Glossary
Accent refers to the type of pronunciation a person speaks with. In contrast, dialect refers to differences in grammar and vocabulary. In Britain, both accent and dialect may give clues about not only a person’s background but also their general level of education. It is often said by linguists that non-mobile, older rural males (NORMs) speak with some of the most distinctive accents, although in recent decades this category has expanded to include immigrants to the UK.
A distinctive range of comedy films produced at the Ealing Studios in London especially between 1948 and 1955, which typically featured the main characters subverting authority or rebelling against the ruling class.
In the 1960s it was widely believed that British society and politics was controlled by a small number of wealthy families and individuals who had been to elite public schools and universities. They included the royal family and others who held key positions in the Church, government and armed forces. However, the concept has little use today when new types of unelected bodies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and powerful media figures also hold great power and are able to influence official policy.
A series of agreements between the British and Irish governments, and the political parties of Northern Ireland regarding civil and cultural rights, justice, policing and the decommissioning of weapons. The agreement helped to bring about peace in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s, following decades of violence.
The term is often used to describe a genre of films which strongly reflect conservative values of nationalism, patriotism and nostalgia for the days of British imperial greatness. The style has been frequently represented by the team of Merchant–Ivory in the 1980s, whose A Room with a View exemplifies the trend. However, another view claims the glorious, romantic past is fundamentally false, as the British Empire was a façade for an exploitative and sometimes cruel occupation. A stronger view argues it is a flawed attempt to represent a British cultural identity, one which is maintained because it consistently sells well with audiences at home and abroad.
A style in design and architecture which uses advanced technology and lightweight, flexible materials, such as steel, glass and aluminium. Unlike in earlier styles, the mechanical aspects of the building, such as pipes, lifts and air-conditioning systems, are sometimes displayed on the outside. The style has been exploited by Richard Rogers and Norman Foster among others.
The Irish Republican Army is an organisation of Irish Nationalists dedicated to the establishment of a United Ireland, which was increasingly active in Britain from the late 1960s when British troops patrolled the streets of many Northern Irish cities.
A style of play popular in the 1950s, a time when there was a new spirit of openness in society, and a desire in the arts to offer authentic representations of it. The ‘kitchen sink’ style put the lives of the poor and ordinary to the forefront, in drama as well as in television, film and art, before becoming absorbed into the mainstream of the 1960s, along with other elements of social realism.
This was a report in 1999 on the racist murder in 1993 of Stephen Lawrence, who was stabbed by a group of white youths in south London. The initial investigation was held to be inadequate, and following a judicial inquiry announced by the Labour government, the former High Court judge Sir William Macpherson found the police investigation showed professional incompetence, failed leadership and a catalogue of errors due to ‘institutional racism’ within the force. The report was a damning indictment of race relations in Britain.
Magic realism is a genre of writing that originated in South America, especially in the works of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, whose novel One Hundred Years of Solitude mixes extravagant fantasy with factual reality, partly in a playful way, but also in response to the manipulation of fact and fiction in South American politics by totalitarian regimes. It is probably not coincidental that in Britain the style was exploited in the 1980s and early 1990s – notably by Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, Graham Swift and Peter Carey – when for many people, what the Thatcher government said about society was very different from the reality of living in it.
From time to time a particular kind of behaviour suddenly is treated as sensational and problematic by the government and the mass media, even though it has been present all along. In Britain, moral panics have often been encouraged by the political right, in order to criticise the left for its alleged incompetence. Some of the best-documented examples include studies of Teds, mods and rockers, muggers, New Age travellers and asylum seekers.
A small, far-right political organisation founded in 1966 and dedicated to the expulsion of non-white immigrants from the UK, as well as the reintroduction of capital punishment for certain offences.
This describes buildings from the early nineteenth to early twentieth century in the classical styles of ancient Greece and Rome. These included many civic and commercial buildings, such as town halls, banks and train stations which emphasised civic power and pride, as well as reaffirming the kind of society that the local government wanted to create.
Since the late 1980s there has been a trend in architecture to design types of houses that are traditional in appearance, having the ‘look’ of houses from perhaps 50–100 years earlier, but are modern in features and comforts. These are sensitive to their (often rural) environment, and popular with house-buyers, who generally prefer the look of older houses.
A severely functional style of architecture, characterised by smooth, stark surfaces and sharp angles, which imposes itself on the environment and observer in a kind of architectural anti-aesthetic. In Britain the style was commonly found in local authority housing blocks of the 1950s and 1960s and the National Theatre complex, designed by Denys Lasdun. However, the reputation of such buildings suffered as they were often built quickly and cheaply, and concrete as a building material soon went out of fashion.
During the 1980s and 1990s there was a reaction against what many saw as the hypocrisy of undeclared homosexuals in positions of power, who had spoken out against gay equality in the Church and elsewhere. ‘Outing’ them involved publicly declaring that the person in question was in fact gay.
Pirate radio refers to radio stations broadcasting illegally. In the mid-1960s many broadcast rock music from ships in the Thames estuary and in the North Sea, exploiting a legal loophole, which left them in international waters outside British legal jurisdiction. Today, pirate radio stations are more likely to be found in apartment blocks in urban areas.
Many linguists believe that language influences attitudes and behaviour, and during the 1980s there was a move to change language use in official documents order to promote equality and avoid giving offence to groups such as women, gays, the disabled and ethnic minorities. Local authorities and other official bodies have attempted to promote political correctness by avoiding the use of language that could reinforce stereotyped thinking or cause offence; for example, words with the suffix ‘man’ were altered to person, thus ‘chairman’ became chairperson, and some female forms such as actress, air hostess and spinster fell out of use.
Since the nineteenth century British politics has been divided into two main groups, the left and the right, which have their roots in philosophies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The basic premise of the left was that a better, fairer society could be achieved through the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, and that social problems were largely attributable to social inequality. A more extreme view wanted to see the imposition of a communist society, in which, theoretically at least, everyone would be equal and nobody exploited; there would be no private business or private property; and elections would be unnecessary. This was largely the belief of Karl Marx (1818–83) and Marxist ideology, which divided the world until the 1990s. Although Marx lived and worked in Britain for some years, his works found little favour. The Labour Party was committed to some Marxist principles until the 1990s, such as the nationalisation of major industries, for example coal, steel and transport, but these were removed under the leadership of Tony Blair.
In contrast to the political left, the right was an early political view based on philosophies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which believed that a better society could be created with small government, strong law, low taxes and free enterprise. This found its maximum expression in recent times with ‘Thatcherism’ (see below).
The term ‘soap opera’ was imported from America in the 1950s where mini-series with lots of drama, domestic conflict and crises were sponsored by detergent manufacturers who used the commercial breaks to advertise their products, primarily to housewives watching daytime television.
Social realism emerged in the 1950s, with new works of theatre, literature, poetry and art, television plays and soap operas aiming to represent society in a more realistic way. It marked the beginning of the British ‘new wave’ in a movement that was influenced by the ‘documentary’ style developed in Britain in the late 1930s.
Spin and spin doctors were a new aspect of 1990s media and public relations. The act of preparing and managing political or corporate information in the best possible light is known as ‘spin’. The mass media frequently spin news to make it eye-catching, controversial or sensational; political parties spin news so as to avoid damage and present themselves in the most acceptable way. Those who ‘spin’ the news are known as ‘spin doctors’.
Suburbia is a generic name for areas of the city between the centre and the countryside. Most people in Britain live in the suburbs, and increasingly work there too. In recent years suburban life has been the subject of study, as an area once known for its limited interest and the narrow-mindedness of its conformist inhabitants is recognised as one far more varied and liberal than researchers initially suspected.
This is a print industry term meaning ‘compressed’. For many years it referred to smaller-sized newspapers which were generally more sensational press with a wide appeal. They had shorter articles and sentences and often used informal vocabulary and slang. However, from around 2000, several of the larger, ‘broadsheet’ newspapers began to appear in a smaller, tabloid size, in the belief that many readers found the format practical and preferable. Papers such as the Independent, The Times and the Guardian now appear in smaller formats, and the term is no longer synonymous with ‘low quality’ press.
Thatcherism refers to the ideology and practices of the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1990. It involved cutting public spending on social welfare and arts projects, a vast programme of privatisation of almost all state-controlled industries and liberating market forces, together with a strong police force to keep in check the inevitable social consequences. Abroad, Thatcher’s foreign policy included a tough anti-communist/socialist stance and much closer ties with the USA.
Thatcher frequently expressed her personal belief in the need to return to values of thrift, enterprise, the family, personal restraint and a strict code of conduct, which were often referred to as ‘Victorian values’. Her autocratic style and strength were enough to carry forward her programmes until she was finally dislodged by her own party following economic recession, the introduction of the ‘poll tax’ and internal divisions over closer ties with Europe.
Thatcherism profoundly affected British society not only in the 1980s, but also through into the twenty-first century, as privatisation, the removal of subsidies and business values have become mainstream in the arts and in many areas of society. On the other hand, so-called ‘Victorian values’ have been largely ignored as society has become more tolerant, plural and liberal.
The Conservative Party is often referred to as the Tory Party.
In the post-war period British youth culture has frequently been characterised by gangs and groups with specific values, attitudes, beliefs, behaviour, clothes, language, drugs, music and so on. Essentially, youth culture refers to a style which is distinct from that of the dominant culture. Since the 1950s many youth cultures have been related to youth and deviancy, for example ‘Teddy Boys’, ‘mods’, ‘rockers’, ‘punks’ and ‘yardies’. Their existence mainly among the working class is said to have provided a solution to their failure to adjust to mainstream society, or a rejection/contempt for the values of the dominant class.
However, since the 1990s the ‘tribalism’ of British youth appears to have declined. According to some theories, this reflects the disappearance of labour-intensive manual industries and a decline in oppositional politics of left and right, as well as the development of a multicultural society, which together have contributed to a breakdown of traditional class divisions. At the same time, the public has become both more tolerant and increasingly familiar with the tendency of the mass media to exaggerate events, resulting in lower levels of interest and the removal of the media’s role as an ‘amplifier’ of youth culture.