leaves from teapots, served in a beautiful cup and saucer. In reality, we buy bog-standard tea-bags by the kilo and make constant mugs of it throughout the day. It may not be posh, but it’s the quickest way to make a brew! And since you asked, we ALWAYS add a dash of milk to our black tea (no lemon, are you mad??)”

Brits are obsessed with The Royal Family - FICTION

“Most British people are proud of their Queen - but it isn’t true that we ALL love the royal family. There are so many royals knocking about and most of them don’t seem to do much! It’s another thing we tend to complain about. That said, Princess Catherine has to be one of the most glamourous Brits alive, so we are secretly very happy about that.”

Brits love queuing - FACT

"Why the rest of the world seems to not be able to queue as well as us remains a great mystery. Seriously. Is it really that hard?????”

Brits have bad teeth - FICTION

“Whoa, these stereotypes are harsh. Where did this one come from? We do actually have very good dentists in the UK. I don’t think our teeth are worse than anyone else's, to be honest!"

Brits have a British accent - FICTION

“I am still a bit confused about what people mean by a British accent. Perhaps the southern English accent is most commonly heard abroad, but most people in the UK simply don’t speak like this! Though we are a small island, there are so many different accents in the UK and we are immensely proud of this. You can usually tell a lot about a person’s background just by listening to their voice. And be warned… complimenting someone from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland on their “English” accent is NEVER going to go down well!”

Brits are super polite - FACT

“British people don’t like to be overtly rude, that’s true. We say “sorry”, “please” and “thank you” a lot. But saying polite words doesn’t necessarily mean that we mean it! I’m not sure if this counts as a fact if we don’t really mean it. For example, we often say “sorry” if someone does something to us - for example if someone bumps into you, you would might automatically apologise - but of course deep down you know you did nothing wrong and you’re seething with resentment. That’s just our way, I guess!”

British food is terrible - FICTION

“I can see why people might come to the UK for the first time and be unimpressed by our “traditional” cuisine. Pies, pudding and fish & chips might seem stodgy and bland in comparison with other European food. HOWEVER - British cuisine has been greatly influenced by global tastes for hundred of years, and this is something I think we have turned to our advantage. For example, try a curry in the UK and you will not be disappointed! Plus we have some of the best restaurants and markets in the world. London, Manchester and Glasgow in particular have an incredible foodie scene. And you can't beat a British-style Sunday roast!”

All Brits wear hats - FICTION

“Perhaps it’s because the Queen always wears a hat, but this is definitely not true! Brits stopped wearing hats on a daily basis in the 1960s, like everyone else.”

And that's all folks! Toodle-pip! Cheerio!

Connect with native speakers globally and practice speaking any language for free!

How Long Does it Take to Learn a New Language?

Discover how long it takes to learn a new language and the factors that affect the time needed for language learning. From fresh to fluent, learn more here!

International Women’s Day

Learn all about the history of International Women's Day, its significance, and how to celebrate it around the world.

A Guide to Italian Grammar: Essential Basics and Beyond

In this guide to Italian grammar, we'll cover the basic rules to get you started, including parts of speech, verb conjugation, and more.

11 British Stereotypes and the Honest Truth

This post contains affiliate links for which I may make a small commission to help keep the site running. You will not be charged extra for these items had you not clicked the links. Thank you for your help to keep the site running!

Ever wonder which British stereotypes are true and which aren’t?

What do people think of the Brits, and is it really accurate in real life?

When talking about these British stereotypes, let’s keep in mind that all stereotypes are generalizations.

Just because most British people drink tea (this is a true stereotype about the British!), doesn’t mean that every single person does – duh.

But as an American who has lived in the UK for over 10 years, I’ve come to realize which of these stereotypes about British people are true and which aren’t, and that’s what we’re diving into today because the world deserves to know that British food isn’t bad, and that British people really do love talking about the weather!

So whether you’ve moving to the UK or just coming for a visit, bookmark this page!

1. They Drink a Lot of Tea: true

One of the oldest and most common British people stereotypes is that they drink a lot of tea.

And this is so true.

The UK ranks third in the world when it comes to tea consumption, and tea here is enjoyed by all of the social classes.

While it began as an elixir for the upper class, it soon became more available to the middle class and finally trickled down to the working class who enjoyed it as a way to warm up and take a break from a hard day of labor.

Tea in the UK isn’t just something to drink. It’s a culture and a truly comforting aspect of the day for many people.

So, yes, it’s true that Brits love tea, and if you want to learn more about what I’ve learned about British people and tea, check out my video about the differences between American and UK tea!

2. British Food isn’t Good: false

British food has a reputation of not being good, and that turns a lot of people away from trying “British” cuisine, but actually this isn’t true.

Whether it’s a perfectly done sausage roll, a freshly battered fish and chips , a scotch egg or a full English breakfast, there are so many wonderful and filling foods in Britain to true.

So where does this British stereotype come from?

In my opinion, having lived here for 10 years, there are two reasons.

The first, and this is an unfair reason, is that many of the stereotypes about British food are sort of stuck in the post-war era, when the country was on hard times and people were on rations.

It seems that the stereotype hasn’t updated for many people since then.

However, the perhaps more fair reason for this negative stereotype is that I have found it common for Brits to not season their food or use as much flavor as they would in other cuisines.

Definitely there is a little bit of truth to vegetables cooked at home being often boiled, for instance, instead of other more flavorful methods of cooking, but this is down to the individual and doesn’t mean that the entire country lacks culinary skills.

3. British People are Polite: true and false

One of the positive stereotypes about British people are that they are polite.

In my experience, this is both true and untrue.

The truth is that yes, British people are very polite from an outsider’s perspective!

I would say they are far more polite than us Americans in general day to day life, and they are more unassuming and willing to cooperate in social settings.

That being said, there is nothing the British are better at than a really good passive-aggressive “tut” at someone when they do something wrong, like cutting them in line (the queue) or standing on the left-hand side of the tube (never do that).

So while they are seemingly polite and you wouldn’t expect a British person to bash through a crowd or have an insane amount of road rage, they’re definitely judging you inside (and we love them for it!)

4. Brits Have Bad Teeth: false

One of the negative stereotypes about British people is that they have bad teeth, particularly when compared to Americans.

I’m saying this stereotype is false, because what the case really is is not that British people have overwhelming unhealthy teeth, but rather that there is not an emphasis on cosmetic dentistry in the UK like there is in the US.

Americans are all about their smile – dentists make a ton of money each year “fixing” people’s smiles and whitening teeth, but in the UK, dentistry is more back to the basics of making sure that your teeth are healthy and not filled with cavities or gum disease or other ailments, but there isn’t much beyond that for many people.

So of course, when you compare a British person’s natural teeth with the teeth of someone in America who may have a dentist appointment every 6 months or regular whitening or Invasalign or all of the ways Americans

5. Everyone is Classy: false

There’s a stereotype of British people that everyone seems to wear a top hat and be the classiest person you’ve ever met, and while there are definitely some people like that, it’s untrue that the entire nation is somehow more sophisticated than the rest of the world!

British people are…people, too, and there are definitely some British people who make a bad name for themselves when traveling abroad (there is a whole stereotype about British people by Europeans that they can be the nationality you don’t want to come visit your resort because they’ll just be loud and obnoxious – see, it’s not just Americans who get stereotyped like this!).

I’m not saying British people aren’t classy to put anyone down, I’m just saying British people are human and they’re not all how people like David Beckham and Posh Spice portray themselves.

There’s a whole mixture of classes, social backgrounds, and level of “refinement” – just like any other country.

6. British People Speak like the Queen: false

While you may be most familiar with the accents of the Royals or of British actors or musicians, it’s a false stereotype that that is the main British accent.

It’s a specific British accent, known as Received Pronunciation , and it’s definitely an upper class accent.

It’s also relatively easy to understand.

But it’s often said that British accents change as you turn the corner, much less go to a new town or city and a London accent is very different from the Royal’s accent which is very different from a Liverpool accent or a Scottish accent or a Welsh accent – the list goes on.

So, no, they don’t all speak like the Queen – and that’s a good thing for the diversity of accents you’ll get to hear within the UK.

7. They Say Sorry a Lot: true

One stereotype about British people is that they say ‘sorry’ a lot, and this is definitely true.

It’s sort of just a filler word in social situations, mainly, to express that they apologize for any sort of inconvenience or for doing anything that could have gotten in your way.

So they’re not fully, heartily, apologizing, but rather being polite with a lot of “oh sorry, can I squeeze past you?” or saying sorry when someone else has actually bumped into them (figure that one out!).

8. British People Love the Royal Family: true and false

While Americans are obsessed with the royal family and all of their events, celebrations, weddings, births, and more, it’s actually not a true stereotype that British people love the royal family.

Yes, some people in the UK do love the royal family and follow them – they’re the ones you’ll see on the news talking about how they woke up at 3am to stand outside the hospital for the royal family birth or wedding, etc.

But many people are either indifferent about the royal family or at odds with the idea of having a monarchy.

Many younger Brits err towards the side of a monarchy being an outdated concept, and so it’s important to know that a large percentage of the British population do not have the same feelings about the monarchy as foreigners do.

It is a much more complicated and complex issue within the UK than many people understand on the surface.

9. They Like Talking about the Weather: true

One of the most true stereotypes about British people that I’ve ever heard is that they like to talk about the weather.

Well, maybe they don’t “like” it as much as they just do it – constantly!

The British weather changes so often – it is an island nation after all, and it’s a fantastic small talk topic of conversation, whether you’re trying to fill empty space in a conversation in the office, around extended family members, or with acquaintances

When I grew up in Florida, we almost never talked about the weather because it was so predictable. How many times can you say “it’s hot”?

But in the UK, when it could be hailing and cold in the morning and then full sunshine and hot in the afternoon, where one day it could feel like Spring and the immediate next day could feel like the depths of winter, where the rain comes and goes off-and-on at its own will and with no predictability, the weather is on everyone’s minds!

10. Brits are Reserved: true

As a whole, British people are stereotyped as being relatively quiet and reserved, and while this doesn’t hold true for certain cultures within the UK (the Scots tend to be much more talkative in my experience!), overall I would say this one is true when you compare it to Americans.

I’ve experienced that British people take longer to “open up” to others and like to keep themselves to themselves more.

They’re not necessarily the culture to knock on your door to welcome you to the neighborhood when you’ve first moved in – in fact, they would probably feel like they’re intruding.

I am not even that loud of a person, but I definitely get told that within the context of British culture, I come across as very loud at times, which goes to show just how reserved they can be as a society.

It’s that “stiff upper lip” that they’re so famous for.

11. British People Love to Queue: true

Again, maybe this one isn’t true in the sense that Brits don’t LOVE queuing, but man do they do it with great dedication.

Waiting your turn and forming an orderly queue/line is something the Brits are great at – heck, their tennis tournament, Wimbledon, is famous for the queue itself!

This isn’t a culture of pushing people out of the way to go Black Friday shopping.

There is definitely a culture in the UK of following the rules, which means lining up properly, whether that be for the bus, at Wimbledon, in the store, for an event, or anywhere else you might need to keep some order and prevent a rush!

Cultural British Stereotypes and How to Deal With Them

All over the globe people tend to have similar preconceived notions of what a standard British civilian looks, walks, talks and acts like. Some of the British stereotypes, I can confirm, are quite accurate whilst others can be pretty hilarious but also a little unfair.

Every culture has their own stereotypes and of course it’s unfair to judge and categorise everyone from Britain into certain categories, but it’s also quite nice to prepare yourself for how a typical British person behaves so that you know not only what you’re in for, but also how to respectfully behave when you’re surrounded by the British culture.

Here’s a guide to the most common cultural British stereotypes, both fact and fiction.

Stiff upper lip

This term comes from the idea that an emotional or upset person has a quivering upper lip, so a stiff upper lip refers to the concept that the British are quite reserved and keep their emotions and feelings to themselves. Whilst the times are changing and this is becoming less and less true, compared to other cultures around the world, the British are still quite closed off emotionally and it really takes a lot of time, trust and hard work to be able to break down those walls.

Sarcastic humour

Irony and heavy sarcasm are the bedrock of British humour. Being able to tell when your British friends are being sarcastic from when they’re trying to have a serious conversation takes some serious skill and even after years of living in the U.K, it’s likely that you’ll still often get it wrong. At least there are a lot of hilarious and sometimes awkward conversations to be had in the meantime though…

The British are undoubtedly the best queuers in the world. They have it nailed down to a respectable art form and few things offend Brits more than seeing someone jump the queue they’re standing in. It’s all about fairness and waiting your turn, which leads us on to…

Whilst the Brits are not quite as chivalrous as some of their European neighbours, their polite manners are indeed very likeable. You will rarely be kept waiting for an ‘excuse me’, ‘sorry’, ‘please’ or ‘thank you’.

Want to move to the UK? Find out how much it could cost to move your belongings with our guide on international shipping costs .

Hate of confrontation

British folk spend a lot of time and effort avoiding any possible awkward or confronting moments in social situations, most probably due to the previous point on manners and politeness. Because of this, they have mastered the art of small talk, something you’ll probably want to practice yourself.

Talking about the weather

It’s possibly the most spoken of topic in the country. If you ever find yourself in an awkward situation or have absolutely nothing to say, fear no more as you can get at least 10 minutes worth of quality conversation out of the current weather patterns. Keep an eye on the daily forecast for emergency conversations.

Apologising

The British have a need to apologise for absolutely any situation, saying ‘Sorry, I don’t smoke’ when asked for a lighter being a classic example. There are also so many different uses for the word ‘sorry’ in the U.K that apart from the obvious meaning of ‘I apologise’, sorry can also refer to “Hello”, “I didn’t hear you”, “I heard you but I’m annoyed at what you said”, or “You’re in my way”. It’s easy to get caught in the Sorry trap so be sure to keep a strong head and think before you start throwing the word around yourself, or you may slowly drive yourself mad or self-combust in a passive-aggressive fit.

Complaining

The Brits are often, somewhat unfairly, accused of being huge complainers. When you set aside weather and football conversations, complaining is actually down to a minimum and in fact, like every other culture in the world, there are equally as many enthusiastic and positive Brits as there are negative and whiney ones. It completely depends on the person that you talk to.

The drinking culture in the U.K is huge and most social occasions are centred around alcoholic beverages. The Brits are absolutely spoilt for choice when it comes to pubs and with the long winters and wet summers, it’s easy to see why this is such a popular pastime.

Britain is the nation of tea drinkers. In many workplaces it’s considered outrageous to get up and make yourself a cup of tea without offering a round to everyone within earreach. Tea drinking is serious business in Britain and it won’t take long for you to work out how to brew the perfect cuppa with just the right amount of water to milk ratio.

We’ve all seen an article, news story, film or documentary about football hooligans in the U.K before and probably vowed to never attend a football match again. Whilst this is a very popular sport in Britain, these days it’s mostly quite tame, although you do still get the outsiders who are always ready to cause some trouble. If you’re not going to the games, keep on top of your football stats if you want to earn some bonus conversation points down and the pub.

Terrible food and wine

The traditional British dishes of fish and chips or bangers and mash don’t really stand out as some of the best in the way of culinary sophistication. However, the British food scene is picking up spectacularly and London is really leading the charge. In fact, 2 London restaurants made the Top 10 in the world list in 2014, so there is definitely big progress in the foodie world. When it comes to wine, however, you’ll just have to rely on the imports.

The posh British life

When many foreigners picture a British person, they see posh accents, large manor homes, top hats and tails. “Why golly gosh, this is absolute utter incongruous pish posh my dear boy!” That’s only for the very wealthy aristocrats who live in West London and were raised by nannies. Wait, is that just more stereotyping?

So are the stereotypes true?

Stereotype is the perfect word for it. Yes, you’ll come across a lot of these personalities and probably quite often, but there are also so many people who don’t fit into these categories, just like everywhere in the world.

It’s not that these are the majority, but those Brits who fit the stereotypes tend to be the extreme ones and thus they’ll be the ones that you’ll probably notice most.

How do you deal with stereotypes?

If you can’t beat them, join them. If you want to move to the UK , it will take some adjustment no matter where you’re from. Embrace the cultural differences and make the most of them.

You don’t need to be judgmental, that’s the beauty of being a true expat – you are lucky enough to be able to completely immerse yourself in a new culture, learn everything about it and take the best bits and apply them to your own way of living. Plus, it’s always nice to pick up some polite British manners and let’s be honest, we could all learn to queue a little better.

When all else fails, discuss the weather over a hot cup of tea.

Enjoy this post? Take a look at our stereotypes showdown: London vs New York for more harmless banter.

Written by:

Latest blog articles.

The 9 Countries With the Best Healthcare 2023
The 7 Best Podcasts for Expats
Which Countries Have Restrictions on Unvaccinated People?

Latest Research Articles

Watch Brits Try to Label a Map of Europe
The Hipster Index
Where to Move When You're Young and Broke

Written and reviewed by:

Moving made simple.

Tell us where you're moving to and compare prices from up to 6 trusted removal companies to see how much you could save today.

United Kingdom
14 British Stereotypes That We...

British Stereotypes That We Won't Even Try to Deny

It would be unreasonable to assume that every Australian drinks Fosters, all Americans love baseball, and that the Japanese only eat sushi . Yet when it comes to the British, people all over the world have preconceived ideas about us all loving Marmite and living in London . Let’s set the record straight, once and for all.

Did you know you can now travel with Culture Trip? Join one of our UK trips to experience the country with a small group of like-minded travellers, led by our Local Insiders.

We love tea…

The Aussies may have introduced the flat white to us, but it’s no use trying to talk a Brit out of a good ol’ cuppa. We love it. Not the herbal fancy stuff – we want builder’s brew, the colour of he-man . Moreover, nobody is critiqued on how many cups of tea they drink in this nation. One, three, nine; the only thing we will judge is which brand of tea you drink and the order in which you put the milk.

Drinking in a pub…

Not that different from relaxing with a cuppa, really. It’s familiar, and quite often just around the corner. Whether it’s inside among the dark wood panelling and soggy carpets, or outside in the beer garden on a summer’s day, the pub is like a communal living room in your neighbourhood. As such, there’s no appropriate time to assert your attendance at the pub: lunchtime for beer, 4pm for wine or a 9.30 night cap – you don’t need a reason. It all adds up, though…

We drink an awful lot…

…Of alcohol – that is. When we’re not drinking tea, we’re drinking alcohol. Beer, wine, cider, spirits, alcoholic ice lollies – it all goes down a treat. And of course, we don’t need an excuse: brunch is now bottomless, the weekend starts on Wednesday, and there are gin distillers popping up all over the country faster than mushrooms after rainfall. It’s part of our DNA, something we do especially well when travelling abroad. And no, we’re not planning on giving up any time soon.

Nothing to talk about besides the weather…

Well, come on, you’ve seen our weather: cloudy with a chance of grey, 70% chance of showers, top of 17 with some potential late sun. The weather changes its mind more often than Trump, so forgive us for wanting to have a moan about it because, quite frankly, it can get expensive buying a new umbrella every month.

Getting burnt to a crisp on holiday…

And because of the aforementioned lack of glorious sunshine, it’s no wonder so many Brits burn so easily. It’s glaringly obvious when someone’s been on holiday and neglected to believe that factor 50 was invented for a reason. We’ll say you’re glowing when, in fact, we mean ‘You’re as red as the tomato in my caprese’. #spotthebritabroad

We LOVE to queue…

We do it very well. Take, for instance, the Wimbledon queue: people camp out for days on grass for tickets that essentially allow them to sit and watch more grass. One theory for the origin of this ‘civilized behaviour’ stems from the world wars and the rationing of everyday goods; queuing effectively meant everyone could get a share of the limited supplies. It thus formed notions of decency, and now we just queue for anything. The bank, the post office, the bar – heck, we’ll even join a long queue just in the hopes that there’s something good at the front.

We apologise profusely…

If you haven’t heard a Brit say the word ‘sorry’ at least five times in the past two hours, you’d better check your location settings. Some say it’s because we feel responsible for our terrible weather and food, so we feel the need to apologise for everything: being early, being late, sneezing, asking for the bill, making eye contact during sex, having sex, Nigel Farage.

We are too polite…

All this apologising is because we’re polite and don’t like to cause a scene or complain (except about the weather , but we apologise for that). We tend to swallow bad service at a restaurant, eat stale sandwiches, and even take the blame when it’s not our fault (Nigel Farage) . Give us two glasses of wine, however, and you’ll know exactly how we feel.

We secretly judge you behind your back…

Politeness is a culturally defined marvel, and thus what is considered good manners in one culture can actually sometimes come across as quite rude or rather odd in another . To cut a long story short, we’re passive aggressive: ‘I’d love for you to come around for dinner!’ ( I’d rather eat an uncooked pizza in my bathroom than have you over ); ‘I only have a few small comments’ ( Rewrite the entire thing, you idiot ).

We hate confrontation…

We’ve spent all this time being polite to you, apologising profusely, then secretly having a bitch about you behind your back – so please, please don’t confront us about it, okay? This is why we’ve mastered the art of small talk, to avoid awkward social situations. Now sod off and let us eat our curry chips in peace.

Our battered sausages and mushy peas…

We might be a ‘posh’ bunch, but our refined status falls short at the dishes most synonymous with Britain: marmite on toast, chips with curry sauce, Spam and stodgy rice puddings. Not precisely what one would call ‘culinary sophistication’ – however, the reality is, we actually do eat other foods (well, hangover days excluded) and London now has 66 Michelin-starred restaurants . And , wasn’t it us who invented afternoon tea and the sandwich ? Ah-hem.

We all have charming English accents, like the Queen…

This one we will deny. Have you watched Geordie Shore ?

And speaking of Queen Lizzy…

We love her. In an age of over-sharing, she maintains her haughty habit of under-sharing, and we still don’t know what she’s really thinking, 65 years on. She has a sound sense of style, still rides her horses despite her 91 years and, come on, what’s Christmas Day without a right royal broadcast?

We’re slightly confused about our citizenship and nationality

We might yield a strong affection for the monarch, but in Britain there are several types of citizenship and some nationals who are not citizens at all. Confused? So are we. But essentially there are six different types : British citizens, British subjects, British overseas citizens, British overseas territories citizens, British overseas nationals, or British protected persons. Hmmm. We think it’s time for a cup of tea. Did you know you can now travel with Culture Trip? Book now and join one of our premium small-group tours to discover the world like never before.

Culture Trips launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes places and communities so special.

Our immersive trips , led by Local Insiders, are once-in-a-lifetime experiences and an invitation to travel the world with like-minded explorers. Our Travel Experts are on hand to help you make perfect memories. All our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.?>

All our travel guides are curated by the Culture Trip team working in tandem with local experts. From unique experiences to essential tips on how to make the most of your future travels, we’ve got you covered.

Guides & Tips

Sleeper trains worth experiencing on your travels.

The Best Setjetting Trips You Can Take with Culture Trip

See & Do

A quintessential english countryside experience at bovey castle.

Swapping Rush Hour for the Ultimate Slow Commute

Places to Stay

The yorkshire dales, but make it luxury.

Top TRIPS by Culture Trip in the UK

Film & TV

Aaand action explore the uk's top film spots with google street view.

The Best Group Tours in the UK

How to Make the Most of Your Holiday Time if You're in the UK

Creating Gotham in Liverpool and Glasgow for ‘The Batman’

The Best Private Trips You Can Book With Your Family

Why Where I Stay is Becoming a More Important Part of My Travel Experience

Culture trip spring sale, save up to $1,100 on our unique small-group trips limited spots..

Post ID: 1433619
Sponsored? No
View Payload

Skip to navigation
Skip to main content
Skip to footer
Membership Directory
Partnership

General Questions:

Find a Program Explore Programs ISEP Exchange ISEP Direct Summer Programs January Programs Intern Abroad Identity Abroad Programs by Region Top Cities Africa & The Middle East Asia Australia, New Zealand & Oceania Europe Latin America United States & Canada Programs by Field of Study Animal Science & Agriculture Architecture & Design Business and Marketing Communication, Media, and Film Studies Criminal Justice & Criminology Education and Teaching Practicum Engineering and Computer Science Environmental Science, Environmental Studies, and Sustainability French Language, Culture, and Literature Programs History Language Programs Nursing, Health Sciences and Pre-Health Professions Political Science, International Relations and Global Studies Psychology & Sociology Science Spanish Strategic Communications and Journalism Theatre, Music, Dance, & Fine Art Start a Search Connect with ISEP
How It Works Student Stories We're Here to Help ISEP's Promise Steps to Get Started How to Apply How to Find the Right Program Program Types & Deadlines ISEP Scholarships Become an ISEP Digital Ambassador! Before You Go While You Are Abroad Diversity, Inclusion & Accessibility Abroad Health, Safety, and Risk Management Returning Home Join the ISEP Alumni Association Start a Search Connect with ISEP
Contact Us Meet Our Team Emergency Contact Send Us a Message Travel Advisories General Questions: Business Hours: M-F 9:00am - 5:00pm EST Phone: +1 (703) 504-9960 Fax: +1 (703) 243-8070 Email: [email protected] Membership Directory Join ISEP Partnership Alumni Faculty Donate About ISEP

American and British Stereotypes: A Cultural Exchange

Contributed by.

Blue is an ISEP Voices blogger from Marshall University, in West Virginia, who studied abroad at University of Chester, in the United Kingdom.

Connect with ISEP

Interested in studying abroad? Sign up to learn more!

ISEP student Blue C. is a part of ISEP Voices Spring 2016. She is an exercise science major from Marshall University, and is currently studying abroad at the University of Chester in the United Kingdom.

Coming into a new country from the United States was quite the culture shock. I came to Great Britain: a country that speaks the same language and just drinks much more tea, right? Wrong. My first week here was just a blur of back and forth questions between myself and my new British friends. I never realized how many difference there are in our cultures until I spent some time here. What was even more shocking was the fact that they thought things about the United States that I would never have expected. I’ve been asked three different times if high school is like High School Musical! I decided to ask around and find out what students from these countries really want to know about one another. I ended up sending five questions out to university students from each country to find out what exactly we think of each other.

Questions from American students to British students:

On average how much tea do you actually drink a week.

British student 1: I hate tea.
British student 2: 8-12 cups per week.
British student 3: I drink zero cups of tea a week.
British student 4: Maybe three a week when I’m at uni, but maybe three a day at home.
British student 5: I reckon I drink around five cups of either tea or coffee a day, it just depends on how I feel.

What exactly is a “Full English Breakfast?”

British student 1: Baked beans, sausages, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, toast, hash browns and bacon
British student 2: Tea, bacon, egg, sausage, tomato, beans, toast, pudding and hash browns
British student 3: A breakfast which is full of different foods. It usually begins with cereals or fresh fruits, but the main part of the breakfast is the bacon and eggs. I have sausages and beans with it. Other people have grilled tomatoes and mushrooms as well.
British student 4: Fried eggs, bacon, sausages, bakes beans, toast, fried mushrooms, black pudding and fried tomatoes.
British student 5: A “full English” is a “breakfast,” but more seen as a lunch meal. It mainly consists of pork sausage, bacon, fried or scrambled egg, pudding, hash browns (like a small potato cake with onion in it), fried bread or toast, baked beans and a large mug of either coffee or tea.

What three words do you think of when you hear “America?”

British student 1: Blonde, L.A. and summer
British student 2: Camp, patriotic and McDonald’s
British student 3: Patriotic, big and Obama
British student 4: Guns, Christians and the military
British student 5: Loud, big and patriotic

From what you know, what is something you like about America that you wish was in Great Britain?

British student 1: I would love for the U.K. to have the freedom that universities in America have. There’s more opportunities to study different subjects there.
British student 2: More Reese’s.
British student 3: How they have structure in education sport. From what I’ve learned and seen in the movies, it seems that young people don’t learn to take part in sport, but love it and have a passion for it.
British student 4: The environment, like the national parks, mountains and variety of landscapes.
British student 5: I don’t know how to answer this one. I’d probably say the food, just because I love food.

Without Google, How many states make up the United States and what is the capital of the nation?

British student 1: 50? Washington, D.C.
British student 2: 52 States. Washington, D.C.
British student 3: I think it’s 53 and I’m 100% certain that it’s Washington, D.C.
British student 4: 50 and it’s Washington, D.C.
British student 5: Bloody hell, I’ll say 50 states all together. I really don’t know many, only the obvious ones. Lists 21 states. The national capital is Washington, D.C.

Questions from British students to American students:

Why do americans like british accents so much.

American student 1: Americans like hearing a different accent than their own from someone who speaks the same language. In addition, English accents seem proper and sophisticated.
American student 2: To us, they are different. They are regal, elegant and just downright pleasing to the ear. We enjoy things that are foreign to us.
American student 3: It’s different from us, but we can still understand what is being said, whereas other accents are sometimes hard to understand. Different, but familiar.
American student 4: They just sound so classy.
American student 5: Americans are into anything foreign really.

Why are Americans so patriotic?

American student 1: Americans pronounced patriotism comes from the “Cinderella Story” of the United States hard-fought independence that led to America’s climb to becoming a world superpower.
American student 2: We have the belief that we are the greatest country in the world, and that’s something I think everyone should feel about the nation they are from.
American student 3: We are a major melting pot country. Rather than history or a common language that unite us, we are united by freedom which is what it means to be “American.”
American student 4: I don’t know, I’m not that patriotic.
American student 5: Americans are patriotic because other Americans are patriotic. It’s more of a mob mentality kind of thing.

What three words do you think of when you hear “Great Britain?”

American student 1: Colonialism, tradition and decline.
American student 2: Queen, Doctor Who and Buckingham.
American student 3: England, futbol and Winston Churchill.
American student 4: British Flag, Shakespeare and rain.
American student 5: Tea, football and BBC.

From what you know, what is something you like about Great Britain that you wish was in America?

American student 1: The parliamentary system that elects parties, not candidates.
American student 2: I enjoy the more-than-two-party political system they have. I do not wish for quite as many parties as they have, but I would enjoy seeing more than two major parties in the US.
American student 3: I wish soccer was more popular in America like it is in Britain.
American student 4: Universal health care and the relaxed attitude towards alcohol.
American student 5: Premier League.

Without Google, what nations make up Great Britain?

American student 1: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales
American student 2: Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England
American student 3: Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England
American student 4: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but that might be the United Kingdom. I’m not positive.
American student 5: Ireland, England and Scotland?

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in this. I really enjoyed everyone’s answers and learned some new things myself!

Like this Story? Also like us on Facebook.

Cultural Differences
United Kingdom
United States

Get Blog Updates

Email is required

GoUni Tips - UK Lifestyle

UK Lifestyle

✨ A Guide to British Stereotypes ✨

A stereotype is a generalisation of the perceived tendencies or characteristics of certain people. They are often used to make jokes. We want to share some of the most common stereotypes recognised by Brits, so you can understand the jokes they make. 😆

While many stereotypes have some truth in them (eg "Americans love guns" - there are more guns per person in USA than in any other country in the world); others are completely baseless (eg "Women can't drive well" - women actually have significantly fewer road accidents than men).

Regardless, most Brits understand that, while stereotypes can be fun to joke about, they should not be taken seriously. We certainly do not endorse the usage of any of these in any other context than a joke. ☝🏼

National Stereotypes

Americans 🇺🇸 tend to be stereotyped as brash, fat and overoptimistic. Jokes are also made about Americans' love of guns and cars. 🔫🚘😏

Image result for who buying all the guns

Germans 🇩🇪 are stereotyped as very serious and efficient. As Henning Wehn (a German comedian) jokes: "The difference is Germans like to laugh once the work is done!"

The French 🇫🇷 are stereotyped as suave, romantic, and snobbish. Jokes are also made about France surrendering to the Nazis in World War II.

There isn't much of a stereotype for Italians 🇮🇹 in the UK, but they are known everywhere for using this gesture...

Australians 🇦🇺 are stereotyped as easy-going beer-drinkers, always out on the beach, playing sport or having a BBQ. Sometimes jokes are made about Aussies being criminals, as many of the first white settlers in Australia were criminals exiled from Britain.

While Brits 🇬🇧 would accept the stereotype of drinking a lot of tea, most of them wouldn't recognise the stereotype of being posh - which mostly comes from the Queen, Jane Austen novels and rich British actors.

There is also a British stereotype of having a "stiff upper lip", which means you don't show if you are upset or angry. Most Brits would agree with this perception. One more stereotype that is famous in Britain is that Brits love to queue up, and hate people who try to skip the queue. 😡

Londoners are stereotyped as posh and antisocial. It is often joked that no one likes to look at or talk to anyone in London. 😆

Northerners ( Northern English ) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 are stereotyped as chatty, simplistic and nationalist.

Scots 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 are stereotyped as being very unhealthy: drinking a lot, eating deep-fried Mars bars and having a low life expectancy. They are also stereotyped as hating the English.

ผลการค้นหารูปภาพสำหรับ scottish stereotypes

The Irish 🇮🇪 are stereotyped as being heavy drinkers, and friendly.

Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 has a lot of sheep, so people joke that the Welsh love sheep. 😂

Many Polish and other Eastern European citizens have migrated to the UK since they joined the EU in 2004. They are often stereotyped as being hard workers, or doing construction and home-improvement works cheaply.

There isn't really a stereotype for Thais 🇹🇭 , but jokes are sometimes made about ladyboys in Thailand.

Connect with us.

We'll Keep you updated with alerts, news and help where you need it

Watch GoUni Previews

GoUni EP.25 - รีวิวเรียนที่เมืองแมนยู แสลงอังกฤษแปลกๆ | ft. NCG Manchester

งานแฟร์เรียนต่อ GoUni Language & High School Fair 2024

Gouni valentine's day บอกต่อคอร์สเรียนภาษากับ bell english london, โค้งสุดท้าย เรียนต่อปริญญาโทประเทศอังกฤษ รอบ sep 2023 & jan 2024 พบกันวัน application day, go study abroad fair, 7 ยูท็อป ไม่ต้องสอบ ielts ก็เรียนต่อป.โทที่ uk ได้, 6 เหตุผลที่ใครๆ ก็อยากไปเรียนต่ออเมริกา, บอกต่อวิธีเขียน statement of purpose ยังไงให้ปัง ได้ใจมหาลัย, ทุนเรียนต่อกฎหมายที่อังกฤษ university of east anglia, ✨ ร้านชาไข่มุกในอังกฤษที่ลองแล้วจะหายคิดถึงบ้าน ✨, ✨ uk student discounts for clothing ✨, ✨ 9 tips for starting at university ✨, ✨ uk mobile networks that offer student discounts ✨, รวม 30 คำย่อภาษาอังกฤษที่สายแชททุกคนควรรู้, รู้หรือไม่ มหา’ลัยอังกฤษมีระบบแบ่งบ้านเหมือนแฮร์รี่ พอตเตอร์เลย, ✨ unfolding cultures abroad, so you won’t be shocked ✨, ✨ britain introduces “fake news” to educational ✨.

GOUNI EP19 - รีวิวเรียนภาษาที่เมือง Cambridge คลาสสิคแบบอังกฤษสุด!! | Feat. Bell Cambridge

LET’S GET STARTED

If you are looking to study in the UK there is no better time to start applying than now. And with GoUni we will be there to helpyou every step of the way.

FREE CONSULTATION

UK Edition Change

UK Politics
News Videos
Paris 2024 Olympics
Rugby Union
Sport Videos
John Rentoul
Mary Dejevsky
Andrew Grice
Sean O’Grady
Photography
Theatre & Dance
Culture Videos
Fitness & Wellbeing
Food & Drink
Health & Families
Royal Family
Electric Vehicles
Car Insurance Deals
Lifestyle Videos
UK Hotel Reviews
News & Advice
Simon Calder
Australia & New Zealand
South America
C. America & Caribbean
Middle East
Politics Explained
News Analysis
Today’s Edition
Home & Garden
Broadband deals
Fashion & Beauty
Travel & Outdoors
Sports & Fitness
Sustainable Living
Climate Videos
Solar Panels
Behind The Headlines
On The Ground
Decomplicated
You Ask The Questions
Binge Watch
Travel Smart
Watch on your TV
Crosswords & Puzzles
Most Commented
Newsletters
Ask Me Anything
Virtual Events
Betting Sites
Online Casinos
Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

7 stereotypes about British people that everyone believes

Don't believe everything you hear - our average rainfall is lower than european rainy season average. , article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world

Do you love tea, enjoy polite queuing and take an umbrella everywhere you go? Probably, but that's not the point.

Many Brits experience frustration at the number of stereotypes that people enforce on them. And just like most stereotypes they are usually harmless – and often untrue.

How to spot a psychopath according to a psychopath
The most disturbing truths about marriage
10 skills that are hard to learn but pay off forever

In response to a question posted on Quora , Britons have listed the most common and unfounded examples:

1. They all have a ‘British accent’

“There is no such thing as a British Accent but there are accents and dialects. People from the South sound completely different from people from the North.”

2. They love the Royal Family

“There are quite a few Brits who either outright dislike the concept (if not he family itself), or don't particularly care for it. They bring in a lot of tourist money and occasionally there's a day off for something or the other so tolerance and tempered appreciation wins out.”

The 10 worst areas of Britain for earning the living wage

3. They have terrible food

“England is a fantastic place to eat with a hugely varied cuisine from all around the world.

“I'm not sure how it stacks up compared to other cities when it comes to expensive gourmet meals in five star restaurants and I honestly don't care.

“I do know that for someone on a reasonable budget it's fantastic. It also has the best Indian food on the planet (better than India).”

4. All British people are English

“Great Britain is the name of an Island containing three countries. The inhabitants of these countries are very different.

“Most [‘British’] stereotypes seem to refer to the English.”

5. British people are rude

“Particularly in London. Unless you stand on the left hand side of the escalator on the Tube; then you're in for a lot of rudeness.”

6. They are permanently wet

“While there is no 'dry' season, the average rainfall during our rainy months is in fact lower than the European rainy season average. Greece has as much rain as us in its rainy season.”

7. Everyone has a charming accent like the English folk on the TV

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

My Independent Premium
Account details
Help centre

Places on our 2024 summer school are filling fast. Don’t miss out. Enrol now to avoid disappointment

8 British Stereotypes and Why They Are (Mostly) Inaccurate

As with any other country, we Brits are subject to our fair share of cultural stereotypes.

While, to a greater or lesser degree, there’s an element of truth in some of them, you’ll soon discover that many are comically far from the truth! That’s not to say that we deny responsibility; many of the stereotypes about the British are of our own making, and it gets worse if you get into region-specific stereotypes, like the range of things said about the Scottish and Welsh. Still, it’s certainly the case that visitors can come to Britain with somewhat inaccurate expectations of what they’ll find here . In this article, we’re going to debunk some of the myths and help you get to know us a little better.

1. We’re all best mates with Prince William

Mention to someone from another country that you’re from Britain, and one of the responses you may encounter is “Do you know Prince William?” And in that question, you might just as well substitute the heir to the British throne with any other member of the Royal Family. Judging by the volume of Royal memorabilia sold to tourists each year, it would seem that our Royals are one of the things that non-Brits most love about us. Even those of us who live in Britain are fascinated by them, particularly since William and Kate have come to the fore as the monarchy’s 21st century ambassadors. While it’s very gratifying that our monarchy generates so much interest from overseas, Britain is a country with a population of 63.23 million people. Funnily enough, we’re not all personally acquainted with the Royals, even though many of us will happily dig out our anecdote about “the day we saw the Queen” or about our brief encounter with one of the more minor members of the Royal Family. But, while we may be on first name terms with them, they’re sadly not on first name terms with us.

2. We all live in a gloriously idealised London

In the imaginations of many outside the UK, our capital city is the place in which all British people reside – doubtless in residences with views of the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace. At a push, non-Brits may have heard of other major cities such as Oxford or Edinburgh, and maybe Birmingham, but that’s often as far as non-Brit knowledge extends. This isn’t helped by the fact that so many major films are set in London: Notting Hill , Love Actually , Bridget Jones , to name but a few. And all these films present idealised versions of London that have those who’ve never been imagining that it’s idyllically snowy in the winter and sunny in the summer, that transport is by the iconic red double decker buses and black cabs (the latter at least is partly true), and that all London living is based in the very heart of the city, surrounded by its most famous landmarks. In movies, those who don’t live in London live in picture-perfect villages surrounded by unspoilt countryside, in quaint little cottages with log burners, and roses growing around the door. The reality, of course, sadly doesn’t quite live up to this romantic ideal. Those who live in London live mostly in its sprawling (and often depressing) suburbs, with astronomical house prices making living in central London an impossible dream for everyone but the world’s richest. More often than not, London is grey, polluted and rainy, and getting from A to B is a gargantuan task that involves negotiating the grimy, crowded London Underground, known affectionately as “The Tube”. Don’t get us wrong – London is fantastic. But it’s not how it’s portrayed on the big screen. What’s more, most Brits don’t live in London. They live in cities, towns and villages dotted around the country, just like people do in any other country. Though there is much to admire about the majority of British settlements, and many have long and interesting histories that are still in evidence in their buildings and monuments, they’re probably not how most non-Brits imagine them. These days our high streets look very similar from one town to the next, because they’re all dominated by chains of the same shops and supermarkets, and modern housing estates all look the same because they’re mostly built by the same property developers. Some people do enjoy the idealised, Hollywood version of Britain – but it’s generally the people who have lots of money. That’s not to say, however, that Britain for everyday people lacks charm; far from it.

3. We all talk like a Cockney or an aristocrat

“Tally ho old sport! I say, isn’t this some ghastly weather we’re having, what?” “Alright me old geyser?” These are the two categories of British accent that constitute most non-Brits’ impressions of how we talk here in Britain. Hollywood has done little to dispel this idea of British speech, as this is how we’re depicted in most movies as well. In reality, numerous regional dialects add colour to the way in which English is spoken in Britain, from the thick Glaswegian accent to the gentle West Country lilt. With each of our many accents comes our own set of internal British stereotypes, but we don’t have time to look at these now. Suffice it to say that if you come to Britain expecting us to talk like the Queen or Dick Van Dyke, you’re in for a disappointment!

4. All we ever talk about is the weather

There’s certainly a big element of truth in this one, but you only have to look at the average British weather forecast to understand why. If you lived in, say, California, you’d get bored of talking about the weather after a while, because the sun is always shining and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect, weather-wise, from one week to the next. Over here, on the other hand, our weather changes constantly. Look at today for example. When I woke up this morning the sun was shining and it was the perfect crisp winter’s day. It’s now 11.20am and it has clouded over and it’s raining heavily. What’s more, January was so wet that much of the country is suffering from horrendous flooding. It’s only February and we’ve already experienced record levels of rain, mini tornadoes, record-breaking wind speeds and the biggest, most destructive waves the coast has ever seen. There’s never a dull moment when it comes to the British weather, and that’s why we like to talk about it so much. But talking about the weather fulfils another purpose: it’s a guaranteed topic for small talk, a safeguard we use to avoid those awkward silences that we self-conscious Brits hate. That self-consciousness and awkwardness is another stereotype, of course; even if there are plenty of Brits like that, there are also plenty of gregarious types who defy that image. And all that said, we don’t just talk about the weather. We talk about what we’re up to at the weekend, what happened on TV last night and what we think of the latest gossip. And plenty more besides that, too.

5. We have a stiff upper lip

The idea of the “stiff upper lip” comes from the fact that a trembling upper lip betrays a lack of control over one’s emotions, and maintaining a stiff upper lip – not showing any emotion – is something that many people think characterises the Brits . This misconception stems from the Victorian period, when showing your emotions was indeed considered a big no-no. This has left us with a reputation for being reserved, and reluctant to show how we feel, but this labelling of us as unemotional is a little unfair. These days it’s considered healthy to show grief if you feel it; just look at the public outpouring of emotion at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. A number of newspaper articles in recent years have argued that the British stiff upper lip is no more, and you only have to observe the number of tears shed on reality TV shows like The X Factor to see why this outdated stereotype now fails to hold true.

6. Our food is awful and we can’t produce our own wine

Some countries – dare we say it, France, for example – look down their noses at British food and deride us for our lack of taste. Admittedly, the proliferation in Britain of eating places of overseas origin – French, Italian, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, to name but a few – does rather suggest that we feel our own food is lacking something; after all, in Italy, you only really see Italian restaurants. We admit that fish and chips and “bangers and mash” aren’t exactly the height of culinary sophistication, and the less said about Glasgow’s deep fried Mars Bars, the better. But what about our fabulous cakes and Afternoon Teas? Our hearty steamed puddings? Cornish pasties? And our huge variety of delicious sausages and cheeses? A good strong cheddar is every bit as good as a French cheese; and the French may claim that they have a different cheese for every day of the year, but according to the English Cheese Board, we have over 700 different varieties. And we don’t care what anyone says, we love our Sunday roasts and they’re the feast of kings. Our wine industry is a bit of a joke compared to that of many countries, and that’s why we import so much. After all, what grape would grow in our horrid rainy climate? Well, quite a few actually. It may surprise you to learn that we have a number of vineyards and we even produce our own sparkling wine – the British answer to Champagne. Not that anyone in the UK ever really drinks it, but we feel that that’s beside the point.

7. We’re a nation of queuers

Now here is a British stereotype that definitely is true, and we’re very glad about it. We Brits are renowned for forming an orderly queue whenever the need arises. We’re not ones for pushing and shoving; we let fairness rule the day and patiently wait our turn. Few things offend us more than people who jump the queue, and we’ll make sure that any violators of the queuing order feel the full force of our disapproving glare.

8. We complain a lot – but we also say sorry a lot

It’s true: we do complain a lot. We love grumbling to each other about everything from our neighbours to politicians, from energy bills to noisy parties and from the weather being too cold to the weather being too hot. But we’re normally too polite actually to complain to the source of the grievance. In a restaurant, for example, we might privately complain to our dining companion about the standard of the food, but when the waiter comes round to ask us if everything is alright with our meals, most of us will politely tell them how good it is. It’s also true that we say sorry a lot. In the restaurant scenario we’ve just outlined, if we did pluck up the courage to say something about our substandard meal, we’d probably start and end our complaint with the word “sorry”, as if it was somehow our fault that the food wasn’t up to scratch, and that we are the ones who must do the apologising. It makes no sense, but that’s just how we’re wired.

If you’d like to see for yourself how we Brits measure up to our stereotypes, why not try signing yourself up to one of our English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses ? During your studies, you’ll stay in the classic English university city of Oxford, where your education extends beyond the classroom to learning about Britain’s rich culture and history. What better way to get to know what the Brits are really like than by travelling to the UK and understanding the background to what makes us tick? If you do decide to join us, just remember one thing when you’re at a bus stop or buying something in a shop: never, ever, jump the queue.

Image credits: banner ; William ; London ; cockneys ; rain ; Diana ; fish and chips ; queue ; waiter .

Search Menu
Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Urban Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Emotions
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Variation
Language Families
Language Acquisition
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Lexicography
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Linguistic Anthropology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Culture
Music and Religion
Music and Media
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Society
Law and Politics
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Neuroanaesthesia
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Oncology
Medical Toxicology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Clinical Neuroscience
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Medical Ethics
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Games
Computer Security
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business History
Business Strategy
Business Ethics
Business and Government
Business and Technology
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic Methodology
Economic Systems
Economic History
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Natural Disasters (Environment)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
International Political Economy
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Theory
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Politics and Law
Public Administration
Public Policy
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066-c.1220

< Previous chapter
Next chapter >

18 Stereotypes and the Image of the English

Published: April 2003
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter explores the image of the English, with particular emphasis on stereotypes, during the medieval period. It argues that the image of the English was a crucial factor in sustaining the construct of Englishness, and that the positive stereotypes, and even to some degree the negative ones, helped to draw the descendants of the immigrants into an English identity. When medieval travellers encountered other groups, they experienced real differences in the way peoples acted. Stereotypes could play an important role in how people thought about ethnic identity, and in that context need to be considered very carefully. The type of characterisations discussed in this chapter was important in building group identity, in classifying people into groups, and in maintaining boundaries and barriers between peoples. Some of the material considered in this chapter was meant to be humorous, and even the insults could be employed in a bantering way.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

Google Scholar Indexing
GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]

Personal account

Sign in with email/username & password
Get email alerts
Save searches
Purchase content
Activate your purchase/trial code
Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with username/password
Recommend to your librarian
Institutional account management
Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institutionâ€™s website and Oxford Academic.

Click Sign in through your institution.
Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institutionâ€™s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see â€˜Sign in through society siteâ€™ in the sign in pane within a journal:

Click Sign in through society site.
When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Rights and permissions
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

ESL Activities

British Stereotypes Full Lesson Plan [Updated]

Posted by by Zaraki Kenpachi
12 months ago

Introduction

In today’s increasingly globalized world, cross-cultural understanding is not only valuable, but essential. Our worldviews are often influenced by stereotypes, which are oversimplified images or ideas about a particular type of person or thing. Although these stereotypes can sometimes offer a grain of truth, they often distort our perception of people and cultures, creating misconceptions that can lead to bias and misunderstanding.

This lesson plan, focusing on British stereotypes, provides a valuable tool for educators to address these issues in a comprehensive and engaging manner. By examining British stereotypes, students are encouraged to think critically about the origins, accuracy, and effects of these generalizations. They will understand how media and popular culture play a significant role in perpetuating these stereotypes and gain a deeper awareness of how stereotypes can influence their perception of others.

Furthermore, this lesson is not just about understanding British culture. The skills and insights gained from critically analyzing British stereotypes can be applied to other cultures and groups. Students will learn how to question stereotypes and form their own perspective based on research and understanding, rather than relying on oversimplified and often incorrect generalizations.

British Stereotypes Lesson Plan

Lesson Duration: 60 minutes

Subject: Social Studies, Cultural Studies, English Language and Literature

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

Understand the concept of cultural stereotypes, their origins, and their effects.
Identify common British stereotypes and discuss their accuracy and impact.
Critically analyze stereotypes and develop their perspectives based on research and discussion.

Materials Needed:

Projector or smartboard for presentations and videos.
Internet access for research and video streaming.
Handouts with discussion questions.
Pens, pencils, and notebooks for students.

Lesson Procedure:

1. Introduction (10 minutes)

Start the lesson with a brief discussion about what stereotypes are. Define the term and discuss how they are formed. Discuss the positive and negative effects of stereotypes.
Briefly introduce British stereotypes, and ask students if they can name any.

2. Group Activity: Identifying Stereotypes (15 minutes)

Divide the class into small groups. Assign each group to brainstorm and list down as many British stereotypes as they can. Encourage them to think about movies, books, and other media where they might have encountered these stereotypes.
After the activity, ask each group to present their list. Write these stereotypes on the board for everyone to see.

3. Video Presentation and Discussion (10 minutes)

Show a short video discussing British stereotypes (make sure to review the video prior to class to ensure it is suitable for the students). This could be a video like “Do Brits Really Drink Tea And Have Bad Teeth?” from the YouTube channel Anglophenia, or another educational resource that dispels or discusses British stereotypes.
After the video, ask the students how many of the stereotypes they listed were discussed in the video. This will show the prevalence of these stereotypes.

4. Research and Presentation (15 minutes)

Ask students to choose one stereotype from the list on the board and research it. They can look up the origins of the stereotype, whether it’s true or false, and how it affects British people and their image internationally.
After the research, each student will present their findings. This will lead to a better understanding of the reality versus the stereotypes.

5. Class Discussion and Reflection (10 minutes)

Start a class discussion about the stereotypes they’ve researched. Ask them if their perception of British people has changed after the lesson.
Ask them to reflect on the importance of understanding and questioning stereotypes. Encourage them to apply this critical thinking to other cultures and groups.

Assessment:

The students will be assessed based on their participation in the class discussion and their presentations. The teacher should consider:

Was the student able to effectively research and present a British stereotype?
Did the student actively participate in class discussions and activities?
Did the student display a change in understanding about stereotypes and their impact?

Extension Activities:

For further study, students can:

Write an essay about the effect of British stereotypes on international relations or how these stereotypes affect British literature and media.
Research stereotypes about their own culture or country and create a presentation comparing these stereotypes with the British ones discussed in class.
Watch a British movie or TV series and analyze it for stereotypes. This could be a homework assignment followed by a class discussion.

Teacher’s Notes:

Ensure that the discussion remains respectful and sensitive to the fact that stereotypes can be harmful and offensive. The goal of the lesson is to encourage critical thinking and foster understanding and respect for other cultures.

Understanding stereotypes and their impact on our perceptions of different cultures is a crucial aspect of fostering a more empathetic and inclusive society. This lesson plan provides a structured and engaging approach to exploring British stereotypes, allowing students to investigate their origins, truthfulness, and effects.

Throughout this lesson, students are encouraged to actively engage in discussions, research, and critical analysis, promoting a deeper understanding of the often oversimplified images associated with British culture. By dissecting these stereotypes, students learn to challenge preconceived notions and form more nuanced, well-informed views about not just British culture, but also other cultures and societies.

Moreover, this lesson underscores the vital role of media and popular culture in perpetuating stereotypes, which extends far beyond the classroom walls. It equips students with the skills to become more discerning consumers of media, capable of recognizing and questioning stereotypes in various forms of content they encounter in everyday life.

Ultimately, this lesson about British stereotypes serves as a springboard for broader discussions on cultural understanding and respect. It urges students to apply the same critical thinking skills to other cultures and societies, fostering global citizens who are aware, informed, and respectful of diversity. By tackling stereotypes head-on, we can make strides toward a world where cultural understanding triumphs over generalizations and misconceptions.

Functional Language Lesson Plan [Updated]
Classroom Layout: Floor Plan Examples [Updated]
ESL Collocations Game [Updated]
How to Use Japanese Multiplication [Updated]
Art Discussion Topics [Updated]
Is Being a Teacher Worth It? [Updated]

Brag Tags For Students [Ideas for The Classroom]

Characteristics of a Great Teacher [Updated]

Free Samples
Premium Essays
Editing Services Editing Proofreading Rewriting
Extra Tools Essay Topic Generator Thesis Generator Citation Generator GPA Calculator Study Guides Donate Paper
Essay Writing Help
About Us About Us Testimonials FAQ
Studentshare
Anthropology
British Stereotypes

British Stereotypes - Essay Example

Subject: Anthropology
Type: Essay
Level: Masters
Pages: 4 (1000 words)
Downloads: 2

Extract of sample "British Stereotypes"

Cited: 2 times
Copy Citation Citation is copied Copy Citation Citation is copied Copy Citation Citation is copied

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF British Stereotypes

Stereotypes, cultural differences and cultural disrespect in rush hour and rush hour 2, all stereotypes are harmful, stereotypes in gender, german and american stereotypes, rhetoric & stereotypes, famous stereotypes in advertising, stereotypes dominating the movies gentlemen prefer blondes and the searchers, deconstruction component of the 1998 and 2001 film rush hour.

TERMS & CONDITIONS
PRIVACY POLICY
COOKIES POLICY

Cognition, représentation, langage

Accueil Numéros 10-1 The Foundations Of Discourse: The...

The Foundations Of Discourse: The Case Of British Stereotypes Of The French

Texte intégral, introduction.

1 It is widely accepted that individuals use language to describe the world around them. This perspective would lead us to expect that what people say about the world reflects both diversity in terms of individual perspective, and the multiplicity of the world itself. However, there are regularities in discourse in the sense that what people say about the world is often a repetition of what has been said before (Bakhtin 1981), as opposed to a reflection of a given individual’s immediate experience of the world. French people talking about the British seem to focus more frequently on their phlegmatic character, their reserve and their hypocrisy than on other alleged character traits (Crouzet 2006). These predicates may or may not be applied to Britons in other communities, and the American people I have consulted do not seem to agree that phlegm would be the first characteristic of British nationals. However, a community may change its views through time, and it is plausible that the stereotypes of the British in the US differ today from those of 1776 .

2 The purpose of this paper is to advocate the use of discovery procedures in the study of conventional discourses. In order to distinguish discourses that are the result of socially ratified knowledge, and those that are not, it is necessary to establish some criteria. The investigative work documented in this paper represents an important contribution to the understanding of meaning in language : discourse analysis in its various guises seldom spells out the methodological basis for the interpretations it puts forward, and therefore little substantiation is available to establish the cognitive reality of discourses at all: a sad state of affairs given the prominent role of discourse in shaping individual and collective experience. Our innovative approach is achieved through looking at stereotypes as an epitome of socially shared knowledge. We conduct three preliminary experiments inspired by corpus linguistics, social psychology and pragmatics in order to assess the degree to which bringing together different methods can illuminate the existence of socially ratified discourses. The focus is therefore less on the depth and breath of these experiments than on their joint potential to reveal what is a conventional discourse, and what is not.

3 The first section presents research traditions for which some discourses are regarded as socially ratified knowledge rather than merely the expression of personal belief. This is followed by an analysis of British stereotypes of the French in a press corpus, sentence completion questionnaires and inference judgments. The degree of convergence of predicative structures applied to all the relevant members of the target group in revealing its corresponding conventional discourses is emphasised in the conclusion.

1. The discourse matrix assumption

4 The view that socially stable representations attach to a topic to inform discourse productions has played an important role in the French research community. The impetus given by Michel Pêcheux to discourse analysis relies on the notions of inter-discourse and discursive formation. These two separate notions come to merge in later work in the field: inter-discourse corresponds to background knowledge about the conventional contents of some discourses, finding an abstract representation in discursive formations (Guillaumou 2006). The merger is pursued by Foucault (1972), for whom a linguistic sequence is an utterance only if it is situated in an enunciative field – i.e. if it refers to the conventional discourses about the topic – whereas the set of these conventional discourses constitutes a discursive formation. Foucault (1972) proposes that discourse is a social practice underpinned by areas of conventional knowledge called discursive matrixes ( formations discursives ). A discursive matrix on social stereotypes of the British would, in France, comprise predicates concerning their phlegm, reserve and hypocrisy. The existence of such matrixes would explain why these predicates would seem to come up with notable frequency in discourse productions. They would further explain factors such as the lag between expectations and reality, as documented in a large literature on irrationality (Marcus 2008, Morel 2002, Poundstone 1988, Reason 2000); how experience can be reinterpreted following social interpretative frameworks (Spanos, Burgess and Burgess 1994); and the documented influence of stereotypes on subject decisions (Bodenhausen and Wyer 1985). Comparable to the idea that action is informed by social forms of knowledge (Weber’s frame of perception, Panofsky’s habit, Bourdieu’s habitus, Goffman’s frames, Schank’s scripts, Dawkins’ memes and Levinson’s semtem), the notion of discursive matrixes has led to an ever-growing body of descriptive work in the different strands of discourse analysis. However, the empirical work has not always provided immediate answers to the crucial questions raised by the notion of socially shared forms of knowledge underlying discourse productions. Amongst these questions lies the issue of how a discursive matrix can be demonstrated.

5 What kind of evidence would confirm the hypothesis that the French harbour the belief that the British are phlegmatic, reserved and hypocritical? If such ideas emanate from social knowledge, unlike the propositions that the British are energetic, open-minded and generous, the distinction between the two requires a demonstration. The ability to establish the proposed conventional representations appears pressing for a number of reasons. Sociologically, discourse analysis , practices and assumptions vary considerably according to communities, as evidenced by the scant cross-references between, for instance, the French School of Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux 1969, Foucault 1972) and the British Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough and Holes 1995, Wodak and Meyer 2001). One undesirable scientific consequence is that any results achieved in one community might be difficult to replicate in another, due to the fact that the analytical tools might rely on intuition or culture-specific notions (which is eloquently demonstrated for cross-cultural pragmatics by Wierzbicka 1991). Whilst considerably complicating the testing of particular hypotheses, this also obscures the approach of general questions raised by discursive matrixes, which to select a few major ones, comprise their acquisition, sharing, use, variation and change, and causes. Let’s mention here some of the key questions which arise when approaching research on discourse matrixes:

How are matrixes learned? The acquisition of (self) stereotypes is evidenced to occur around 10 years of age (Rutland 1999). However, what input this process is based on remains to be elucidated, although an answer may be formed through a comparative study involving results from the acquisition of lexical meaning (Bloom 2000).

How can representations that are learned by individuals come to converge in a community (Zlatev, Racine, Sinha and Itkone 2008)? Social convergence does seem to apply to stereotypes (Karasawa 2007). The paradox of socially convergent knowledge on the part of cognitively independent individuals, and the degree of that convergence, tends to remain, and does so for linguistic and other aspects of social meaning.

By what processes are different dimensions of matrixes highlighted? That the British are hypocritical is not likely to be evoked by the French in every context, and indeed the type of context that might bring about this predicate is questionable (Blair 2002). The contextual dependency of discursive meaning is comparable to the complex linguistic question of polysemy, where an under-specified item like ‘go’ or ‘any’ has different readings in characterised contexts (future and movement in ‘I am going to go to the beach’, negation and universal quantification in ‘He can’t do anything right’ vs. ‘He can do anything he likes’).

Why do different discourse matrixes have a varying degree of efficacy? Some propositions are more performative than others, and a course of action is more readily commended as furthering competitiveness than as being virtuous.

How do discursive matrixes vary and change? Discourse productions change through time, as, presumably, do discursive matrixes: no contemporary equivalent is found to the medieval French belief that the sub-human English people had a tail, and their presumed phlegm is not shared by other communities. A diachronic version of discourse analysis remains to be provided to match three hundred years of inquiry into shifts in linguistic meaning.

One question relating to variation and change is that raised by Fairclough (2003) of hegemony. How does a discourse matrix become dominant in a community? This particular issue concerns discourse matrixes fulfilling ideological functions (van Dijk 1998), and could be compared to linguistic forms becoming markers of normative registers.

What are the causes of discursive matrixes? Why should such knowledge exist? What purpose is served by the belief that Britons are reserved? In this sense, the study may benefit from a comparative approach involving other conventional knowledge, such as highly routinised grammatical meanings that allow for quick communication, according to Givón (2002). Routinised discourses allow rapid communication (Moscovici 2000), and may constitute a marker of identity and exclusion (Wodak 2008), furthermore, the knowledge that underlies them helps make sense of the world (Taijfel 1981: 33).

6 The resolution of the issues documented above rests on the ability to identify and characterise discursive matrixes. Proposals as to how discursive matrixes can be identified in a testable way constitute the purpose of this work. In this paper, three methods are reviewed from the fields of Corpus Linguistics, Pragmatics and Social Psychology. Each method is applied to the particular issue of British stereotypes about the French in order to establish their general applicability and degree of convergence.

7 The analysis has considerable relevance for a better understanding of the workings of cognition. If discourse productions conventionalise in a form of knowledge that sees particular predicates related to a given topic, then that knowledge should have an impact on the perception, recognition, categorisation and memory of the empirical experience relating to that topic. In other words, the existence of socially shared knowledge that underlies discourse production has a considerable importance for the notions of agency and models of cognition. The model of the free individual endowed with reason is certainly circumscribed if their discursive production refers to conventional knowledge that may or may not reflect experience. An individual’s knowledge is often presented as a result of his or her relationship with the world, and Aquinas’ empiricist maxim that what is in the mind has first been in the senses is often taken for granted by different models of cognition. If, however, a proportion of what people know is partially derived from social conventions, as illustrated not only by fictitious beings that populate discourse, but also by presumably real beings of which experience might be mainly discursive (such as the dark side of the moon and the bottom of oceans), then sensory experience is not the unique source of knowledge: in effect, it might well be possible to know that the British are reserved without ever having had an encounter with a member of that community. If experience were the basis of knowledge of national character, considerably more variation might be expected than if its origins were socially ratified. This is illustrated by the following:

(1) Heaven is: French cook, British police, German mechanic, Italian lovers, and the Swiss run everything Hell is: British cook, German police, French mechanic, Swiss lovers, and the Italians run everything

8 This slightly tired joke does make the point that not all predicates are conventionally associated to all topics, and that, irrespective of individual experience, there is a social belief that Italians are better lovers than they are administrators. The ways of establishing that one discourse is conventional and the other is not, is the topic of the next section

2. How do we know there are Discursive Matrixes?

9 It has been claimed that certain existing discursive matrixes constitute a conventional relation between a topic and different predicates. There are three interrelated approaches to the issue of how this relation can be established, each promising transferable methods. Primarily, the frequency of the relationship between the predicate and topic should be observed with conventional discourse representation as proposed by Corpus Linguistics. Secondly, this relationship should facilitate inferences about the topic, as sometimes noted in Pragmatics. Lastly, Social Psychology observes regularities in judgments revealed by discourse completion tasks. In this section, each factor is considered in turn before being applied to the stereotypes of the French in section 3.

10 It has been observed for some time that the particular frequency of certain words and expressions in a language may reveal the cultural assumptions of the community that speaks it. Predated by psychoanalytical techniques of word association, Georges Matoré and Algirdas Greimas’ notion of the key word was rediscovered by Wierzbicka (1991) and Corpus Linguistics (Stubbs 2001, 1998); it plays a formidable role in the design of search engines. Yet it is not only applicable to isolated words, Corpus Linguistics has shown that collocations between words and whole expressions can be revealing (as shown by the Google endeavour Culturomics that aims to diagnose cultural change on the basis of collocation changes in giant web corpora). This is demonstrated by Wolfgang Teubert, for instance, whose exploration of the British media discourses about the European Union shows that it is characterised with high frequency as a bureaucratic federal super-state that obscures the global transatlantic aspirations of Britain (Teubert 2007; see also on another topic the work by Gianoni 2010). The notion that conventional discourses are established by the frequency of attributes with predicates suggests that this could be a way to establish discourse matrixes. A Google query shows that the sequence ‘The French are arrogant’ gets 1 090 hits in July 2009, whereas ‘The French are hypocritical’ gets 10 and ‘The Belgians are arrogant’ gets none. Clearly this communicates something about the social perceptions of the French in English-speaking communities, although the internet does not in itself allow an immediate definition of which community is involved, and the considered sequence is merely one way in which the expected discursive matrix surfaces.

11 A second avenue of enquiry is provided by pragmatic inferences. What is explicitly said constitutes but a part of the communication that "takes place against a background of beliefs or assumptions which are shared by the speaker and his audience, and are recognized as such" (Stalnaker 1974: 199). The common ground that speakers assume makes exchanges manageable, as these assumptions do not have to be spelled-out in every exchange. Background knowledge does surface in certain contexts, especially where implicit conclusions are concerned, as pointed out independently by both Grice and Ducrot through the respective notions of implicatures and sous-entendu . Implicit knowledge is necessary for the rationality of the argument made in the following exchange:

(2) A: Is John really such a bad cook? B: Well, he’s English A: That’s outrageous / a fair point. (Wedgewood 2007)

12 Without the generally accepted idea in England that the English are hopeless at cooking, the relation between B’s answer to A’s question would seem anomalous. This anomaly is illustrated by a fictitious exchange such as – Is John a good cook? –Well, he’s a discourse analyst, which is definitely curious not because the intended slur cannot be read, but because there are no generally accepted ideas about the cooking abilities of members of the aforementioned profession. The discourse matrixes about the French are exploited by attested exchanges, one particular example occurs in the subtitles of the Italian film Novecento :

(3) – Is she chic? – Well, she’s French!

13 A further example can be seen in the English subtitles of the French film Les Visiteurs, where the rudeness of a character is justified by the assertion that he is French (cited in Humbert 2003; see also for the representation of the French in cinema, Durham 2008, Knox 2003, Verdaguer 2004). Another way to identify whether such ideas are part of the common ground is to consider the connectors that are used. Since but generally coordinates notions that proceed in different argumentative directions, unlike and which should bring together notions that lead to the same conclusion, the conjunction of John is English but a good cook and that of John is English and a bad cook should and does yield felicitous sequences, whereas John is a discourse analyst but a good cook and John is a discourse analyst and a bad cook that can only be a description of accidentally related properties , and much more so that John is English and a good cook and John is English but a bad cook. Exploiting the argumentative direction of connectors allows for the diagnostic of the relation between predicates and a topic to be elicited rapidly (Anscombre 2001, Larrivée 2009: 191). A consequence of this is to point to the argumentative dimension of discourse matrixes (Galatanu 2002, Longhi 2008, after Ducrot, see Anscombre and Ducrot 1983), which provide a conclusion that is part of the common ground.

14 A third way to validate the existence of a conventional relation between a predicate and a topic is through the controlled methods of social psychology. The study of socially conventional perceptions is carried out through a variety of empirical methods that generally involve subjects making judgements along pre-defined dimensions. The resulting data is often rated in accordance with Likert’s scales of socially meaningful occurrences, and sentence completion tasks. Sentence completion tasks typically involve subjects completing specified sentences in order to identify their latent beliefs on a topic, which in turn leads to the identification of collective opinions. Such work is pursued by Suárez-Orozco (2000) in her exploration of how children of immigrants think that their communities are viewed by the American society. These subjects were asked to complete the sentence ‘Most Americans think [people from my country] are...’. Overall, the responses in Suárez-Orozco’s study reflected a negative evaluation (‘bad’), which was related in some cases to poverty, lack of intelligence or knowledge, impoliteness, laziness and criminality. Less depressing and equally informative results are provided by the long tradition of experiments eliciting judgements on accents. The British subjects asked to rank the prestige and social attractiveness of the speakers of audio clips labelled as representing different English accents in Coupland and Bishop (2007; see Garrett 2010 for an overview of work on language attitudes) provide remarkably consistent judgements: the production labelled ‘standard English’ and the one closest to the subjects’ own accent were judged most favourably on both dimensions, whereas less favour was granted to immigrant accents (German and French doing much better than Asian English), which nonetheless fared better than some urban vernaculars such as Birmingham’s. It is not just the accent that is at stake, but the groups with which that accent might be associated; consequently, collective social perceptions of those groups can be elicited through such experiments.

15 These three methods represent an interdisciplinary approach that offers the potential to reveal the collective knowledge of members of a community, beyond what can be extracted through analysis of their immediate, personal experience of the world. The interdisciplinary nature of this approach allows a robust demonstration of the predicates that are conventionally related to a topic in a community through convergence, and by the elimination of biases introduced by each method. Corpora generally include a large proportion of occurrences that have nothing to do with the relevant discourse matrixes. The strictly controlled inference structures and judgement elicitations may provide answers that are not of direct interest, and relevant answers are amenable to the observer’s paradox as subjects provide the response that they think that the observer wants. Undoubtedly, a more accurate picture can be obtained by bringing together the three methods of corpus linguistics, inference judgement and sentence completion.

16 Before we turn to our analytical contribution on the stereotypes of the French in Britain, it would be appropriate to mention a further experimental method that has been carried out using recent technology. Event-related potentials (ERP) are employed by Robert (2009) for the study of syntactic transitivity. The study involves submitting syntactically anomalous sequences such as La concierge bavasse un ragot ‘The concierge dribbled a gossip’ and Marie bavasse un ragot ‘Marie dribbled a gossip’. The anomaly is due to the fact that the verb bavasser ‘to dribble’ is normally intransitive, and generally relates to a bodily fluid as opposed to speech-content. However, these two sequences are received differently by subjects; while the electrophysical indicator N400 relating to semantic difficulty is activated in both cases, the indicator P600 relating to syntactic difficulties peaks with the Marie version, but not with the concierge version. The reason for this appears to be that in France, gossiping is typical of a concierge, an association that a proper noun like Marie does not in itself invite. In other words, the presence of a received idea is enough for the speaker to produce a stable interpretation and disregard the syntactic difficulty. If this reasoning is correct, discursive formation could be tested with a view to revealing that morphosyntactic difficulties can be seen to be overridden in such situations during experimental observations. However, the elaborate nature of such experiments forces us to leave their use to future work.

3. Stereotypes of the French in Britain

3.1 corpus analysis.

17 The existence of discourse matrixes is indicated by the frequency of the relevant predicates for a given topic. This frequency can be studied in any extant body of language production where the topic is likely to come up. Studies of the British press have established its reference to stereotypes of the French: military ineptitude, cowardice, a lack of personal hygiene and immorality are predicates used by the populist daily The Sun (Drake 1998). Press articles are readily available in hard copies and increasingly in electronic format, and can be brought together and searched using everyday text processing facilities. They are dated, generally have a named author and target a well-defined national community, unlike on-line resources such as blogs. Furthermore, newspaper articles are believed to largely reflect conventional social discourses, and contribute to reinforce them. They have the supplementary advantage of escaping observer effects, since observation cannot modify already published texts. They should therefore allow stereotypes and other axiological matrixes in a given community at a given time to be documented. However, such stereotypes may not always be as prevalent in the press as one might expect, given that public commercial publications often shy away from axiological characterisations of groups (Fowler 1991) – except possibly in certain article genres such as reader letters and columns. That stereotypes should be found at all in the press would therefore be an indication of their inscription in the larger community they represent. The objectives pursued in this section are to apportion a) whether Britain has stereotypes of the French, b) which ones can be evidenced in the press, and c) whether corpus analysis support the idea of discourse matrix.

18 Having established these objectives, on July 12th 2009 we carried out a search of two sequences relating to the ethnonym French in the UK National Newspapers category of Lexi-Nexis UK. The first sequence was ‘all French people are’; it was chosen to see what predicates are applied to the French in general, and all available dates were selected. This search yielded 165 texts, with 111 occurrences of the exact sequence ‘all French people’ (excluding 4 repeated strings). The second sequence ‘is French but’ was chosen so as to elicit concessive predicates about the French. The reasoning was that concessive relations should be found with well-established stereotypes. The necessity for fine-grained analysis led us to limiting the query to the previous six months. This yielded 89 occurrences ‘French but’ (omitting 3 repeated strings). The number of occurrences was significant, while allowing a fine-grained analysis, which is the reason why these particular strings were chosen among all those that could be relevant. The analysis was expected to provide a number of recurring predicates across the two chosen structures if stereotypes on the topic existed in the society where and for whom the newspapers were published, within the limits of the norm and discouraging the expression of negative axiology. In the event that there were no such stereotypes, the predicates were expected to present as divergent and provide for few recognisable patterns.

19 Classification was the first step in the analysis of the occurrences found. The data was classified on the basis of the sentence containing the ethnonym only. In most cases, the sentence was a description of particular individuals, things or events that did not present a general property of French nationals. The clear application of an axiological predicate to French people outside ofa particular situation was of primary interest. Of the 111 occurrences of ‘all French people’, 46 concerned the views of French people on a particular thing or event (the euro, the tour de France or serial killer Jacques Mesrine), 48 were associated with political issues (very often French politicians “calling” or “appealing” to the French), and 17 reporting judgements applying to the French in general. These related to behaviour:

( 4) "What about le televiseur or le telephone?", I asked. "Well, they’re objects," he replied. "So is la table, yet that’s feminine", I countered. At that point, he did what all French people do in such a situation. "Mais, c’est comme ca," he shrugged.

20 dispositions:

(5) "He didn’t seem like a very warm man," said one man. "But perhaps all French people are like that."

(6) You and I might mistakenly believe that all French people take lengthy afternoon breaks, but look further south, say the Asterix books.

22 appearance:

(7) a. It’s time the Brits stopped being so rude about the French, stopped assuming all French people wear woolly jumpers and berets, carry onions over one shoulder and reek of garlic.

b. And there is a word related to prejudice. Stereotypes. Like all French people have strings of onions around their necks or that all Scottish people play the bagpipes and wear kilts.

23 hygiene:

(8) a. A national survey into personal hygiene has found less than half of all French people wash themselves all over in the bath or shower every day.

b. GRAPHIC: IN A LATHER: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL FRENCH PEOPLE HAVE A DAILY WASH

c. But you can’t say that about everybody. It’s the same as saying all French people stink.

24 wine and food consumption:

(9) a. But if modest consumption of wine during pregnancy was as bad as they claim, then all French people would be brain-damaged.

b. Van de Velde - a man who applies the preparatory skills to commentary that top-class caddies apply to yardage charts - tries to say something insightful, then Alliss, or his partner in misnomers Alex Hay, interrupts by suggesting that all French people eat insects or describing a "beautiful" shot by "David" Love III.

c. Like all French people, I am a great meat eater, and since I spend most of my time in England, I eat British beef.

d. In fact there are very few places outside France that can carry off a meal of more than half-a-dozen courses. The old school, French-style, full-works, slap-up extravaganza, done real proper, is an unforgettable experience - and one enjoyed by all French people not just the rich.

25 To this can be added for illustration the following sequence:

(9’) It is a nation of wine-bibbers, cries the cliché. The statistics tell us half of all French people don’t drink wine at all.

26 sexual penchant:

( 10) It [lingerie] has naughty connotations in England because of the widely held (and quite correct) assumption that all French people are perverts.

27 cultural sophistication:

(11) Because all French people have style and class and we British can bea bit naff.

28 or overall evaluation:

(12) Distressed French expatriates point to an increasingly inflammatory media: one headline on the cover of an Australian magazine asked: ’’Are all French people bastards?’’

29 Some of the stereotypes are listed and challenged in the following passage:

(13) They go through the pictures together then. No, neither has eaten frogs’ legs, nor would they. The raw meat is disgusting and the fruit looks artificial. The baguette is still very French, although wrapped, square loaves are becoming more popular in the towns. Models of the Eiffel Tower are hateful to all French people, of course, and even the real thing is dismissed in some quarters (though not by these ladies) as ’just metal - how do you say, scrap metal?’

30 Notably, example (9) containing the ethnonym also represents an instance where stereotypes are challenged. These predicates intuitively correspond to the British stereotypes about the French, which can be demonstrated by immediate collocations attested on Google (7 520 ‘French shrug’, 21 700 ‘smelly French’, 30 700 ‘wine-drinking French’, 35 100 ‘French sexual’, 8 190 ‘French sophistication’, 7 700 ‘French bastard’, well above combinations with other ethonyms – accessed in May 2010). An exception to this is the predicate warm in (5): this stereotype emerges neither through intuition nor through collocations (only 3 ‘warm French man’). This occurrence seems to report the judgment of a particular writer, as indicated by the edging perhaps , rather than the community as a whole. The collective responsibility for stereotypes (Anscombre 2001) is recognised explicitly in a majority of sequences, through speech verbs (8c), or notions such as assumption ((7a), (10)), prejudices (7b), stereotypes (7b), belief (6), or reported speech ((9b), (9c), (12)), and these collective views are dissociated from the speakers’ in (6), (10).

31 The 89 sequences ‘French but’ comprised homonyms – brand mark BUT (1 case), the family names of Dawn French (1), Katy French (1), Philip French (3) – and the language was concerned in 34 cases. The 49 remaining examples related to specific (groups of) individuals (24), things and event (16, out of which 9 related to sporting competitions). The concessive argument focused on something other than the French in 6 further cases, the last 3 providing undisputed evidence of collective axiological judgment.

(14) a. I don’t want to stereotype the French , but their discipline can go if things are not going their way.

b. "Britain is by far - and I mean by far - the best place in Europe to live if you are not white, " he opined. Well, most of us had guessed as much, but it made a change to hear someone like Mr Phillips say so. Since devolution was ushered in by an unsuspecting Scottish public, the administrations - mostly Labour - have spent millions of pounds telling us the exact opposite. They may not have said we were actually more intolerant than, say, the French, but their advertising budget - which rose inexorably year by year - was spent trying to make us feel deeply guilty about our inhumanity to our fellow man.

c. Stockings stuffed with literary references, puppet theatre, manic bickering and emotional frankness, it’s an understatement to call such a movie French . But boy, is it French.

32 The above examples refer to collective perceptions of the disposition of French people, invoking character traits such as indiscipline and intolerance; argumentativeness and assertiveness; as well as cultural sophistication, with the primary utterance (a) identifiable as a stereotype. These recur in indirect ways in other sequences; the following examples refer to underhand behaviour:

(15) An e-mail? A blinking e-mail? A furtive little electronic note sent from an anonymous Hotmail account is no way to bring about the end of the Prime Minister of Britain’s career.

It sounds like the kind of thing the Italians might do, or the French. But not the Brits. That’s just not sporting and shows a complete lack of, well, kugelsack. Plotters in Gordon Brown’s own Labour party are using Internet messages to try to bring about his resignation.

(16) It’s amazing to sell soufflés to the French but they really appreciate our type of food.

33 Both searches established that the British press does evidence stereotypes of the French. The view of the French as either a smelly breed who sport garlands of onions or garlic around their necks, or as culturally sophisticated people primarily interested in sex, wine and food can be reconstructed through 15.5% out of all axiological occurrences of ‘all French people’ in UK Lexis-Nexis. They constitute 6% of the sequences ‘French but’ in a six month period. They are often mentioned rather than used, by being identified through reported speech or knowledge of the community. There is disparity between the percentages that is explained by the apparently more open-ended nature of concessive relation, which can be established on a topic other than what immediately precedes the connector for the string ‘French but’. However, it remains that the presence of stereotypes in a type of publication averse to direct axiological judgments constitutes remarkable evidence of their existence in the society under study.

34 Even though the universally quantified ethnonym seems a good way to diagnose stereotypes, the case of example (5) has shown that axiological predicates applied to the national group are not all endorsed by a community. While the proportion of stereotype occurrences is significant, the small number of occurrences for each calls for further enquiry . The question of whether the stereotypes of the French in Britain can be validated by other methods is explored in the next two sections.

3.2 Sentence completion tests

35 Conventional predicates about a topic can be documented through public discourses found in newspapers. They raise the question of the extent to which they are an entirely reliable witness of knowledge shared by social actors, given their communication functions and norms. These may therefore usefully be supplemented with other types of data. Supplementary material can be obtained through the protocols devised by social psychology. One such protocol is the sentence completion test (SCT) (Sherry, Dahlen and Holadey 2004; Holadey, Smith and Sherry 2000; Rogers, Bishop and Lane 2004). Extending the word association techniques used in psychoanalysis, SCTs involve presenting subjects with the task of filling in the gaps in incomplete sentences. The gap may be considerable in terms of its semantic potential, as in the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank ‘I dislike…’, or very much narrowed down as in Suarez-Orozco’s ‘Most Americans think that [people from my country] are...’. The answers should be provided by subjects as quickly as possible, in order to give access to latent beliefs and escape the observer paradox. Used extensively in personality assessments, the tests have also been employed for the assessment of cultural values and stereotypes. An early example is Golde and Kogan (1959) in their study of the way the young view older adults; attitudes to smoking among college students is explored through the completion of the sentence ‘Smoking makes one...’ by Hendricks and Brandon (2004); the perceived differences between the notions of gender and sex is considered by Pryzgoda and Chrisler (2000).

36 The robust and simple method of sentence completion tests confirms the expected stable recurrent predicates of discursive matrixes on a variety of topics. One such topic might relate to national stereotypes. In order to test the existence of stereotypes of the French amongst British nationals, we devised a questionnaire comprising two sentences containing the strings ‘all French people’ and ‘French but’ extracted from the press corpus, to ensure comparability. The sentences invited group judgment (‘Most people think that all French people are...’) and individual evaluation (‘She is French but...’). The same format was adopted for the four preceding filler sentences (‘Most people think that philosophy is’, ‘She studies philosophy but...’, ‘It’s widely believed that fruits and vegetables are...’, ‘He likes fruits and vegetables, although...’). The SCT questionnaires were administered to a group of 21 British Sociology undergraduate second year university students at the beginning of one of their first classes in November 2010. Sociology students were selected because it was felt that Modern Languages students, to whom one author has direct access , might have a reason not to revealwith the hypothesised stereotypes. The subjects were instructed to “Complete the following sentences. Try to do this fairly quickly.” The results were expected to evidence the stable and recurrent predicates that were found in the press, and the sequence all French people would yield a greater proportion of stereotypes than French but if the press results indicated non-accidental tendencies. These expectations were borne out by the responses. The sequence ‘Most people think that all French people are...’ was completed with eleven different predicates; 38% of answers were represented by rude ; followed by romantic at 14% and arrogant at 10%; the other 8 predicates distributed between negative ( weak, racist , stuck up ) and positive axiology ( sexy, fancy, nice, posh ); one was entirely neutral ( from France ), maybe in an attempt to avoid axiology altogether.

‘French people are...’

37 As in the press corpus, the predicates in the sequence ‘She is French but...’ are much more diverse. The usual suspect ( not ) rude came up in only 10% of the answers. They had to do with a constellation of behaviour typically associated to the French – their disposition (19%: she’s not that bad; she’s ok; she is quiet and reserve [sic], all right ), language (14%: she doesn’t speak French, she can’t speak French, she does not speak with an accent ), food (14%: she doesn’t like eating frogs legs and snails , she doesn’t like cheese, she doesn’t like French food ), appearance (10%: she’s fashionable, she is lovely ), sexual ethos (10%: she can’t kiss, she doesn’t (French kiss presumably)) and three indications of national domicile (14%: lives in England (2), lives in UK ). One answer was leading away from axiology ( he isn’t ) and one wasn’t provided at all, reinforcing the point that the sequence was not the most revealing in terms of the existence of discourse matrixes.

38 The limitations of the concessive individual sequence She is French but ... with respect to the generic attributive Most people think that all French people are ... can be related to their formulation, the characterisation of an individual rather than a group, and to being asked to disclose one’s own values as opposed to one’s group. The concessive sequence does ask for a whole clause to be provided, with no overt requirement that it be axiological, whereas axiology is more likely to occur in an attributive structure in which only the predicate has to be provided. An individual ( she ) can be engaged in a larger number of contingent situations that a whole group ( all French people ). Unlike the generic which was related to the values of one’s group ( Most people think ), the concessive may be read as inviting personal judgment, which subjects might be reluctant to disclose for fear that these might in turn lead to them being judged.

39 The social correlates of judgments were difficult to investigate because despite the gender imbalance (4 males and 17 females), the group was relatively homogeneous (all British, all around 20 years of age). It is interesting to note that there was no material difference between the answers of subjects who declared that they “have a direct personal experience of the French” (n = 10) and those who do not (n = 11). If anything, subjects declaring experience of the French had a blunter use of stereotypes, claiming 7 of the 8uses of rude in the completion of the generic sentence. This may be because the respective subject’s personal experience of the French happened to reinforce the socially shared stereotypes.

40 Diagnosis of discourse matrixes is provided for by sentence completion tests. This method of gathering data provides a higher rate of expected axiology with group judgment than with individual judgement, and a higher rate with generic attributive than with the concessive structures, as in the press corpus. Whether or not these results are replicated by the judgment of inferences is evaluated in the next section.

3.3 Inference judgment task

41 Stereotypes have been related to the facilitation of information management and communication. This is the case in examples elicited in pragmatics studies, in occasional attestations, and in the following press occurrence, whose semantic felicity relies on the stereotype that all French people consume large amounts of wine:

42 Felicity would be questionable if other topic or predicates were involved ( Anscombre 2001, Larrivée 2009: 191), as they go against the socially sanctioned stereotypes.

(9”) a. ?? If modest consumption of wine during pregnancy was bad, then all tea-totals would be brain-damaged.

b. If modest consumption of wine during pregnancy was bad, then all French people would be healthy.

43 Stereotypes can thus be brought to light by normative and anti-normative inferential relations. Whilst this has never been tested to our knowledge (however, see Geurts and Pouscoulous 2009), we consequently sought to establish the status of such relations by submitting them to subjects from the target culture, in order to mitigate the impact of individual variation in judgment and establish their expected convergence. We designed the following four sentences with normative predicates rude and arrogant and anti-normative polite and modest , based on the findings of the press corpora.

44 It is true that she is rude, but then she’s French.

45 The French were very polite, as they always are.

46 Since he’s French, he’s very modest.

47 The French were arrogant, as they always are.

48 The sequences followed the format of individual evaluation and generic attributive structure employed in the preceding judgment test. To keep the questionnaire short, no fillers regarding other topics were provided. Four possible answers were offered – Yes, Maybe, No, Not sure. This task followed the sentence completion test to avoid the predicates provided in the judgment task colouring the predicates chosen by subjects during the SCT. The question put to subjects was “Would you say that the link between the following pairs of sentences is what you would expect? If not, briefly say why.” The expected answers were categorical agreement with the first and last statement, and categorical disagreement with the second and third. Categorical answers were not found in the subject answers, although they followed the previously identified trends. These can be seen from the following graph:

49 The normative rude and arrogant received the greatest proportion of outright agreement (43% and 24%, against 5% for polite and 10% for modest ). Rude had the lowest disagreement (14%), which was at 19% for modest and arrogant; the highest level of disagreement rested with the anti-normative polite (38%). The anti-normative predicate modest associated to a lesser extent with outright rejection (19%) or agreement (19%) than it did with uncertainty (71% for the combination of maybe and unsure ). Remarkably, it is the only term that did not provoke explicit comments about stereotyping. Even though provision was not explicitly made for comments in the available answers, subjects registered that a stereotype was involved for rude (10%) , polite (14%) and arrogant (10%), which in turn stopped them providing a judgment on the inference.

50 This suggests that the expected stereotypes about French rudeness and arrogance can be validated by inference judgment tests, although not in a categorical way, but at a threshold of around 35%: this threshold is met by the agreement level for rude , and by arrogant if agreement at 24% is aggregated to 10% of notes about stereotyping. The lower than expected threshold can be explained by the attitudes of the subjects. Some explicitly recognised stereotyping and expressed disagreement with it. During a debriefing discussion, the four British adult subjects who took part in a pilot experiment involving the questionnaire raised their uncertainty as to whether the answers were supposed to reflect their own personal beliefs, or those of that of their national group. The subjects’ identification of the presence of stereotyping, and their subsequent negative perception of it, might have meant that they were reluctant to share social judgments for fear of being negatively judged themselves. This observer’s paradox effect might have been heightened by the absence of fillers, the invitation to reflect on the reasons of disagreements (“If not, briefly say why”), and the focus on individual answers (‘Would you say...’, ‘you would expect’). Ways in which this might be avoided would be to focus on the group’s views rather than those of the individual (“Would most people agree that the link between the following pairs of sentences is expected?”); An invitation to answer as quickly as possible, and use of fillers might have led to more categorical answers. The answers to the inference judgment task attest to stereotypes of French rudeness and arrogance in meeting a threshold of about 35% agreement, which is comparable to levels found in the SCT and very significantly higher than even all the stereotypes taken together in the press corpora. A further indication that a discursive matrix is present is provided by the uninvited subject comments that stereotypes are involved. Little or no such comment bore on the anti-normative attributes modest and polite .

Conclusions

51 The purpose of this paper has been to propose a discovery procedure of discursive matrixes. If some discourses are conventional and therefore ratified by a group, then the questions that arise are how do we know which ones are thus, and which ones are not? The expected frequency and saliency of predicates for a topic can be assessed by methods of Corpus Linguistics and psycho-social procedures of theSentence Completion Test and the novel Inference Judgment Task. During our research, these were applied to the stereotypes of the French in Britain. The results validate the socially shared representation of the French as rude, arrogant and sophisticated. Such validation is provided by the Corpus Linguistics approach, although the journalistic corpus may not be the most revealing media available as it shies away from certain stereotypes, which are now frowned upon in the public sphere. Confirmation is provided through answers supplied by British subjects to questionnaires verifying the saliency of particular predicates, which are ratified at a rate of about 35%, indicating the presence of an observer effect. This may be why sequences involving judgments on an individual are less revealing than those about groups, where subject responsibility is more obviously defused. Concessive sequences were also less informative than attributive sequences both in the press corpora and in the Sentence Completion Tests (the Inference Judgment Task does not allow to assess this).

52 Directions for future research go beyond the validation of the procedure to other topics with more effectively tuned protocols. The consequences for a theory of cognition are significant in showing that knowledge is not entirely accrued by individual experience, and does indeed originate from socially shared views. This may or may not appear obvious to some commentator or other, and the point is that the proposed protocol allows us to demonstrate shared knowledge as a cognitive fact. Socially shared knowledge is significant for language, as it demonstrates how semantic reflexes shaping discourse relate to social knowledge, and illuminate how linguistic meaning can refer to a common experience of the (cultural and material) world. The conventional nature of these views has far-reaching consequences for the everyday behaviour of subjects, notably in terms of rapid production and recognition of messages, and persuasion (see Mercier and Sperber in press):

There are also real advantages in conformity beyond the rewards and privileges that it yields. If one chooses to denounce Qaddafi, or the Sandinistas, or the PLO, or the Soviet Union, no credible evidence is required. The same is true if one repeats conventional doctrines about our own society and its behavior [...]. But a critical analysis of American institutions, the way they function domestically and their internal operations, must meet far higher standards; in fact, standards are imposed that can be barely be met in the natural sciences. One has to work hard, to produce evidence that is credible, to construct serious arguments, to present extensive documentation – all tasks that are superfluous as long as one remains within the presuppositional framework of the doctrinal consensus. It is small wonder that few are willing to undertake the effort, quite apart from the rewards that accrue to conformity and the costs of honest dissidence. (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 305)

Bibliographie

Anscombre, J-C. (2001). Dénomination, sens et référence dans une théorie des stéréotypes nominaux. Cahiers de praxématique 36, 43-72.

Anscombre, J-C. and Ducrot, O. (1983). L’argumentation dans la langue . Brussels: Mardaga.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays . Austin and London: University of Texas Press.

Bar-Tal, D. (2000). Shared beliefs in a society: Social psychological analysis . London: Sage.

Blair, I. V. (2002). The Malleability of Automatic Stereotypes and Prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review 6, 246-261.

Bloom, P. (2000). How children learn the meaning of words . Cambridge: MIT Press.

Bodenhausen, G. V. and Wyer, R. S. (1985). Effects of stereotypes in decision making and information-processing strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48,2, 267-282.

Coupland, N. and Bishop, H. (2007). Ideologised values for British accents. J ournal of Sociolinguistics 11,1, 74-93

Crouzet, F. (2006). Images d’Outre-Manche: la France vue par les Britanniques, la Grande-Bretagne vue par les Français 1904-2004. Histoire, économie et société 1, 131-141.

Drake, D. (1998). Hop off you Frogs: Francophobia and the Sun . Europa 2,2, 1998

Durham, C. A. (2008). Finding France on Film: Chocolat, Amelie and Le Divorce. French Cultural Studies .

Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge . London: Tavistock.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research . London: Routledge.

Fairclough, N. and Holes C. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language . Longman.

Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press . London and New York: Routledge.

Galatanu, O. (2002). La sémantique des possibles argumentatifs et ses enjeux pour l’Analyse du Discours. M. Jesus Salinero Cascante and Inarea I. Las Heras (eds). Actes du congrès International d’Etudes Françaises, vol. 2. Logroño: Universitad de La Rioja. 203-215.

Garrett, P. (2010). Attitudes to Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Geurts, B. and Pouscoulous N. (2009). Embedded implicatures ? Semantics and Pragmatics 2, 4, 1–34.

Gianoni, D. S. (2010). Mapping Academic Values in the Disciplines Subtitle: A Corpus-Based Approach . Berne: Peter Lang.

Givón, T. (2002). Bio-linguistics: The Santa Barbara Lectures . Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Golde, P. & N. Kogan (1958). A sentence completion procedure for assessing attitudes toward old people. Journal of Gerontology 14, 355-363.

Guillaumou, J. (2006). Discours et événement. L’histoire langagière des concepts . Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté.

Hendricks, P. S. and Brandon, T. H. (2004). Smoking expectancy among college smokers. Addictive Behaviors 30,2, 235-245.

Herman, E. S. and Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media . Vintage.

Holaday, M., Smith, D. A. and Sherry, A. (2000). Sentence Completion Tests: A Review of the Literature and Results of a Survey of Members of the Society for Personality Assessment. Journal of Personality Assessment 74,3, 371–383.

Humbert, B. (2003). Screening France. French Politics , Culture and Society 21, 81-94.

Karasawa, M. (2007). Stereotypes as Shared Beliefs: Effects of Group Identity on Dyadic Conversations. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 10,4, 515-532.

Knox, E. C. (2003). Deja Views: How Americans Look at France. French Politics, Culture and Society 21, 24-32.

Larrivée, P. (2009). Les Français, les Québécois, et la langue de l’autre . Paris: L’Harmattan.

Longhi, J. (2008). Objets discursifs et doxa. Essai de sémantique discursive . Paris: L’Harmattan.

Marcus, G. (2008). Kluge: The haphazard construction of the human mind . London: Faber.

Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. (In press). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences .

Morel, C. (2002). Les décisions absurdes. Sociologie des erreurs radicales et persistantes. Paris: Gallimard.

Moscovici, S. (2000). Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology . Polity Press.

Paveau, M.-A. (2006). Les Prédiscours. Sens, mémoire, cognition . Paris: Presses Sorbonne nouvelle.

Pêcheux, M. (1969). Analyse automatique du discours . Paris: Dunod.

Poundstone, W. (1988). Labyrinths of Reason. Puzzles, Paradoxes and the Frailty of Knowledge . New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

Pryzgoda, J. and Chrisler, J. C. (2000). Definitions of Gender and Sex: The Subtleties of Meaning. Sex Roles 43, 7-8.

Reason, J. (2000). Human error: models and management. British Medical Journal 320, 768-770.

Robert, S. (2009). Construction grammars and brain imagery: an ongoing story. Paper read at the Third International AFLiCo Conference, University Paris Ouest – Nanterre, May 28, 2009 .

Rogers, K. E., Bishop, J. and Lane, R. C. (2004). Considerations for the Use of Sentence Completion Tests. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy 33,3, 235-242.

Rutland, A. (1999). The Development of national prejudice, ingroup favoritism and self stereotypes in British children. British Journal of Social Psychology 38, 55-70.

Sherry, A., Dahlen, E. and Holaday, M. (2004). The Use of Sentence Completion Tests with Adults. Michel Hersen, Mark J. Hilsenroth, Daniel L. Segal (Eds). Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment: Personality and Psychopathology . Hoboken: Wiley, 372-386.

Spanos, N. P., Burgess, C. A. and Burgess, M. F. (1994). Past-Life Identities, Ufo Abductions, and Satanic Ritual Abuse: The Social Construction of Memories. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 42,4, 433-446.

Stalnaker, R. C. (1974). Pragmatic presuppositions. M. K. Munitz and P. K. Unger (Eds). Semantics and Philosophy . New York University Press. 197-214.

Stubbs, M. (2001). Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics . Oxford: Blackwell.

Stubbs, M. (1998). German loanwords and cultural stereotypes. English Today 14, 19-26.

Suárez-Orozco, C. (2000). Identities under siege: immigration stress and social mirroring among the children of immigrants. A. C. G. M. Robben and M. N. Suarez-Orozco. 2000. Culture under siege. Collective violence and trauma . New York: Cambridge University Press, 194-226.

Taijfel, H. (1981). Human Groups and Social Categories . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Teubert, W. (2007). From argumentation to formulaic expressions: a corpus linguistics perspective. Pdf document, 25 slides.

van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach . London: Sage.

Verdaguer, P. (2004). Hollywood’s Frenchness: representations of the French in American Films. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 8,4, 441-451.

Wedgewood, D. (2007). Shared assumptions: semantic minimalism and Relevance Theory. Journal of Linguistics 43, 647-681.

Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction . Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.

Wodak, R. (2008). ’The Contribution of Critical Linguistics to the Analysis of Discriminatory Prejudices and Stereotypes in the Language of Politics’, in R. Wodak and V. Koller. Handbook of Applied Linguistics ’The Public Sphere’ 4 Berlin: de Gruyter, 291-316.

Wodak, R. and Meyer M. (2001). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis: Methods of Critical . London: Sage.

Zlatev, J., Racine, T. P., Sinha Ch. and Itkone E. (2008). The Shared Mind. Perspectives on intersubjectivity . Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Table des illustrations

Pour citer cet article, référence électronique.

Pierre Larrivée et Julien Longhi , « The Foundations Of Discourse: The Case Of British Stereotypes Of The French » , Corela [En ligne], 10-1 | 2012, mis en ligne le 19 juin 2012 , consulté le 19 mai 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/corela/2676 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/corela.2676

Pierre Larrivée

Université de Caen, CRISCO

Articles du même auteur

La notion de variation dans le langage : quelques repères [Texte intégral] Paru dans Corela , HS-26 | 2018
La contingence des faits linguistiques : réflexions sur la variation et le changement [Texte intégral] Paru dans Corela , 1-2 | 2003

Julien Longhi

Université de Cergy-Pontoise, CRTF

Quelques ressorts discursifs et argumentatifs de la discrimination envers les femmes par le « savoir ». Éric Zemmour, les mots pour construire la haine [Texte intégral] Paru dans Corela , HS-36 | 2022
L’énonciation aujourd’hui, un concept clé des sciences du langage [Texte intégral] Sous la direction de Marion Colas-Blaise, Laurent Perrin et Gian Maria Tore, Limoges, Lambert-Lucas, 2016, 450 pages Paru dans Corela , 15-2 | 2017
Perception de l’ambiance sonore d’un lieu selon sa représentation visuelle : une analyse de corpus [Texte intégral] Paru dans Corela , 14-1 | 2016
Compte-rendu de : « Les Approches écologiques en linguistique » (N. Lechrevel, 2010) : pour une linguistique « verte » ? [Texte intégral] Paru dans Corela , 10-1 | 2012
De intermittent du spectacle à intermittent : de la représentation à la nomination d’un objet du discours [Texte intégral] Paru dans Corela , 4-2 | 2006

Droits d’auteur

Présentation
Organigramme
Consignes aux auteurs
Appels à contributions

Numéros en texte intégral

21-2 | 2023 Vol. 21, n°2
HS-40 | 2023 Le nom propre en français et en anglais au prisme de plusieurs approches linguistiques
HS-39 | 2023 Héritage des théories de Gilles Fauconnier (1944-2021) : des Espaces Mentaux à l’Intégration Conceptuelle
21-1 | 2023 Vol. 21, n°1
HS-38 | 2023 Les groupes nominaux sans déterminant – regards croisés
20-2 | 2022 Vol. 20, n° 2
HS-37 | 2022 La détermination nominale au prisme de plusieurs approches linguistiques.
20-1 | 2022 Vol. 20, n°1
HS-36 | 2022 Ce que discrimer veut dire
HS-35 | 2022 Anaphore et pronoms en anglais : convergences, différences et complémentarité de quelques approches linguistiques
HS-34 | 2021 Les noms sous-spécifiés en français: du lexique au discours
19-2 | 2021 Vol. 19, n°2
19-1 | 2021 Vol. 19, n°1
18-2 | 2020 Vol. 18, n°2
HS-33 | 2020 Textuel, textiel. Repenser la textualité numérique
HS-32 | 2020 Les postures énonciatives
HS-31 | 2020 Métalinguistiques.
18-1 | 2020 Vol. 18, n°1
HS-30 | 2020 Phonétique, littérature et enseignement du FLE : théories et recherches
17-2 | 2019 Vol. 17, n°2
HS-29 | 2019 Questions et exclamations au prisme de plusieurs approches linguistiques
17-1 | 2019 Vol. 17, n°1
HS-28 | 2019 Les affordances langagières : textualité numérique, matérialité discursive
HS-27 | 2019 Co(n)textualisation(s)
16-2 | 2018 Vol. 16, n°2
HS-26 | 2018 Réseaux communautaires et variation dans le langage en moyen français et français préclassique
HS-25 | 2018 Les procédés implicites dans l'interface sémantique-pragmatique
16-1 | 2018 Vol. 16, n°1
HS-24 | 2018 L'anglais mondial oralisé
15-2 | 2017 Vol.15, n°2
HS-23 | 2017 The Genesis and Dynamics of Spatial Adpositions
HS-22 | 2017 Prédication et prépositions en anglais
15-1 | 2017 Vol.15, n°1
HS-21 | 2017 Linguistique de corpus : vues sur la constitution, l'analyse et l'outillage
14-2 | 2016 Vol.14, n°2
HS-20 | 2016 L'Implicite
14-1 | 2016 Vol. 14, n°1
HS-19 | 2016 Le point de vue pris au mot
13-2 | 2015 Vol. 13, n°2
HS-18 | 2015 La reformulation : usages et contextes
13-1 | 2015 Vol. 13, nº1
HS-17 | 2015 Regards sur l'interdisciplinarité en science du langage
HS-16 | 2015 Diversité des pratiques de recherche en science du langage
12-2 | 2014 Vol. 12, n°2
HS-15 | 2014 Complémentarité des approches qualitatives et quantitatives dans l’analyse des discours
12-1 | 2014 Vol. 12, n° 1
HS-13 | 2013 Statut et utilisation des corpus en linguistique
HS-14 | 2013 Calcul du sens et contexte
11-2 | 2013 Vol. 11, n° 2
11-1 | 2013 Vol. 11, n° 1
HS-12 | 2012 Langue, espace, cognition
10-2 | 2012 Vol. 10, n° 2
10-1 | 2012 Vol. 10, n° 1
HS-11 | 2012 RJC Cotexte, contexte, situation
HS-10 | 2012 Paramétrer le sens ? Études de cas
9-2 | 2011 Vol. 9, n° 2
9-1 | 2011 Vol. 9, n° 1
HS-9 | 2010 Parole
8-2 | 2010 Vol. 8, n° 2
HS-8 | 2010 L’interpellation
8-1 | 2010 Vol. 8, n° 1
HS-7 | 2010 Espace, Préposition, Cognition
7-2 | 2009 Vol. 7, n° 2
7-1 | 2009 Vol. 7, n° 1
6-2 | 2008 Vol. 6, n° 2
6-1 | 2008 Vol. 6, n° 1
5-2 | 2007 Vol. 5, n° 2
HS-6 | 2007 Cognition, discours, contextes
5-1 | 2007 Vol. 5, n° 1
4-2 | 2006 Vol. 4, n° 2
HS-5 | 2006 Organisation des textes et cohérence des discours
4-1 | 2006 Vol. 4, n° 1
HS-4 | 2006 Le parcours
HS-3 | 2006 Les verbes d'apparence
3-2 | 2005 Vol. 3, n° 2
HS-2 | 2005 Le traitement lexicographique des noms propres
3-1 | 2005 Vol. 3, n° 1
HS-1 | 2005 Colloque AFLS
2-2 | 2004 Vol. 2, n° 2
2-1 | 2004 Vol. 2, n° 1
1-2 | 2003 Vol. 1, n° 2
1-1 | 2003 Vol. 1, n° 1

Tous les numéros

Informations.

Mentions légales et Crédits
Politiques de publication

Lettres d’information

La Lettre d’OpenEdition

Stereotypes

Type of English

Lesson time

I want to learn

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

Level: Pre-intermediate (A2-B1)

Type of English: General English

Tags: people and places passive voice Article based

Publication date: 21/11/2013

In this lesson, students read a short article on the perception of British culture according to expats living in Britain. The passive voice is studied in the grammar part of the lesson.

The BrE version will definitely be helpful hand in hand with some home reading for intermediate students. Cheers!

50 Latest Stereotypes IELTS Topics

Unlimited Task 1 checks Get all the feedback you need to keep improving your charts and letters.
Unlimited Task 2 checks Practice and perfect your skills with essays.
Personalized suggestions Know how to boost your score.
Detailed mistakes analysis Get instant feedback. Spot every mistake.
Topic ideas generator Get topic-specific ideas to enhance your writing.
Vocabulary helper Get the right words for any topic.
Progress tracking Track your writing improvements.

IMAGES

British Stereotypes Lesson Plan
British Stereotypes Handout
Essay on Stereotype
British stereotypes and an essay Lovely cover, lousy book
British stereotypes by Josh Kroft
BRITISH STEREOTYPES by on Prezi

VIDEO

British car stereotypes🇬🇧💂🫖
5 British Stereotypes that aren't true #shorts
British stereotypes are wrong#expats #traveltips101 #brits #comedyreels #ukcomedy
American Reacts to Stereotypes About the UK that are WRONG
Americans React to Common Stereotypes About British People!
British Stereotypes that Aren't True

COMMENTS

Parsing the Endless Nuances of British Stereotypes
Part of the puzzle of Brexit, for Americans, is that so many of the main players represent barely distinguishable but traditionally opposed British types. In American terms, both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May would probably belong to a generic upper middle class. Both were raised outside London, in comfortable country houses, and have a bit of ...
In 'Other' Words: Writing Gently Humorous Essays About Stereotypes
In this lesson, students read a gently humorous essay examining British stereotypes about Americans, consider stereotypes and misconceptions of people in various groups and write lighthearted personal essays. Warm-up | This lesson's warm-up asks students to generate stereotypes they have about a specific "other.".
Stereotypes of British people
Sense of humour. British humour is well known for its use of absurdity, awkwardness, dark comedy, self-deprecation, dry comedy, innuendo, irony, sarcasm, satire, wit, and wordplay. [7] Monty Python was a famous British comedic group and some of the most highly regarded comedies worldwide, such as Fawlty Towers and Mr. Bean, are British.
British Stereotypes: Fact or Fiction?
Brits are super polite - FACT. "British people don't like to be overtly rude, that's true. We say "sorry", "please" and "thank you" a lot. But saying polite words doesn't necessarily mean that we mean it! I'm not sure if this counts as a fact if we don't really mean it. For example, we often say "sorry" if someone ...
11 British Stereotypes and the Honest Truth
1. They Drink a Lot of Tea: true. One of the oldest and most common British people stereotypes is that they drink a lot of tea. And this is so true. The UK ranks third in the world when it comes to tea consumption, and tea here is enjoyed by all of the social classes. While it began as an elixir for the upper class, it soon became more ...
Most Common Cultural British Stereotypes
Here's a guide to the most common cultural British stereotypes, both fact and fiction. Stiff upper lip. via GIPHY. This term comes from the idea that an emotional or upset person has a quivering upper lip, so a stiff upper lip refers to the concept that the British are quite reserved and keep their emotions and feelings to themselves. Whilst ...
British Stereotypes That We Won't Even Try to Deny
We apologise profusely…. If you haven't heard a Brit say the word 'sorry' at least five times in the past two hours, you'd better check your location settings. Some say it's because we feel responsible for our terrible weather and food, so we feel the need to apologise for everything: being early, being late, sneezing, asking for ...
Essay On British Stereotypes
Essay On British Stereotypes; Essay On British Stereotypes. 801 Words 4 Pages. British Stereotypes & Multiculturalism "On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners" (Mikes) As Mikes famous quote above suggests, there are many stereotypes about England, especially the United Kingdom.
American and British Stereotypes: A Cultural Exchange
American student 1: Americans like hearing a different accent than their own from someone who speaks the same language. In addition, English accents seem proper and sophisticated. American student 2: To us, they are different. They are regal, elegant and just downright pleasing to the ear.
A Guide to British Stereotypes GoUni
A stereotype is a generalisation of the perceived tendencies or characteristics of certain people. They are often used to make jokes. We want to share some of the most common stereotypes recognised by Brits, so you can understand the jokes they make. 😆. While many stereotypes have some truth in them (eg "Americans love guns" - there are more ...
7 stereotypes about British people that everyone believes
4. All British people are English. "Great Britain is the name of an Island containing three countries. The inhabitants of these countries are very different. "Most ['British'] stereotypes ...
Stereotypes about the English
The English are one of the nations, for which people all across the world have created countless stereotypes and opinions involving their country, culture and character. This might be due to the wide-spread political power, which Britain used to exercise throughout the previous centuries, when the country boasted numerous colonies and conquests ...
8 British Stereotypes and Why They Are (Mostly) Inaccurate
We're not ones for pushing and shoving; we let fairness rule the day and patiently wait our turn. Few things offend us more than people who jump the queue, and we'll make sure that any violators of the queuing order feel the full force of our disapproving glare. 8. We complain a lot - but we also say sorry a lot.
National stereotypes in the context of the European crisis
Introduction. While readers of National Identities need no reminder of the large body of existing, steadily growing and multi-disciplinary scholarship focused on stereotypes, there are two particular conceptual strands that are highly pertinent to the following discussions. As such, brief reminders of those conceptualizations may be useful in framing the ensuing articles.
18 Stereotypes and the Image of the English
Abstract. This chapter explores the image of the English, with particular emphasis on stereotypes, during the medieval period. It argues that the image of the English was a crucial factor in sustaining the construct of Englishness, and that the positive stereotypes, and even to some degree the negative ones, helped to draw the descendants of the immigrants into an English identity.
British Stereotypes Full Lesson Plan [Updated]
Lesson Procedure: 1. Introduction (10 minutes) Start the lesson with a brief discussion about what stereotypes are. Define the term and discuss how they are formed. Discuss the positive and negative effects of stereotypes. Briefly introduce British stereotypes, and ask students if they can name any. 2.
British Stereotypes Essay Example
This paper will look at the common stereotypes linked with British and how these stereotypes are justified. The next section of the paper will show the negative and the positive stereotypes given by foreigners. The report will conclude with its findings. Negative Stereotypes One of the most common stereotypes about British is their having bad ...
The Foundations Of Discourse: The Case Of British Stereotypes Of Th
Foucault (1972) proposes that discourse is a social practice underpinned by areas of conventional knowledge called discursive matrixes ( formations discursives ). A discursive matrix on social stereotypes of the British would, in France, comprise predicates concerning their phlegm, reserve and hypocrisy.
Stereotypes: ESL/EFL Lesson Plan and Worksheet
Stereotypes. In this lesson, students read a short article on the perception of British culture according to expats living in Britain. The passive voice is studied in the grammar part of the lesson. The BrE version will definitely be helpful hand in hand with some home reading for intermediate students. Cheers!
In the new york times essay about british stereotypes
Points Earned: 0.0/1.0 Correct Answer(s): D 3. While conducting research in El Salvador, Professor Quan noticed that Salvadoran stereotypes about the US Americans they were working with included the idea that US Americans were A) too religious B) rich and thus should pay for meals and drinks C) unconcerned with social graces and developing social relationships D) too concerned with having a ...
50 Latest Stereotypes IELTS Topics
50 Latest Stereotypes IELTS Topics. Get a band score and detailed report instantly. Check your IELTS essays right now! High school athletes should not fall under the spell of harmful stereotypes. what is your opinion?