The �Oh, Come Off It!’ Rule

The English ban on earnestness, and specifically on taking oneself too seriously, means that our own politicians and other public figures have a particularly tough time. The sharp-eyed English public is even less tolerant of any breaches of these rules on home ground, and even the smallest lapse – the tiniest sign that a speaker may be overdoing the intensity and crossing the fine line from sincerity to earnestness – will be spotted and picked up on immediately, with scornful cries of �Oh, come off it!’

And we are just as hard on each other, in ordinary everyday conversation, as we are on those in the public eye. In fact, if a country or culture could be said to have a catchphrase, I would propose �Oh, come off it!’ as a strong candidate for England’s national catchphrase. Jeremy Paxman’s candidate is �I know my rights’ – well, he doesn’t actually use the term catchphrase, but he refers to this one frequently, and it is the only such phrase that he includes in his personal list of defining characteristics of Englishness. I take his point, and �I know my rights’ does beautifully encapsulate a peculiarly English brand of stubborn individualism and a strong sense of justice. But I would maintain that the armchair cynicism of �Oh, come off it!’ is more truly representative of the English psyche than the belligerent activism suggested by �I know my rights’. This may be why, as someone once said, the English have satire instead of revolutions.

There have certainly been brave individuals who have campaigned for the rights and freedoms we now enjoy, but most ordinary English people now rather take these for granted, and prefer sniping, pinpricking and grumbling from the sidelines to any sort of active involvement in defending or maintaining them. Many cannot even be bothered to vote in national elections, although the pollsters and pundits cannot seem to agree on whether our shamefully low turnout is due to cynicism or apathy – or, the most likely answer, a bit of both. Most of those who do vote, do so in much the same highly sceptical spirit, choosing the �best of a bad lot’ or the �lesser of two evils’, rather than with any shining-eyed, fervent conviction that this or that party is really going to make the world a better place. Such a suggestion would be greeted with the customary �Oh, come off it!’

Among the young and others susceptible to linguistic fads and fashions, the current response might be the ironic �Yeah, right’ rather than �Oh, come off it!’ – but the principle is the same. Similarly, those who break the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule are described in the latest slang as being �up themselves’, rather than the more traditional �full of themselves’. By the time you read this, these may in turn have been superseded by new expressions, but the underlying rules and values are deep-rooted, and will remain unchanged.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-06