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First Assignment: Lecturer

The document provides information about an assignment for a student named Farishta including the lecturer's name, student details, and course information. It then provides background details on the United Kingdom, including its location, climate, population, ethnic makeup, religions, government, and native languages. The document continues with sections on British society, culture, and stereotypes commonly associated with Britain.

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SadeeqUllahKhan
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77 views

First Assignment: Lecturer

The document provides information about an assignment for a student named Farishta including the lecturer's name, student details, and course information. It then provides background details on the United Kingdom, including its location, climate, population, ethnic makeup, religions, government, and native languages. The document continues with sections on British society, culture, and stereotypes commonly associated with Britain.

Uploaded by

SadeeqUllahKhan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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First Assignment

Lecturer
Miss Saira Tajdar

Name: Farishta
Reg# 302-1111113
Term: U (CBS)
Program: BBA
Day: Saturday (Morning)

UK - LANGUAGE, CULTURE,
CUSTOMS AND ETIQUETTE
Location: Western Europe, islands including the
northern one-sixth of the island of Ireland between the
North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, northwest of
France
Capital: London
Climate: temperate; moderated by prevailing southwest winds over the North Atlantic
Current; more than one-half of the days are overcast
Population: 60,776,238 (July 2007 est.)

Ethnic Make-up: white (of which English 83.6%, Scottish 8.6%, Welsh 4.9%, Northern
Irish 2.9%) 92.1%, black 2%, Indian 1.8%, Pakistani 1.3%, mixed 1.2%, other 1.6%
(2001 census)
Religions: Christian (Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist) 71.6%,
Muslim 2.7%, Hindu 1%, other 1.6%, unspecified or none 23.1% (2001 census)
Government: constitutional monarchy
Language in the UK
The United Kingdom does not have a constitutionally defined official language. English
is the main language (being spoken monolingually by more than 70% of the UK
population) and is thus the de facto official language.
Other native languages to the Isles include Welsh, Irish, Ulster Scots, Cornish, Gaelic
and British Sign Language.
Immigrants have naturally brought many foreign languages from across the globe.

British Society, People and Culture


The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is comprised of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and
Northern Ireland. It is important not only to be aware of these geographical distinctions,
but also the strong sense of identity and nationalism felt by the populations of these four
nations.

The terms 'English' and 'British' do not mean the same thing. 'British' denotes
someone who is from England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. 'English'
refers to people from England. People from Scotland are 'Scots', from Wales
Welsh and from Northern Ireland Irish. Be sure not to call someone Welsh,
Scots, or Northern Irish English.

The Class System


Although in the past few decades, people from varied backgrounds have had
greater access to higher education, wealth distribution is changing and more
upward/downward mobility is occurring, the British class system is still very

much intact although in a more subconscious way. The playing field is levelling
but the British still seem to pigeon-hole people according to class.
Class is no longer simply about wealth or where one lives; the British are able to
suss out someones class through a number of complex variables including
demeanour, accent, manners and comportment.
A Multicultural Society
Formerly a very homogenous society, since World War II, Britain has become
increasingly diverse as it has accommodated large immigrant populations,
particularly from its former colonies such as India, Pakistan and the West Indies.
The mixture of ethnic groups and cultures make it difficult to define Britishness
nowadays and a debate rages within the nation as to what now really constitutes
being a Briton.

Britain Stereotypes:
Class conscious?
What, though, of this description of us as "awfully class conscious"? It's tempting to say
that that's out of date, that most Britons now belong in the vast, sprawling middle class.
But the figures are much less comforting. The OECD put Britain at the bottom of the
social mobility league table, finding that children born into poor families here have a
lower chance of getting on than they do in Italy, France, Spain or Germany.
Even if the figures were not against us, we could hardly complain if our fellow
Europeans think we have a hang-up about class. What message do we Brits think we
send when our signature cultural export of 2011 was Downton Abbey, a show entirely
about the intricacies of class and which apparently longs for a return to Edwardian
notions of hierarchy? The smash West End play One Man, Two Guvnors similarly
revolves around class. Unfortunately, it's not just a foreigners' myth that in Britain how
one speaks and what school one attended still counts.
Second world war obsession?
Nor can we easily deny our obsession with the last war. When David Cameron wielded
his veto at the December save-the-euro summit, the speed with which he was
compared to the British Tommy in the legendary 1940 cartoon stoically declaring,
"Very well, alone" testified to a nation that still views Europe through a wartime lens.
For reasons that are not all bad, we have turned 1939-45 into a kind of creation myth,
the noble story of modern Britain's birth. We vote for Churchill as our Greatest Briton
and revere the Queen in part because she is a direct link to that chapter in our history,
the moment when we were unambiguously on the side of good.
That, of course, is a key difference between us and our fellow Europeans, for whom that
period is anything but simple or unambiguous.

And yet no Brit could accept the caricature of us without some dissent. For one thing,
it's contradictory. How can Britons simultaneously be both self-controlled and prone to
rip our clothes off in a drunken haze? (One answer might be that we're repressed and
need alcohol to loosen up, but then go too far.) But it is also incomplete.
More tolerant?
For the stereotype captures much of what we were and still are but misses out who
we have become. We are now a much more diverse and varied society, especially in
our big cities, than the hooligan/City gent image allows.
There is a vibrancy to modern British life that eludes the cliche's grasp. There's a hint of
it in that Polish suggestion that the Brits are "kind and friendly to immigrants".
Compared with other European countries, it's probably true that Britain is, generally,
more tolerant. Some of our public services the NHS, the BBC are still cherished. We
are not merely a mini-America of let-it-rip free-marketism.
Despite everything, Britain is not broken. And if that's hard for some of our European
neighbours to accept, then they should hear what we say about them.

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