I suspect it's at least partly to do with the urban 'anonymity' factor, perhaps? Though I also suspect that a lot of it is the ethnic factor you mention here; what I think of when I think of New England and Yankee (in the specific sense, not the general 'north of the Mason-Dixon' sense I hear it used in sometimes) is the rural culture that, as
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I suspect it's at least partly to do with the urban 'anonymity' factor, perhaps? Though I also suspect that a lot of it is the ethnic factor you mention here; what I think of when I think of New England and Yankee (in the specific sense, not the general 'north of the Mason-Dixon' sense I hear it used in sometimes) is the rural culture that, as <user="kathmandu"> says, is very heavily influenced by British settlers way back when, and has a strong stiff-upper-lip culture. That's something that pinged me too, because of the strong Yankee sense of privacy I've noticed and been bred up with (though more on that below). Everybody may know everybody's business in a small town, but all the same you keep your private business to yourself. If people know, it's not because you yourself told them.
I've certainly seen the kind of arguments you're talking about -- though not the table-overturning, ye <i>gods</i> -- though rarely. Every time, though, everyone I notice is carefully ignoring the arguing people and pretending not to hear. The ones who aren't pretending as successfully mostly look acutely embarrassed to be an unwilling part of this scene. It is, of course, entirely possible that I tend to notice the other people who feel as I do, the ones exchanging surreptitious <i>oh my GOD how can they do this in public</i> glances.
For relevant regional background: I spent most of my childhood in Cincinnati, but with a strong heritage from my mother's family of upstate New York Scottish-derived and Pennsylvania Dutch farmers; my father's Tennessee mother and Ohio father I was equally fond of, but their influence was -- hmm, much more as individual personalities rather than a family heritage. We moved to small-town Vermont when I was in high school, though, and I rooted there much more solidly than I ever had in Cincinnati; that probably had as much to do with the culture of my particular suburb as the city at large, but still, there it is. Nowadays, I live in Boston.
Other people tend to comment "Oh, I forgot you'd ever lived in Ohio -- you seem such a Vermonter," although these are mostly non-Vermont people that have said this, so grain of salt. (For the record: Vermont has the born-and-bred (or, uh, grandparents-born-and-bred) thing too, at least to some degree. I consider myself <i>from</i> Vermont nowadays, but I wouldn't claim aloud to be <i>a Vermonter</i>. This is one of those distinctions that nobody talks about wrt specific people, and I don't honestly know how much it's actually a perception other people have of me, but it's definitely present enough for me to have absorbed the idea and integrated it into my identity, that I am not and will never be completely a Vermonter because I didn't grow up there. Especially since I've been living in Boston for the past few years, and the big city is very different from most of northern and rural New England.)
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Date: 13 Jan 2011 06:36 pm (UTC)I've certainly seen the kind of arguments you're talking about -- though not the table-overturning, ye <i>gods</i> -- though rarely. Every time, though, everyone I notice is carefully ignoring the arguing people and pretending not to hear. The ones who aren't pretending as successfully mostly look acutely embarrassed to be an unwilling part of this scene. It is, of course, entirely possible that I tend to notice the other people who feel as I do, the ones exchanging surreptitious <i>oh my GOD how can they do this in public</i> glances.
For relevant regional background: I spent most of my childhood in Cincinnati, but with a strong heritage from my mother's family of upstate New York Scottish-derived and Pennsylvania Dutch farmers; my father's Tennessee mother and Ohio father I was equally fond of, but their influence was -- hmm, much more as individual personalities rather than a family heritage. We moved to small-town Vermont when I was in high school, though, and I rooted there much more solidly than I ever had in Cincinnati; that probably had as much to do with the culture of my particular suburb as the city at large, but still, there it is. Nowadays, I live in Boston.
Other people tend to comment "Oh, I forgot you'd ever lived in Ohio -- you seem such a Vermonter," although these are mostly non-Vermont people that have said this, so grain of salt. (For the record: Vermont has the born-and-bred (or, uh, grandparents-born-and-bred) thing too, at least to some degree. I consider myself <i>from</i> Vermont nowadays, but I wouldn't claim aloud to be <i>a Vermonter</i>. This is one of those distinctions that nobody talks about wrt specific people, and I don't honestly know how much it's actually a perception other people have of me, but it's definitely present enough for me to have absorbed the idea and integrated it into my identity, that I am not and will never be completely a Vermonter because I didn't grow up there. Especially since I've been living in Boston for the past few years, and the big city is very different from most of northern and rural New England.)