Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the
Understandable English Podcast. My name is Oliver and today we
are going to talk about understanding the British people
or understanding the British mentality.
So how British people behave or think, how they can be seen as
perhaps different, some cultural differences.
The reason this topic came up is I was thinking with people who
live here, how people behave differently, so some cultural or
mentality differences. We're going to be basing or
reading this off of an article and it's called Tips for
Understanding the British People.
I will link this article in the description of the video if
you're watching on YouTube and of the podcast if you're
listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Google or
wherever you listen. So with the way the world has
changed with globalization, which is the process of things
becoming more global and shared, the Internet has played a big
role in this. We can watch videos or content
from countries all around the world, and we also can all
communicate and share our ideal ideas and mentality, which has
led to us becoming more familiar and similar than ever before.
However, I think of course every culture and country has
differences too and it's important to understand those.
Otherwise we can try to think about different cultures through
the way we were raised for through our own cultures
mentality or mindset. The difficulty with this, for
example, is that something which is acceptable or normal in one
culture might be seen as where rude or unacceptable in another
culture. So it's important to understand
the culture and the context of each country that you go to.
Which is why today I want to focus on my culture on the UK in
general. It's important to note that of
course the UK is different. All over there is England,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and each of these
places have their own cultural differences too.
But I'm going to look at some general ideas within the article
that I'm going to read, or at least take ideas from and
discuss them with you. So let's get started.
One of the big focus points or points of UK culture and society
is individualism. So individualism, what is this?
So society in the UK likes to focus on and reinforce
individual achievement. So we are very focused on
individuals. Other countries for example have
more of a collective focus, so a focus as a group, so achieving
things together for the better of the country.
This could be seen within certain political ideas such as
communism or socialism, but the UK tends to be very different on
this. It's a lot closer to the USA, so
very big focus on the individual's interests.
So in the UK the individual, so one person, your individual self
and your rights are most important.
So everyone should look after themselves and their family
before everything else. So people tend to be more
private and focused on themselves and their close
circle of family and friends, so that can be a little bit
different from some societies. This can also affect the
workplace and business. Teamwork is important of course
to achieve goals, but even within teams people can compete.
Management particularly likes to look at individual performance
as well as team performance. So the performance of individual
people is very important and it can be very competitive.
And this also is the case in education.
Education is a competitive system.
Here it is based on your individual performance and at
achieving the best that you can achieve.
The next area we will look at is communication.
For me this is the biggest difference from other countries
or a lot of other countries, because there are countries that
have similar communication styles to the UK.
The UK has very mixed communication, so different
parts of the UK can be different.
In the South of England, for example, people often seem to be
more indirect and reserved, so more private with their emotions
and what they think. People in the north of the UK do
tend to be more open and direct about what they want and what
they think, but of course every person is different and
communication styles are different from each individual
to the next. I'm not going to talk about
communication too much because I do have a few extra podcasts
that I have made in the past about indirect and direct
communication and also about British politeness, so how
people perceive things as polite or as rude.
OK, so the next point that this article talks about is personal
space. And it says that in general the
British are quite private in nation or in natural in their
nature, so they are naturally quite private.
And the quote they have put is an Englishman's home is his
castle. So people put a big value on
their home and it is the place where they can be themselves
most freely and outside of the home.
So in society, in public, people behave and conform to the social
norms. So the normal social behavior.
Personal space is seen as very important in the UK and people
don't like to stand too close together.
They don't like when people invade or enter their personal
space. Of course, again everyone is
different on this point. Some people love to hug for
example. Uh, some people like a
handshake. This is different from person to
person, but in general people do like personal space and they
don't like people being too close and all over each other.
They do like space here. Another big point in UK culture,
which is particularly important for work culture, is action.
So in the UK there is more of a doing orientation or a tendency
towards action which is being on time, so not being late and
getting your work done. Often companies don't care so
much about the time but more about the result, so getting the
work done and the result. This can be different because I
know even when I lived in Russia for example, companies would
want me to stay in the office for all of my working hours even
if I wasn't doing any work. The time mattered more to them
than the action and the result. Whereas here most companies,
they want the result. If you get your work done then
it's not as big a deal if you, I don't know, finish early or go
home a little bit early. The result and the action is
important. But I think in general that this
also is different from the city to the countryside and from the
South to the north. In the north and in the
countryside things tend to be a little bit slower.
But within the workplace, I think it's true and that it's
important to remember especially being on time.
It's a big part of British culture and being late can be
seen as being lazy or not respecting someone else's time.
Those are the main points that I want to talk about today.
I hope that was interesting and helps you to understand some
different characteristics of the British people and society here.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to come back for
the next one. Follow the podcast and if you're
watching on YouTube, subscribe to the channel.
Thank you very much for listening and I hope you have an
amazing day. Goodbye.