Anexa 1

https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022/08/stereotypes-of-british-people

Do British stereotypes make any sense?

We don’t queue when it comes to visas, and we don’t apologise when it comes to colonialism.

By Bilal Aly The New Statesman UK Edition

I personally have never understood British stereotypes. Yes we do drink tea, but beyond that I’m
not sure how many of them are true – the weather here isn’t so unpredictable, and most people
don’t speak like they’re in Downton Abbey. But even beyond that, there are some British
stereotypes that not only feel flawed, but like complete paradoxes; to the extent that they should be
turned on their head.

For one thing, it’s funny that we should have a reputation for loving queues – we so often invoke
the glory of standing in line outside Wimbledon or tut when someone jumps the customs queue at a
foreign airport. Yet on a global scale, we don’t actually seem to have much experience of queues.
The British passport is actually the sixth most-powerful globally, and allows us to enter 186
destinations visa-free. It’s just not the case that British citizens have to, as is the case for many
other nationalities, line up single-file outside an embassy, or spend thousands filling in lengthy
application forms. It is particularly telling that, as a country, we raise our eyebrows at “queue-
jumping” refugees – to the extent that we try to send them to Rwanda. Our obsession with queues,
it seems, only really emerges when we aren’t the ones cutting in.

Then there is the British stereotype of over-apologising – memes abound online of people saying
sorry for everything – even when it’s someone else who is at fault, for jostling them on the Tube. It
is strange, then, that we are so inept at apologising on the bigger things – our country has left most
of the world waiting for one. In a survey conducted by YouGov a few years ago, 59 per cent of our
compatriots believed that the British Empire is “something to be proud of”, while almost half
believe that its ex-colonies are better off as a result. Finally! We’ve found an inconvenience too
small in our eyes for even the standard British “oh, sorry!”

Lastly, there is the British reputation for a stiff upper lip. However, I’m not sure how true that can
be. One survey conducted last October by the Institute for Customer Service found that half of
those who regularly deal with the public had experienced abuse within the past six months, while
27 per cent had been physically assaulted. Furthermore, 10-20 per cent of UK citizens have been
the victim of online abuse.

Maybe it’s time we took a closer look at the British traditions and stereotypes that we romanticise.
Like a lot of caricatures, they crumble under closer inspection.
Obreja D. Lavinia Irina,
LECP, an 1
Interculturalitatae si orizont anglofon
Sem. I

Understanding British through their stereotypes

In my opinion, ‘images’ and ‘stereotypes’ are not adequate to analyze and understand any
country, but if it were proper to take into consideration this way of analyzing a nation, I think
Britain would be the best choice!
The way of understanding Britain by internal and external ‘images’ is also very interesting
and useful since there are more different point of views that we can thus access, receiving a
complete image of this country, being able to create our own image over it. Of course, as I said
above, British are considered to manifest more ‘stereotypes’ in behavior and vision on life than any
other people.
The text ‘An Italian in London’, by Beppe Severgnini presents an external image of Britain
of 2000s and sometimes these visions could be considered too harsh. On the other hand, I chose
the article of Tony Blair - ‘Britain is on a roll, whatever popstars say’, in order to have an internal
image of Britain in the same period of time. The third text from the newspaper New Statesman is
typically about the stereotypes in behavior of British, so there is about another meaning of the
concept.
To have in turn and in comparison all these texts analized we shall begin with the first one’s
ideas. In my opinion, even if some of the external images of Britain and British in these text seem
too harsh, they could be proper and adequate because they are points of view of different writers,
some of varied national origins. Therefore, it is normal to have perspectives on Britain that could
seem unrepresentative since they are so personal or representing only the point of view of a specific
nationality in Britain, during a certain era of British history.
That is why, these are justified within the context they are written. On the other hand, in
order to have a complete image on Britain, it is highly necessary to read and take into consideration
all these different partly-representative images, so that we could create for ourselves a complete
representative image of this nation.
The views of Britain are so contrasting within these three texts because they mirror very
different perspectives of people involved in politics, mass-media, science or preoccupied by
everyday life of common people. Over time, modernization, the ‘Cool Britannia’ slogan and
Labour government policies have received conflicting responses, from home and abroad, as some
texts illustrate. Some support modernization, some stress on the continuing disparities in British
society that modernizing forces have not remedied.
So Britain is a country of contrasts - “part decaying, part surviving and part booming” and
the contrasting views of Britain revealed are justified.
Tony Blair’s article consists of a “a patriotic vision of a model 21 st century nation” as he
himself states. He is enthusiastic and hopeful, trying to make the readers fell the same and embrace
his vision.
But on the other hand, as any true politician, he tries to please both vision on British
development - traditional and modern. Thus he says: “Part of that modernization is about the
identity of a country. It matters what a country looks like and feels like. It matters what we think of
ourselves and how we project it.” He can also accept that some of the British artists have a sense of
rebellion towards his policies: “Rebellion is part of any youth culture. That means we should show
a face of Britain that is forward-looking.”
Being a political discourse, the Prime Minister wants to convince through tone and content,
through key-words and stressing on important personal ideas.
He is optimistic and proud of his nation and of his role in the history of Britain: “I am proud
the rest of the world is talking about us and wanting to know more about the modern Britain we
have started to build” or, at least, this is the impression he wants to give to the readers.
The nature of change in Britain refer to the general belief of British people in traditionalism
and conservatism. As an author here say about Britain in the 1970’s “it was more like a church, in
which all institutions, from industries and trade unions to the judiciary and the police, from
universities to the civil-service bureaucracy, were sacred and perennial.” This can be a correct
observation, since the change occurred in social and political fields together with the Thatcherism
in 1980, when the Democratic Party won the elections and Margaret Thatcher became Prime
Minister.
In my opinion, Britain is a mixture of nations, from a demographic point of view, no more
than other countries. Over all these social and political changes that affected the internal and
external images over British, what lies as a general, ‘eternal’ feature is the habit of performing
some personal specific stereotypes, as the article from 2022 agrees.
For example, the ‘reputation for loving queues’ and ‘the British stereotype of over-
apologising’ are just a few “normal” stereotypes that defied this people.
Why is Britain attractive to people of different nationalities is not a secret. Britain has its
specific features, from the gloomy, stiff atmosphere to the high style of living that native British
adore. They say that even the climate and weather have a contribution to this British spirit, but I
think even the history itself of this nation created it, making them so proud, proverbial stylish and
cold.

References:
1. Oakland, John - Contemporary Britain - A survey with Texts, 2001
2. https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022/08/stereotypes-of-british-people