This is the other problem with the English understatement: it is a rule, but a rule in the fourth OED sense of 'the normal or usual state of things' - we are not conscious of obeying it; it is somehow wired into our brains. We are not taught the use of the understatement, we learn it by osmosis. The understatement 'comes naturally' because it is deeply ingrained in our culture, part of the English psyche.
The understatement is also difficult for foreigners to 'get' because it is, in effect, an in-joke about our own unwritten rules of humour. When we describe, say, a horrendous, traumatic and painful experience as 'not very pleasant', we are acknowledging the taboo on earnestness and the rules of irony, but at the same making fun of our ludicrously rigid obedience to these codes. We are exercising restraint, but in such an exaggerated manner that we are also (quietly) laughing at ourselves for doing so. We are parodying ourselves. Every understatement is a little private joke about Englishness.
The Self-deprecation Rule
Like the English understatement, English self-deprecation can be seen as a form of irony. It usually involves not genuine modesty but saying the opposite of what we really mean - or at least the opposite of what we intend people to understand.
The issue of English modesty will come up again and again in this book, so I should clear up any misunderstandings about it straight away. When I speak of 'modesty rules', I mean exactly that - not that the English are somehow naturally more modest and self-effacing than other nations, but that we have strict rules about the appearance of modesty. These include both 'negative' rules, such as prohibitions on boasting and any form of self-importance, and 'positive' rules, actively prescribing self-deprecation and self-mockery. The very abundance of these unwritten rules suggests that the English are not naturally or instinctively modest: the best that can be said is that we place a high value on modesty, that we aspire to modesty. The modesty that we actually display is generally false - or, to put it more charitably, ironic.
And therein lies the humour. Again, we are not talking about obvious, thigh-slapping funniness: the humour of English self-deprecation, like that of the English understatement, is understated, often to the point of being almost imperceptible - and bordering on incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with English modesty rules.
To show how it works, however, I will take a relatively blatant example. My fiance is a brain surgeon. When we first met, I asked what had led him to choose this profession. 'Well, um,' he replied, 'I read PPE [Philosophy, Politics and Economics] at Oxford, but I found it all rather beyond me, so, er, I thought I'd better do something a bit less difficult.' I laughed, but then, as he must have expected, protested that surely brain surgery could not really be described as an easy option. This gave him a further opportunity for self-deprecation. 'Oh no, it's nowhere near as clever as it's cracked up to be; to be honest it's actually a bit hit-or-miss. It's just plumbing, really, plumbing with a microscope - except plumbing's rather more accurate.' It later emerged, as he must have known it would, that far from finding the intellectual demands of Oxford 'beyond him', he had entered with a scholarship and graduated with a First. 'I was a dreadful little swot,' he explained.
So was he being truly modest? No, but nor could his humorously self-deprecating responses really be described as deliberate, calculated 'false' modesty. He was simply playing by the rules, dealing with the embarrassment of success and prestige by making a self-denigrating joke out of it all, as is our custom. And this is the point, there was nothing extraordinary or remarkable about his humble self-mockery: he was just being English. We all do this, automatically, all the time. Even those of us with much less impressive achievements or credentials to disguise. I'm lucky - many people don't know what an anthropologist is, and those who do generally regard us as the lowest form of scientific life, so there is very little danger of being thought boastful when I am asked about my work. But just in case I might be suspected of being (or claiming to be) something vaguely brainy, I always quickly explain to those unfamiliar with the term that it is 'just a fancy word for nosey parker', and to academics that what I do is in any case 'only pop-anthropology', not the proper, intrepid, mud-hut variety.
Among ourselves, this system works perfectly welclass="underline" everyone understands that the customary self-deprecation probably means roughly the opposite of what is said, and is duly impressed, both by one's achievements and by one's reluctance to trumpet them. (Even in my case, when it barely counts as self-deprecation, being all too sadly true, people often wrongly assume that what I do must surely be somewhat less daft than it sounds.) The problems arise when we English attempt to play this game with people from outside our own culture, who do not understand the rules, fail to appreciate the irony, and therefore have an unfortunate tendency to take our self-deprecating statements at face value. We make our customary modest noises, the uninitiated foreigners accept our apparently low estimate of our achievements, and are duly unimpressed. We cannot very well then turn round and say: 'No, hey, wait a minute, you're supposed to give me a sort of knowingly sceptical smile, showing that you realize I'm being humorously self-deprecating, don't believe a word of it and think even more highly of my abilities and my modesty'. They don't know that this is the prescribed English response to prescribed English self-deprecation. They don't know that we are playing a convoluted bluffing game. They inadvertently call our bluff, and the whole thing backfires on us. And frankly, it serves us right for being so silly.
HUMOUR AND COMEDY
Because the two are often conflated and confused, it is worth pointing out that I am talking here specifically about the rules of English humour, rather than English comedy. That is, I am concerned with our use of humour in everyday life, everyday conversation, rather than with the comic novel, play, film, poem, sketch, cartoon or stand-up routine. These would require another whole book to analyse - and a book written by someone much better qualified than I am.
Having said that, and without pretending to any expert knowledge of the subject, it seems clear to me that English comedy is influenced and informed by the nature of everyday English humour as I have described it here, and by some of the other 'rules of Englishness' identified in other chapters, such as the embarrassment rule (most English comedy is essentially about embarrassment). English comedy, as one might expect, obeys the rules of English humour, and also plays an important social role in transmitting and reinforcing them. Almost all of the best English comedy seems to involve laughing at ourselves.
While I would not claim that English comedy is superior to that of other nations, the fact that we have no concept of a separate 'time and place' for humour, that humour suffuses the English consciousness, does mean that English comic writers, artists and performers have to work quite hard to make us laugh. They have to produce something above and beyond the humour that permeates every aspect of our ordinary social interactions. Just because the English have 'a good sense of humour' does not mean that we are easily amused - quite the opposite: our keen, finely tuned sense of humour, and our irony-saturated culture probably make us harder to amuse than most other nations. Whether or not this results in better comedy is another matter, but my impression is that it certainly seems to result in an awful lot of comedy - good, bad or indifferent; if the English are not amused, it is clearly not for want of effort on the part of our prolific humorists.