America and Americans / Europeans

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Feb 22 14:43:57 UTC 2002


At 10:47 AM +0000 2/22/02, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>--On Thursday, February 21, 2002 10:16 pm -0600 Donald M Lance
><lancedm at MISSOURI.EDU> wrote:
>
>>The intention of my question was "What would an American think or say?"
>>For many Americans, Mexico would be in Central America and England would
>>be in Europe.
>>DMLance
>
>Hmm.  I grew up thinking Britain wasn't in Europe because continents are
>land masses, and Britain's a separate island.  (I'm now aware of
>definitions of continents based on sub-ground geological boundaries--plates
>or whatever.)
>
>In Britain, there are plenty of people who think of themselves as European
>(although not 'continental').  When making comparisons to Americans,
>they'll say "well, since we're European...".  But largely
>Euro-identification here is a political thing.  If you're in favor of the
>EU (and, more than likely, adoption of the Euro) you consider yourself
>European as well as British (and/or English, Scottish, etc.).  If you're
>more of an isolationist, you're British but not European.
>
An even more extreme case is Iceland.  I kind of think of Icelanders
as Europeans, though even less continental than Brits.  (I don't
think of Iceland as part of Europe.)  It's partly language and
ethnicity here, certainly not geography.

larry



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