Formality and the UK – what do our politicians teach us?
On Wednesday 20th July 2022, Boris Johnson made his closing remarks in the House of Commons at his final Prime Minister’s Questions’ (PMQ) session.
“I wanna thank you; I wanna thank all of the wonderful staff of the House of Commons; I wanna thank all my friends and colleagues; I wanna thank my Right Honourable Friend, opposite, Mr Speaker. I wanna thank everybody here and hasta la vista…baby.”
Almost two years earlier to the day, on 24th July 2019, Theresa May similarly had decided to resign as Prime Minister. In her closing comments at PMQs, she said:
“[the people we represent] that is the bedrock of our parliamentary democracy and of our liberty, and each one of us, wherever we sit and whatever we stand for, can take pride in that. That duty to serve my constituents will remain my greatest motivation.”
Among the British stereotypes, it is often claimed that we are a nation deeply rooted in tradition, pomp and circumstance, with the propensity to speak with a posh somewhat aristocratic accent, known as Received Pronunciation (RP). In order words, formality – culturally – holds sway over the British. However, formality has always been a difficult concept to define, with no real consensus. At best, most would agree that situations and social interactions that are regimented, understood to be constrained by an agreed protocol and often involving a lesser degree of familiarity of its members are all formal in substance.
The House of Commons, thus, provides an intriguing window into the complexities and paradoxes of formality, serving as a test of some well-established assumptions. If the stereotype holds that the British speak predominately RP, the House of Commons is doing a good job at perpetuating it. Boris Johnson (with Theresa May to a lesser extent) speaks a “purer” form of RP, which embodied the accent of the speech of those educated at Britain’s leading boarding schools, such as Eton where Johnson was educated. From the sixteenth century onwards, the boarding schools elevated this accent since their students were the future men of the Court and high-society London, where power and prestige were concentrated. Geography and class fused into the “received” form of accepted speech. Hence, the association with RP as sounding ennobled or “posh”.
RP is also often conflated with the concept of “BBC English”, but the two are not identical. To be sure, RP was the main accent of BBC broadcasters in its early history, but in recent decades a wider representation of regional accents can be heard, together with a gradual evolution of RP itself, as social mobility increased and elements of the Southern English accent of the lower classes were incorporated. Therefore RP (in its more traditional form) has never been the most widely spoken form of British English; perhaps fewer than 3% of the population speak it. That Prime Ministers and the Royal Family may represent the country on the international stage and thus amplify RP to the ears of overseas onlookers distorts the reality of its actual usage among the British.
If RP can be considered a quasi-encoded form of speech – how to speak “properly”; the accent adopted in the most formal institutions such as courts, broadcasting studios and parliaments – then formality in this narrow sense has lost some of its importance in modern Britain. RP is on the wane. Likewise, formal dress code is on the wane: male MPs can be now seen, albeit only occasionally, in the House of Commons without ties; presenters and guest speakers in TV studios are similarly loosening the formal rules.
What about the words we choose to speak? Are the British becoming less formal?
Let’s go back to those closing comments of our most recent Prime Ministers. Theresa May’s final words appeared to be semi-scripted as she cast her eyes downwards to the dispatch box as she uttered them. There is an intuition that written language is more formal than spoken language. In essence, this is true as formality favours explicit communication to remove ambiguity that could be later misinterpreted. Nevertheless spontaneous spoken language can be formal in nature and conversely, written text can imbue a high degree of informality, as is now common with e-mail correspondence. It could be argued that May wanted to respect the formal conventions and perceived formal circumstance of delivering a final message to her parliamentarians and the wider electorate, paraphrasing the essence of a formalised democracy. Johnson on the other hand took a different approach. While both acknowledged the greater importance of the parliament and its voters than themselves as PM, Johnson was unconventional by dint of his informality. He used several instances of “wanna” – an Americanism widely used nowadays. This is perhaps a superficial detail, but arguably would be a phrase harder to pick out in the speech of people, much less prime ministers, as one winds back the clock. More interesting was his choice of “hasta la vista…baby” echoing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s catchphrase in the movie Terminator 2, a product of popular entertainment far removed from the elite social milieu of his Etonian days.
In some respects, Johnson’s style echoed Winston Churchill’s view of parliamentary discourse, who after World War I spoke of “a conversational style of speaking, which has long been held to be the model of English Parliamentary life. How much better this is than foreign assemblies, where they all sit in a semi-circle, and everyone has a place, or even a desk, which he can bang when he is displeased…”. Any yet certain unique formal codes still persist: naming fellow parliamentary colleagues not by name but by “the (Right) honourable friend/gentleman/lady” within the chamber, as seen within Johnson’s farewell.
If formality is not the exclusive domain of writing nor does it neatly overlap with politeness. In a witty parliamentary exchange, one famously outspoken Labour MP said of the Conversative (Tory) Party:
Skinner: “Half the Tories opposite are crooks.”
Speaker: “Please retract that unparliamentary language.”
Skinner: “OK, half the Tories opposite are not crooks.”
The jarring of language is clearly visible here. “Crook” is an informal word for a dishonest person. The Speaker of the House, in objecting to flagrant violations of language expectations of MPs, used formal language to try and immediately re-instigate a sense of propriety worthy of the situation, with “retract” and “unparliamentary” which are not commonly used in everyday language. Skinner, with demonstrable wit, understood the request but further subverted the norm by making a joke of it.
Perhaps we can conclude that the goings-on in the House of Commons do represent something of Britishness and the complexities of social codes. Whilst the House does not represent the class structure of the wider UK by any stretch, it does represent a moderate shift of cultural norms which exists across all sectors of society towards more instances of informality where once formality reigned supreme. But context is always vital and often a mix is optimal. Too much formality is embarrassing, is awkward. Theresa May embodied – at least in the public sphere – a desire to be overtly formal, which led to criticism of her lack of warmth or relatability, whether justified or not. But equally so is an inappropriate degree of informality that feels equally awkward. Skinner, the MP, will be remembered as such even though he never reached high office. Johnson provides a contradictory mix, which arguably made him attractive as a politician regardless of his political persuasions – an educated man needed for the job of PM, but with a down-to-earth spirit. To understand the British is to enter into this interwoven dance of formality and informality; of seriousness and humour; of social distance and social intimacy.
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