The British: People from worldwide origins

Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, University of Osnabrück (Fachbereich Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften), course: Constructing Britishness: Fiction, Film, Press, language: English, abstract: ¿We call our islands by no less than six different names,

England, Britain, Great Britain, the British Isles, the

United Kingdom and, in very exalted moments, Albion.¿

This quotation taken from George Orwell¿s essay

England, Your England (1941) clearly shows that the names

quoted above are often used as synonyms, although they

patently are not. So it is no surprise that some people define

themselves as being ¿Englishsorrybritish¿ ¿ a term which

occurred in the newspapers several times over the last few

months. A lot of people seem to be quite confused about their

identity, about who they are and where they belong. But using

the words ¿English¿ and ¿British¿ interchangeably is, in my

opinion, not very fair ¿ especially with regard to the inhabitants

of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In fact, the so-called United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Northern Ireland comprises four different indigenous

nations: English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish. And

considering the fact that the British Isles (cf. map 1, page 2) ¿ of

which the United Kingdom3 is a part ¿ have attracted settlers

and immigrants for several centuries, it is not surprising that the

contemporary British are a very diverse people, or ¿ as is stated

in the title of my paper ¿ people from worldwide origins. The

question arises whether the majority of people in the United

Kingdom consider themselves to be British or rather to be

English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish or part of any other

community often referred to as a so-called ethnic minority

group.