British Communication Style

In Britain, “please”, “thank you”, and sometimes “thank you very much” are involved in just about every human transaction. They are necessary and expected in communication with the British. British politeness has a ritualized predictability and expected formality (Weisser 1987:5). People in Britain are very time-oriented, respecting deadlines and punctuality. As for tone of voice: shouting in an argument with a British person means to lose the argument, as such people are considered those “who have failed to handle the intellectual content of a disagreement and must raise their voices in order to compensate for their dim intelligence”, notes Henry Weisser (1987:7). People who talk loud are considered ill-bred, ill-mannered and ill-educated. The general rules for well-educated British people experiencing disagreement are: to lower one’s voice and stick precisely to the facts and not to the feelings one has about an issue. The British operate with objective facts that are the only valid source of truth (Morrison 1994:109).