The author of Dick Jones' Patteran Pages has very kindly commented in response to my previous rant to set me straight about a couple of points of distinction between Yanks and Brits. I had complained at surprising length (I mean that the length was surprising to me personally) of the English deployment of the glare as a weapon of social chastisement. I was actually on my way to building up--as a separate issue---to a further complaint about the British preference for addressing solecisms by what an English friend refers to as 'polite and tactful indirectness' and I was planning to refer to as 'passive-aggressiveness.' This note anticipated the issue and sorted it all right out.
As an Englishman I might be able to help you with the glaring issue. There is an inbuilt assumption amongst the English ....that all sentient beings beyond a certain age (10, 11, 12?) should know, through a combination of race memory & nurture, what is acceptable & what isn't. Amongst their own, when the glare alone fails to communicate (& only deep sleep, advanced drunkenness or, of course, blindness could account for this), a sotto voce murmur of "Not appropriate, old chap/m'dear" would be used. A friend of mine of noble blood said that her Great Aunt employed - with merciful rarity - the word 'unsuitable'. When my friend was on the receiving end of this deadly word (an unequivocal glare gaving failed to register), the mortification was extreme.
I'm afraid that the kind of directeness & candour that you represent as admirable in your fellow Americans would be simply inappropriate in decent society.
'Very accurate,' said my husband, when I read it to him.
Nicholas is not only past master of the glare but when truly annoyed, actually emits highly toxic rays---blame rays. If he is truly exasperated, he stands in front of me with a particular English face that no American can do---we simply don't carry our eyebrows high enough and we never develop the necessary musculature. The expression---except for the eyebrows---actually requires a complete lack of expression, as if shock and disapproval had turned the features to stone (except for the eyebrows). No American can really do this properly; we don't have the same control over our faces.
He also has the deadly word down to a fine art. As I've said before, I don't suppose he has raised his voice to me in anger more than four times in four years of marriage. When wishing to silence what he calls 'ranting' and I call discussion, he can typically derail it in an instant with a single curt, "Quite." I know of no more effective word or phrase for inducing the sense that one has been talking too freely, too loudly, and for too long, but unfortunately it is not a phrase that an American can use to effective purpose.
I am working on learning to use the drawled, drawn out, "Mmmmyes," which Nicholas uses as a shorthand phrase for 'I am getting very bored with this discussion and would now like for it to end' or 'I completely disagree with what you're saying but I can't be bothered to argue the point.' I've found through cautious experimentation that this phrase really does work on Americans. (My husband tells me that a female colleague he used it on when she was being boring about Bush still brings it up every time she sees him).
So really I am against the glare, but I am very much for being able to quell others by a well-placed word or phrase uttered in the right tone.
I imagine everyone knows since the increasing (extremely welcome) infusion during the last few years of British television that the English have many more words and phrases for laconically insulting one another. My friend Rumcove, much more given to laconic insults than to the raised eyebrow and cold stare, taught me a number of them early in our association. Wanker, pillock, wally, prat, berk--and of course 'the T word' and 'the C word' that most Americans dare not utter. The English use those words, if not exactly freely, of their own free and without fear being shot (Rumcove's friend used one of the forbidden words in jest in Texas and nearly ended up getting shot). They also call one another 'bastards' quite cheerfully and quite frequently. That's still a fighting word here (though not as 'horrifying' as the others I mentioned and can't---sorry, I just can't---bring myself to type).
We have a dearth of useful insults in this country, so some of the English words that have migrated over here via television seem to be taking hold. The problem is that people don't really understand the connotations or have a standard for deciding when a word such as 'wanker' would be suitable and when it is not. I heard a very dignified man use the word 'wanker' in circumstances in which I imagine he would certainly not have used the phrase 'jerk- off.'
I do appreciate Mr Jones' response, but I wonder if it is really true that the English have an innate sense of what is or is not suitable, or whether they just have an innate sense of how to create in others the sense of being unsuitable. That's a point on which I must further reflect.
RELATED POSTINGS:
(I Know All There is To Know) About the Glaring Game
The Glaring Game Part 2: Nature or Nurture?
God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.
English Placenames: The Cirencester Problem.
An Update on the Cirencester Problem
XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll
Estuary Englishman
Wandering Scribe?
The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]
A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)
Tea. How It Happened to an American.
No Ordinary Profile: The Talented Mr. Rumcove
The Two Floridas
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