Variations and the Yorkshire Inversion

The money-talk taboo is a distinctively English behaviour code, but it is not universally observed. There are significant variations: southerners are generally more uncomfortable with money-talk than northerners, and the middle- and upper-classes tend to be more squeamish about it than the working classes. Indeed middle-class and upper-class children are often brought up to regard talking about money as �vulgar’ or �common’.

In the world of business, observance of the taboo increases with seniority: whatever their individual class or regional origins, higher-ranking people in English companies are more likely to be squeamish about money-talk. Those from working-class and/or northern backgrounds may start out with little or no �natural’ embarrassment about money-talk, but as they rise through the ranks they learn to be awkward and uncomfortable, to make apologetic jokes, to procrastinate and avoid the issue.

There are, however, pockets of stronger resistance to the money-talk taboo, particularly in Yorkshire, a county that prides itself on being forthright, blunt and plain-spoken, especially on matters that mincing, hesitant southerners find embarrassing, such as money. To illustrate this no-nonsense, no-frills attitude, Yorkshiremen describe a standard conversation between a Yorkshire travelling salesman and a Yorkshire shopkeeper as follows:

Salesman, entering shop: �Owt?’

Shopkeeper: вЂ?Nowt.’⁴²

Salesman leaves.

This is a caricature, of course – most Yorkshire people are probably no more blunt than any other northerners – but it is a caricature with which a great many people from this area identify, and some actively do their best to live up to it. Far from beating about the bush, dithering and euphemising about money in the usual English manner, the proud-to-be-Yorkshire businessman will take a perverse pleasure in blatantly flouting the money-talk taboo – saying, directly and without jokes or preamble: �Right, and what’s all that going to cost me, then?’

But this is not an exception that invalidates or even questions the rule. It is a deliberate, dramatic inversion of the rule – something that can only occur where a rule is well established and understood. It is the flip side of the same coin, not a different and separate coin. Blunt Yorkshiremen know that they are turning the rules upside-down: they do it on purpose, they make jokes about it, they take pride in their maverick, iconoclastic status within English culture. In most other cultures, their directness about money would pass without notice: it would simply be normal behaviour. In England, it is remarked upon, joked about, recognized as an aberration.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-06