The Context Rule

A principal rule concerns the contexts in which weather-speak can be used. Other writers have claimed that the English talk about the weather all the time, that it is a national obsession or fixation, but this is sloppy observation: in fact, there are three quite specific contexts in which weather-speak is prescribed. Weather-speak can be used:

as a simple greeting

as an ice-breaker leading to conversation on other matters

as a �default’, �filler’ or �displacement’ subject, when conversation on other matters falters, and there is an awkward or uncomfortable lull.

Admittedly, this rule does allow for rather a lot of weather-speak – hence the impression that we talk of little else. A typical English conversation may well start with a weather-speak greeting, progress to a bit more weather-speak ice-breaking, and then �default’ to weather-speak at regular intervals. It is easy to see why many foreigners, and even many English commentators, have assumed that we must be obsessed with the subject.

I am not claiming that we have no interest in the weather itself. The choice of weather as a code to perform these vital social functions is not entirely arbitrary, and in this sense, Jeremy Paxman is right: the changeable and unpredictable nature of the English weather makes it a particularly suitable facilitator of social interaction. If the weather were not so variable, we might have to find another medium for our social messages.

But in assuming that weather-speak indicates a burning interest in the weather, Paxman and others are making the same kind of mistake as early anthropologists who assumed that certain animals or plants were chosen as tribal �totems’ because the people in question had a special interest in or reverence for that particular animal or plant. In fact, as Lévi-Strauss eventually explained, totems are symbols used to define social structures and relationships. The fact that one clan has as its totem the black cockatoo is not because of any deep significance attached to black cockatoos per se, but to define and delineate their relationship with another clan, whose totem is the white cockatoo. Now, the choice of cockatoos is not entirely random: totems tend to be local animals or plants with which the people are familiar, rather than abstract symbols. The selection of totems is thus not quite as arbitrary as, say, �You be the red team and we’ll be the blue team’: it is almost always the familiar natural world that is used symbolically to describe and demarcate the social world.

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