Origin of British stereotypes
In media Brits are usually portrayed either as middle-class factory workers obsessed by
football, beer and Friday evenings in Pub, or extremely sophisticated in their language, as
well as in their manners, city-living intellectuals. All previous example are obviously
extreme cliché. Yet any cliché, no matter how exaggerated it is, ensues only if there is proper
reason. That`s why I want to tell you about origins of and historical context for some of
stereotypes that are commonly used to describe Brits.
1. Drunk brits.
This one comes not from the amount of beer brits usually consume, but the way they
do it. In compresence with Frenchman, that have their drinks almost evenly distributed
through the day, brits like to have them all in one big gulp. This of course led to some
detrimental consequences. Moreover, statistic is inclined to say that brits consume less
alcohol than some other major countries.
2. Hideous food.
This one is easy. Reason for that can be found in Britain’s climate, landscape and
soils. Latter is actually quite poor, and mountainous landscapes with rocky hills only
complete picture of utter lack of diverse food. That`s why most of British cuisine
(national) consists from mutton, fish, grains, not so big variety of vegetables and
consequently added potato. In addition, Victorian era and colonies of Britain
decreased agricultural production in country substituting it with imported goods from
colonies.
3. Sophisticated language.
It has deep roots, that take their beginning from times of Britain`s colonial prosperity.
Because at the time Britain became place of knowledge synthesis. Intellectuals of the
time where considered to be of highest erudition. Also there was idea of white man`s
burden, that was consequence of social-Darwinism, that dominated minds of
Europeans. This idea stated that white man are ones of civilized race and should
spread civilization to uncivilized races and ethnicities. That`s why brits became very
proud of their origins and ravenously preserved their language, thereby many
anachronisms and old expressions are still present in British English in compresence
to American.
4. British humor.
British are often described to have good sense of humor. In Victorian era idea of
laughter being good for one`s health was introduced by some of writers and
journalists, and so, despite popular believe about Victorians being in a constant state
of seriousness, it was time when humor got great push in development, and so resulted
in further refinement of the latter. And despite the fact that many people were no keen
with idea of new humor, even their articles about dangers of regular laugh weren`t
able to stop people from entertaining themselves with various jokes.
Exercise:
Connect two parts of sentence that sound naturally:
Exaggerated Cliché
Sophisticated Anachronisms
National Burden
Ravenous Pride
Defender
Questions:
1. What British colonies do you know?
2. What can you say about virtues of Victorian era?
Reference:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/26/british-stereotypes-please-mention-war
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/26/british-stereotypes-please-mention-war
https://www.soils.org.uk/soils-britain
