title: Statutory interpretation

text: In common law jurisdictions, the judiciary may apply rules of statutory interpretation both to legislation enacted by the legislature and to delegated legislation such as administrative agency regulations.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Statutory interpretation first became significant in common law systems, of which historically England is the exemplar. In Roman and civil law, a statute (or code) guides the magistrate, but there is no judicial precedent. In England, Parliament historically failed to enact a comprehensive code of legislation, which is why it was left to the courts to develop the common law; and having decided a case and given reasons for the decision, the decision would become binding on later courts.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Accordingly, a particular interpretation of a statute would also become binding, and it became necessary to introduce a consistent framework for statutory interpretation. In the construction (interpretation) of statutes, the principle aim of the court must be to carry out the "intention of Parliament", and the English courts developed three main rules (plus some minor ones) to assist them in the task. These were: the mischief rule, the literal rule, and the golden rule.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Statutes may be presumed to incorporate certain components, as Parliament is "presumed" to have intended their inclusion. For example:


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Where legislation and case law are in conflict, there is a presumption that legislation takes precedence insofar as there is any inconsistency. In the United Kingdom this principle is known as parliamentary sovereignty; but while Parliament has exclusive competence to legislate, the courts (mindful of their historic role of having developed the entire system of common law) retain sole competence to "interpret" statutes.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: The age old process of application of the enacted law has led to formulation of certain rules of interpretation. According to Cross, "Interpretation is the process by which the courts determine the meaning of a statutory provision for the purpose of applying it to the situation before them", while Salmond calls it "the process by which the courts seek to ascertain the meaning of the legislature through the medium of authoritative forms in which it is expressed". Interpretation of a particular statute depends upon the degree of creativity applied by the judges or the court in the reading of it, employed to achieve some stated end. It is often mentioned that common law statutes can be interpreted by using the Golden Rule, the Mischief Rule or the Literal Rule. However, according to Francis Bennion, author of texts on statutory interpretation, there are no such simple devices to elucidate complex statutes, "[i]nstead there are a thousand and one interpretative "criteria"".


title: Statutory interpretation

text: A statute is an edict of a legislature, and the conventional way of interpreting a statute is to seek the 'intention' of its maker. It is the judicature's duty to act upon the true intention of the legislature or the mens or sentential legis. The courts have to objectively determine the interpretation with guidance furnished by the accepted principles. If a statutory provision is open to more than one interpretation the court has to choose that interpretation which represents the true intention of the legislature. The function of the courts is only to expound and not to legislate.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Federal jurisdictions may presume that either federal or local government authority prevails in the absence of a defined rule. In Canada, there are areas of law where provincial governments and the federal government have concurrent jurisdiction. In these cases the federal law is held to be paramount. However, in areas where the Canadian constitution is silent, the federal government does not necessarily have superior jurisdiction. Rather, an area of law that is not expressly mentioned in Canada's Constitution will have to be interpreted to fall under either the federal residual jurisdiction found in the preamble of s. 91—known as the Peace, Order and Good Government clause—or the provinces residual jurisdiction of "Property and Civil Rights" under s. 92(13) of the 1867 Constitution Act. This contrasts with other federal jurisdictions, notably the United States and Australia, where it is presumed that if legislation is not enacted pursuant to a specific provision of the federal Constitution, the states will have authority over the relevant matter in their respective jurisdictions, unless the state's definitions of their statutes conflicts with federally established or recognized rights


title: Statutory interpretation

text: The judiciary interprets how legislation should apply in a particular case as no legislation unambiguously and specifically addresses all matters. Legislation may contain uncertainties for a variety of reasons:


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Therefore, the court must try to determine how a statute should be enforced. This requires statutory construction. It is a tenet of statutory construction that the legislature is supreme (assuming constitutionality) when creating law and that the court is merely an interpreter of the law. Nevertheless, in practice, by performing the construction the court can make sweeping changes in the operation of the law.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Moreover, courts must also often view a case's statutory context. While cases occasionally focus on a few key words or phrases, judges may occasionally turn to viewing a case in its whole in order to gain deeper understanding. The totality of the language of a particular case allows the Justices presiding to better consider their rulings when it comes to these key words and phrases.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Statutory interpretation is the process by which a court looks at a statute and determines what it means. A statute, which is a bill or law passed by the legislature, imposes obligations and rules on the people. Although legislature makes the Statute, it may be open to interpretation and have ambiguities. Statutory interpretation is the process of resolving those ambiguities and deciding how a particular bill or law will apply in a particular case.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Assume, for example, that a statute mandates that all motor vehicles travelling on a public roadway must be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). If the statute does not define the term "motor vehicles", then that term will have to be interpreted if questions arise in a court of law. A person driving a motorcycle might be pulled over and the police may try to fine him if his motorcycle is not registered with the DMV. If that individual argued to the court that a motorcycle is not a "motor vehicle", then the court would have to interpret the statute to determine what the legislature meant by "motor vehicle" and whether or not the motorcycle fell within that definition and was covered by the statute.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: There are numerous rules of statutory interpretation. The first and most important rule is the rule dealing with the statute's plain language. This rule essentially states that the statute means what it says. If, for example, the statute says "motor vehicles", then the court is most likely to construe that the legislation is referring to the broad range of motorised vehicles normally required to travel along roadways and not "aeroplanes" or "bicycles" even though aeroplanes are vehicles propelled by a motor and bicycles may be used on a roadway.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: In Australia and in the United States, the courts have consistently stated that the text of the statute is used first, and it is read as it is written, using the ordinary meaning of the words of the statute.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: It is presumed that a statute will be interpreted so as to be internally consistent. A particular section of the statute shall not be divorced from the rest of the act. The ejusdem generis (or "eiusdem generis", Latin for "of the same kind") rule applies to resolve the problem of giving meaning to groups of words where one of the words is ambiguous or inherently unclear. The rule states that where "general words follow enumerations of particular classes or persons or things, the general words shall be construed as applicable only to persons or things of the same general nature or kind as those enumerated".


title: Statutory interpretation

text: A statute shall not be interpreted so as to be inconsistent with other statutes. Where there is an apparent inconsistency, the judiciary will attempt to provide a harmonious interpretation.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Legislative bodies themselves may try to influence or assist the courts in interpreting their laws by placing into the legislation itself statements to that effect. These provisions have many different names, but are typically noted as:


title: Statutory interpretation

text: In most legislatures internationally, these provisions of the bill simply give the legislature's goals and desired effects of the law, and are considered non-substantive and non-enforceable in and of themselves.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: However in the case of the European Union, a supranational body, the recitals in Union legislation must specify the reasons the operative provisions were adopted, and if they do not, the legislation is void. This has been interpreted by the courts as giving them a role in statutory interpretation with Klimas, Tadas and Vaiciukaite explaining "recitals in EC law are not considered to have independent legal value, but they can expand an ambiguous provision's scope. They cannot, however, restrict an unambiguous provision's scope, but they can be used to determine the nature of a provision, and this can have a restrictive effect."


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Also known as canons of construction, canons give common sense guidance to courts in interpreting the meaning of statutes. Most canons emerge from the common law process through the choices of judges. Critics of the use of canons argue that the canons constrain judges and limit the ability of the courts to legislate from the bench. Proponents argue that a judge always has a choice between competing canons that lead to different results, so judicial discretion is only hidden through the use of canons, not reduced.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Textual canons are rules of thumb for understanding the words of the text. Some of the canons are still known by their traditional Latin names.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Substantive canons instruct the court to favor interpretations that promote certain values or policy results.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Deference canons instruct the court to defer to the interpretation of another institution, such as an administrative agency or Congress. These canons reflect an understanding that the judiciary is not the only branch of government entrusted with constitutional responsibility.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Critics of the use of canons argue that canons impute some sort of "omniscience" to the legislature, suggesting that it is aware of the canons when constructing the laws. In addition, it is argued that the canons give a credence to judges who want to construct the law a certain way, imparting a false sense of justification to their otherwise arbitrary process. In a classic article, Karl Llewellyn argued that every canon had a "counter-canon" that would lead to the opposite interpretation of the statute.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Some scholars argue that interpretive canons should be understood as an open set, despite conventional assumptions that traditional canons capture all relevant language generalizations. Empirical evidence, for example, suggests that ordinary people readily incorporate a "nonbinary gender canon" and "quantifier domain restriction canon" in the interpretation of legal rules.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: The French philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755) believed that courts should act as "the mouth of the law", but soon it was found that some interpretation is inevitable.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Following the German scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779–1861) the four main interpretation methods are:


title: Statutory interpretation

text: It is controversial whether there is a hierarchy between interpretation methods. Germans prefer a "grammatical" (literal) interpretation, because the statutory text has a democratic legitimation, and "sensible" interpretations are risky, in particular in view of German history. "Sensible" means different things to different people. The modern common law perception that courts actually "make" law is very different. In a German perception, courts can only "further" develop law ().


title: Statutory interpretation

text: The freedom of interpretation varies by area of law. Criminal law and tax law must be interpreted very strictly, and never to the disadvantage of citizens, but liability law requires more elaborate interpretation, because here (usually) both parties are citizens. Here the statute may even be interpreted in exceptional cases, if otherwise a patently unreasonable result would follow.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: The interpretation of international treaties is governed by another treaty, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, notably Articles 31–33. Some states (such as the United States) are not a parties to the treaty, but recognize that the Convention is, at least in part, merely a codification of customary international law.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: The rule set out in the Convention is essentially that the text of a treaty is decisive unless it either leaves the meaning ambiguous, or obscure, or leads to a result that is manifestly absurd or unreasonable. Recourse to "supplementary means of interpretation" is allowed only in that case, like the preparatory works, also known by the French designation of "travaux préparatoires".


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Over time, various methods of statutory construction have fallen in and out of favor. Some of the better-known rules of construction methods are:


title: Statutory interpretation

text: Within the United States, purposivism and textualism are the two most prevalent methods of statutory interpretation.


title: Statutory interpretation

text: "Purposivists often focus on the legislative process, taking into account the problem that Congress was trying to solve by enacting the disputed law and asking how the statute accomplished that goal." Purposivists believe in reviewing the processes surrounding the power of the legislative body as stated in the constitution as well as the rationale that a "reasonable person conversant with the circumstances underlying enactment would suppress the mischief and advance the remedy" Purposivists would understand statutes by examining "how Congress makes its purposes known, through text and reliable accompanying materials constituting legislative history."


title: Statutory interpretation

text: "In contrast to purposivists, textualists focus on the words of a statute, emphasizing text over any unstated purpose." Textualists believe that everything which the courts need in deciding on cases are enumerated in the text of legislative statutes. In other words, if any other purpose was intended by the legislature then it would have been written within the statutes and since it is not written, it implies that no other purpose or meaning was intended. By looking at the statutory structure and hearing the words as they would sound in the mind of a skilled, objectively reasonable user of words, textualists believe that they would respect the constitutional separation of power and best respect legislative supremacy. Critiques of modern textualism on the United States Supreme Court abound.


title: Mathira

text: Mathira Mohammad, mononymously known as Mathira, is a Pakistani-Zimbabwean model, dancer, television hostess, singer, and actress. She has hosted several television shows and appeared in music videos. She is known for her item songs in "Main Hoon Shahid Afridi" and the Indian Punjabi film "Young Malang".


title: Mathira

text: Mathira was born into a Muslim family in Harare, Zimbabwe to a South African father and Pakistani mother. Her sister Rose Muhammad is also an actress. She was educated in Zimbabwe before moving to Pakistan with her family amid unrest in Zimbabwe. She made her debut in music videos of "Jadugar", "Desi Beat" and "Nachdi Kamal" by Malkoo and "Woh Kaun Thi" by Rizwan-ul-Haq and "Jotha Tu Hai" by Arbaz Khan. In March 2011, she got a chance to host a late-night programme "Love Indicator" on Vibe TV.


title: Mathira

text: Mathira then shot for the cover of a leading Pakistani fashion magazine. In 2011, she also hosted an AAG TV's show "Baji Online". In 2013, she made her debut in Bollywood by doing an item song "Lakk Ch Current" in Indian Punjabi film "Young Malang". She has also done an item number "Masti Mein Doobi Raat Hai" in the film "Main Hoon Shahid Afridi" starring Humayun Saeed. She then appeared in the music video of the song "Jhootha" with young rapper Arbaz Khan, which was released on 30 December 2013.


title: Mathira

text: In 2014, she acted in a film directed by Vipin Sharma. In 2015, she has featured in a song "Piya Re" with Furqan and Imran by paying the tribute to Adnan Sami Khan's song "Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein".


title: Mathira

text: From 2017 to 2019, she played a supporting character in Geo Kahani's series "Naagin." In 2019, she was seen in the romance-thriller film "Sirf Tum Hi To Ho" opposite Danish Taimoor.


title: Mathira

text: Mathira married Punjabi singer Farran J Mirza (also known as Flint J) in 2012. The couple has a son, Aahil Rizvi who was born in September 2014. The couple separated in January 2018.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Hybridoma technology is a method for producing large numbers of identical antibodies (also called monoclonal antibodies). This process starts by injecting a mouse (or other mammal) with an antigen that provokes an immune response. A type of white blood cell, the B cell, produces antibodies that bind to the injected antigen. These antibody producing B-cells are then harvested from the mouse and, in turn, fused with immortal B cell cancer cells, a myeloma, to produce a hybrid cell line called a hybridoma, which has both the antibody-producing ability of the B-cell and the longevity and reproductivity of the myeloma. The hybridomas can be grown in culture, each culture starting with one viable hybridoma cell, producing cultures each of which consists of genetically identical hybridomas which produce one antibody per culture (monoclonal) rather than mixtures of different antibodies (polyclonal). The myeloma cell line that is used in this process is selected for its ability to grow in tissue culture and for an absence of antibody synthesis. In contrast to polyclonal antibodies, which are mixtures of many different antibody molecules, the monoclonal antibodies produced by each hybridoma line are all chemically identical.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: The production of monoclonal antibodies was invented by César Milstein and Georges J. F. Köhler in 1975. They shared the Nobel Prize of 1984 for Medicine and Physiology with Niels Kaj Jerne, who made other contributions to immunology. The term hybridoma was coined by Leonard Herzenberg during his sabbatical in César Milstein's laboratory in 1976–1977.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Laboratory animals (mammals, e.g. mice) are first exposed to the antigen against which an antibody is to be generated. Usually this is done by a series of injections of the antigen in question, over the course of several weeks. These injections are typically followed by the use of in vivo electroporation, which significantly enhances the immune response. Once splenocytes are isolated from the mammal's spleen, the B cells are fused with immortalised myeloma cells. The fusion of the B cells with myeloma cells can be done using electrofusion. Electrofusion causes the B cells and myeloma cells to align and fuse with the application of an electric field. Alternatively, the B-cells and myelomas can be made to fuse by chemical protocols, most often using polyethylene glycol. The myeloma cells are selected beforehand to ensure they are not secreting antibody themselves and that they lack the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HGPRT) gene, making them sensitive to the HAT medium (see below).


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Fused cells are incubated in HAT medium (hypoxanthine-aminopterin-thymidine medium) for roughly 10 to 14 days. Aminopterin blocks the pathway that allows for nucleotide synthesis. Hence, unfused myeloma cells die, as they cannot produce nucleotides by the "de novo" or salvage pathways because they lack HGPRT. Removal of the unfused myeloma cells is necessary because they have the potential to outgrow other cells, especially weakly established hybridomas. Unfused B cells die as they have a short life span. In this way, only the B cell-myeloma hybrids survive, since the HGPRT gene coming from the B cells is functional. These cells produce antibodies (a property of B cells) and are immortal (a property of myeloma cells). The incubated medium is then diluted into multi-well plates to such an extent that each well contains only one cell. Since the antibodies in a well are produced by the same B cell, they will be directed towards the same epitope, and are thus monoclonal antibodies.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: The next stage is a rapid primary screening process, which identifies and selects only those hybridomas that produce antibodies of appropriate specificity. The first screening technique used is called ELISA. The hybridoma culture supernatant, secondary enzyme labeled conjugate, and chromogenic substrate, are then incubated, and the formation of a colored product indicates a positive hybridoma. Alternatively, immunocytochemical, western blot, and immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry. Unlike western blot assays, immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry facilitates screening and ranking of clones which bind to the native (non-denaturated) forms of antigen proteins. Flow cytometry screening has been used for primary screening of a large number (~1000) of hybridoma clones recognizing the native form of the antigen on the cell surface. In the flow cytometry-based screening, a mixture of antigen-negative cells and antigen-positive cells is used as the antigen to be tested for each hybridoma supernatant sample.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: The B cell that produces the desired antibodies can be cloned to produce many identical daughter clones. Supplemental media containing interleukin-6 (such as briclone) are essential for this step. Once a hybridoma colony is established, it will continually grow in culture medium like RPMI-1640 (with antibiotics and fetal bovine serum) and produce antibodies.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Multiwell plates are used initially to grow the hybridomas, and after selection, are changed to larger tissue culture flasks. This maintains the well-being of the hybridomas and provides enough cells for cryopreservation and supernatant for subsequent investigations. The culture supernatant can yield 1 to 60 μg/ml of monoclonal antibody, which is maintained at -20 °C or lower until required.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: By using culture supernatant or a purified immunoglobulin preparation, further analysis of a potential monoclonal antibody producing hybridoma can be made in terms of reactivity, specificity, and cross-reactivity.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: The use of monoclonal antibodies is numerous and includes the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. For example, monoclonal antibodies can distinguish subsets of B cells and T cells, which is helpful in identifying different types of leukaemias. In addition, specific monoclonal antibodies have been used to define cell surface markers on white blood cells and other cell types. This led to the cluster of differentiation series of markers. These are often referred to as CD markers and define several hundred different cell surface components of cells, each specified by binding of a particular monoclonal antibody. Such antibodies are extremely useful for fluorescence-activated cell sorting, the specific isolation of particular types of cells.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: With the help of monoclonal antibodies, tissues and organs can be classified based on their expression of certain defined markers, which reflect tissue or cellular genesis. Prostate specific antigen, placental alkaline phosphatase, human chorionic gonadotrophin, α-fetoprotein and others are organ-associated antigens and the production of monoclonal antibodies against these antigens helps in determining the nature of a primary tumor.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Monoclonal antibodies are especially useful in distinguishing morphologically similar lesions, like pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma, adenocarcinoma, and in the determination of the organ or tissue origin of undifferentiated metastases. Selected monoclonal antibodies help in the detection of occult metastases (cancer of unknown primary origin) by immuno-cytological analysis of bone marrow, other tissue aspirates, as well as lymph nodes and other tissues and can have increased sensitivity over normal histopathological staining.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: One study performed a sensitive immuno-histochemical assay on bone marrow aspirates of 20 patients with localized prostate cancer. Three monoclonal antibodies (T16, C26, and AE-1), capable of recognizing membrane and cytoskeletal antigens expressed by epithelial cells to detect tumour cells, were used in the assay. Bone marrow aspirates of 22% of patients with localized prostate cancer (stage B, 0/5; Stage C, 2/4), and 36% patients with metastatic prostate cancer (Stage D1, 0/7 patients; Stage D2, 4/4 patients) had antigen-positive cells in their bone marrow. It was concluded that immuno-histochemical staining of bone marrow aspirates are very useful to detect occult bone marrow metastases in patients with apparently localized prostate cancer.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Although immuno-cytochemistry using tumor-associated monoclonal antibodies has led to an improved ability to detect occult breast cancer cells in bone marrow aspirates and peripheral blood, further development of this method is necessary before it can be used routinely. One major drawback of immuno-cytochemistry is that only tumor-associated and not tumor-specific monoclonal antibodies are used, and as a result, some cross-reaction with normal cells can occur.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: In order to effectively stage breast cancer and assess the efficacy of purging regimens prior to autologous stem cell infusion, it is important to detect even small quantities of breast cancer cells. Immuno-histochemical methods are ideal for this purpose because they are simple, sensitive, and quite specific. Franklin et al. performed a sensitive immuno-cytochemical assay by using a combination of four monoclonal antibodies (260F9, 520C9, 317G5 and BrE-3) against tumor cell surface glycoproteins to identify breast tumour cells in bone marrow and peripheral blood. They concluded from the results that immuno-cytochemical staining of bone marrow and peripheral blood is a sensitive and simple way to detect and quantify breast cancer cells.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: One of the main reasons for metastatic relapse in patients with solid tumours is the early dissemination of malignant cells. The use of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for cytokeratins can identify disseminated individual epithelial tumor cells in the bone marrow.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: reports on having developed an immuno-cytochemical procedure for simultaneous labeling of cytokeratin component no. 18 (CK18) and prostate specific antigen (PSA). This would help in the further characterization of disseminated individual epithelial tumor cells in patients with prostate cancer. The twelve control aspirates from patients with benign prostatic hypertrophy showed negative staining, which further supports the specificity of CK18 in detecting epithelial tumour cells in bone marrow.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: In most cases of malignant disease complicated by effusion, neoplastic cells can be easily recognized. However, in some cases, malignant cells are not so easily seen or their presence is too doubtful to call it a positive report. The use of immuno-cytochemical techniques increases diagnostic accuracy in these cases.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: analysed 53 samples of pleural or peritoneal fluid from 41 patients with malignant disease. Conventional cytological examination had not revealed any neoplastic cells. Three monoclonal antibodies (anti-CEA, Ca 1 and HMFG-2) were used to search for malignant cells. Immunocytochemical labelling was performed on unstained smears, which had been stored at -20 °C up to 18 months. Twelve of the forty-one cases in which immuno-cytochemical staining was performed, revealed malignant cells. The result represented an increase in diagnostic accuracy of approximately 20%. The study concluded that in patients with suspected malignant disease, immuno-cytochemical labeling should be used routinely in the examination of cytologically negative samples and has important implications with respect to patient management.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Another application of immuno-cytochemical staining is for the detection of two antigens in the same smear. Double staining with light chain antibodies and with T and B cell markers can indicate the neoplastic origin of a lymphoma.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: One study has reported the isolation of a hybridoma cell line (clone 1E10), which produces a monoclonal antibody (IgM, k isotype). This monoclonal antibody shows specific immuno-cytochemical staining of nucleoli.


title: Hybridoma technology

text: Tissues and tumours can be classified based on their expression of certain markers, with the help of monoclonal antibodies. They help in distinguishing morphologically similar lesions and in determining the organ or tissue origin of undifferentiated metastases. Immuno-cytological analysis of bone marrow, tissue aspirates, lymph nodes etc. with selected monoclonal antibodies help in the detection of occult metastases. Monoclonal antibodies increase the sensitivity in detecting even small quantities of invasive or metastatic cells. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for cytokeratins can detect disseminated individual epithelial tumour cells in the bone marrow.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The State Opening of Parliament is a ceremonial event which formally marks the beginning of a session of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It includes a speech from the throne known as the King's (or Queen's) Speech. The event takes place in the House of Lords chamber on the first day of a new session, which is usually in May or June, and traditionally in November, but can occur at any time of year depending on the timing of General Elections and parliamentary session start dates. It takes place in front of both Houses of Parliament. The monarch, wearing the Imperial State Crown, reads a speech that has been prepared by his or her government outlining its plans for that parliamentary year.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Queen Elizabeth II opened every session of Parliament during her reign, except in 1959, 1963, and 2022. In 1959 and 1963, she was pregnant with Prince Andrew and Prince Edward respectively and those two sessions were opened by Lords Commissioners, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Geoffrey Fisher in 1959 and Michael Ramsey in 1963), empowered by the Queen. The Lord Chancellor (Viscount Kilmuir in 1959 and Lord Dilhorne in 1963) read the Queen's Speech on those occasions. The Queen also missed the 2022 State Opening on the advice of her doctors. That session was opened by her son Charles, Prince of Wales and her grandson Prince William, Duke of Cambridge who, in their capacity as Counsellors of State, were empowered to do so by Letters Patent issued by the Queen for the occasion, the Prince of Wales reading the Queen's Speech (from the consort's throne) on behalf of his mother.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The State Opening of Parliament is a ceremony filled with historical ritual and symbolic significance for the governance of the United Kingdom. In one place are assembled the members of all three branches of government, of which the Monarch is the authority and nominal head in each part: the Crown-in-Parliament (the Monarch, together with the House of Commons and the House of Lords) constitutes the legislature; the King- (or Queen-) in-Council, His (or Her) Majesty's Ministers (who are members of one or other House, and members of the Monarch's Privy Council) constitute the executive; the King- (or Queen-) on-the-Bench, consisting of His or Her Majesty's Judges, although not members of either House, are summoned to attend and represent the judiciary. Therefore, the State Opening demonstrates the governance of the United Kingdom but also the separation of powers. The importance of international relations is also represented through the presence in the Chamber of the "corps diplomatique".


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The ceremonial surrounding the opening of parliament can be broken down into several parts (the following descriptions refer to the full ceremonial of the event; for occasions when, for various reasons, reduced ceremonial has been used, see below):


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: First, the cellars of the Palace of Westminster are searched by the Yeomen of the Guard in order to prevent a modern-day Gunpowder Plot. The Plot of 1605 involved a failed attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill the Protestant King James I and aristocracy. Since that year, the cellars have been searched, now largely, but not only, for ceremonial purposes. This is supervised by the Lord Great Chamberlain, and the Yeomen are paid for their services with a small glass of port wine.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Peers and peeresses assemble in the House of Lords. The Lords Spiritual and the Lords Temporal wear their Parliament robes for the occasion. They are joined by senior representatives of the judiciary, who sit on woolsacks in the centre of the Chamber, and members of the diplomatic corps, who are seated behind the Bishops. The Commons assemble in their own chamber, wearing ordinary day dress, and begin the day, as any other, with prayers. Beforehand the Speaker's Procession takes place in the usual way: preceded by a doorkeeper, the Serjeant at Arms, leads the Speaker of the House of Commons from his official residence to the Commons Chamber, followed by his trainbearer, chaplain and secretary. In the Central Lobby, a police inspector makes the traditional cry of "Hats off, strangers", instructing those assembled to remove their hats in deference to the highest-ranking commoner in the realm.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: On the morning of the State Opening, the Treasurer, Comptroller and Vice-Chamberlain of the Household (all of whom are government whips) assemble with other senior members of the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace, carrying their ceremonial white staves of office. The Treasurer and Comptroller, along with other senior members of the Royal Household, accompany the monarch in the carriage procession; but the Lord Chamberlain does not join them. Instead, on behalf of the monarch, he remains at Buckingham Palace keeping one MP (the Vice-Chamberlain) "hostage" for the duration of the state opening, by tradition as a surety for the safe return of the monarch. The hostage MP is well entertained until the successful conclusion of the ceremony, when they are released upon the safe return of the monarch. The Vice-Chamberlain's imprisonment is now purely ceremonial, though they do remain under guard; originally, it guaranteed the safety of the Sovereign as they entered a possibly hostile Parliament. The tradition is said to stem from the time of Charles I, who had a contentious relationship with Parliament and was eventually beheaded in 1649 during the Civil War between the monarchy and Parliament (a copy of Charles I's death warrant is displayed in the robing room used by the monarch as a ceremonial reminder of what can happen to a monarch who attempts to interfere with Parliament); however it has been suggested that the custom in its present form is of much more recent origin (mention of hostage-taking only dating back to the 1960s or 70s). In 1845, by contrast, the Lord Chamberlain's routine absence from the State Opening was said to be due to 'the department over which his lordship presides not being acknowledged in His Majesty's Palace at Westminster' (where the Lord Great Chamberlain instead has the equivalent authority).


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Hostage MPs in recent years (all of whom were serving as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household at the time) have included:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Before the arrival of the sovereign, the Imperial State Crown is brought to the Palace of Westminster, together with the Great Sword of State and the Cap of Maintenance, in their own carriage (usually Queen Alexandra's State Coach). The King's Bargemaster and Watermen accompany it, acting as footmen (a reminder of past times when the regalia were brought from the Tower of London by river). On arrival at the Sovereign's Entrance, under the Victoria Tower, the Crown is passed by the Bargemaster to the Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, under the watchful eye of the Crown Jeweller. The regalia are then carried to be displayed in the Royal Gallery. Also in the procession, usually in King Edward VII's Town Coach, are the two maces (separate from the three used by parliament) which are carried by the Serjeants-at-Arms of the Royal Household who escort the regalia in procession.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The monarch travels to the Palace of Westminster from Buckingham Palace in a state coach (since 2014, the Diamond Jubilee State Coach), arriving at the Sovereign's Entrance under the Victoria Tower; the monarch is usually accompanied by his or her consort and sometimes by other members of the royal family. Senior members of the Royal Household follow in other carriages, and members of the armed forces line the processional route from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster. At the monarch's arrival, the national anthem is played, a gun salute is sounded in Green Park and the Royal Standard is hoisted in place of the Union Flag at the top of the Victoria Tower (where it remains until the monarch departs). The monarch is greeted on arrival by the Lord Great Chamberlain (who has oversight of the royal areas of the Palace of Westminster) and the Earl Marshal (who has responsibility for State ceremonial), before proceeding to the Robing Room, where he or she puts on the Parliament Robe of State and the Imperial State Crown. A procession is formed of heralds, Great Officers of State and members of the Royal Household, and when all is ready a fanfare is sounded and the monarch proceeds in State through the Royal Gallery to the House of Lords. Directly ahead of the monarch walk two peers: one (nowadays usually the Leader of the House of Lords) carrying the Cap of Maintenance, and the other (nowadays generally a retired senior military officer) carrying the Great Sword of State. Once seated on the throne, the monarch, wearing the Imperial State Crown, instructs the House by saying, "My Lords, pray be seated"; his or her consort takes their seat on the throne to the sovereign’s left and other members of the royal family may be seated elsewhere on the dais (for instance the Prince of Wales may be seated on a chair of state on a lower portion of the dais to the monarch's right).


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Changes are sometimes made to suit the requirements of particular monarchs at particular times; for example in October 2019, the Queen attended in the usual ceremonial robes of state, but did not wear the Imperial State Crown; instead it was carried ahead of her in the procession and placed alongside the throne on a table.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Motioned by the monarch, the Lord Great Chamberlain raises his white staff of office to signal the official known as Black Rod to summon the House of Commons. Black Rod turns and, under the escort of the Door-keeper of the House of Lords, proceeds to the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons, and reaches the doors of the Commons.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: On Black Rod's approach, the Doorkeeper of the Commons orders that the doors are slammed shut against them, symbolising the rights of parliament and its independence from the monarch. The Usher of the Black Rod then strikes with the end of their ceremonial staff (the Black Rod) three times on the closed doors of the Commons Chamber, and is then admitted (there is a mark on the door of the Commons showing the repeated indentations made by Black Rods over the years.)


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: This ritual is strongly associated with the occasion when (in 1642) King Charles I stormed into the House of Commons in an unsuccessful attempt to arrest five Members of Parliament, including the celebrated English patriot and leading parliamentarian John Hampden. (Since that time, no British monarch has entered the House of Commons when it is sitting.) The door-closing ritual, however, predates the 1640s, and although it has long since come to symbolise the independence of the Lower House, its primary purpose (according to Erskine May) is for the Commons to establish Black Rod's identity. (Once this has been achieved, Black Rod cannot be refused admission, and all other business of whatever kind in the House must cease.)


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The doors having been opened, the Chief Door-keeper of the House of Commons introduces Black Rod. At the bar, Black Rod bows to the Speaker before proceeding to the table, bowing again, and announcing the command of the monarch for the attendance of the Commons, in the following words:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: A tradition developed in recent years for this command to be greeted with a defiant topical comment by republican-leaning Labour MP (until 2019) Dennis Skinner, upon which, with some mirth, the House rises to make their way to the Lords' Chamber. This customary intervention was omitted by Mr Skinner in 2015, claiming that he had "bigger fish to fry than uttering something", due to a dispute over seating with the Scottish Nationalists. Skinner resumed the practice in 2016, until he was unseated in 2019.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The Speaker proceeds to attend the summons at once. The Serjeant-at-Arms picks up the ceremonial mace and, with the Speaker and Black Rod, leads the Members of the House of Commons as they walk, in pairs, towards the House of Lords. By custom, the members saunter, with much discussion and joking, rather than formally process. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition followed by The Deputy Prime Minister, First Secretary of State or another member of the government and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition usually walk side by side, leading the two lines of MPs. The Commons then arrive at the Bar of the House of Lords. The only people required to bow are the House of Commons Speaker, Commons Clerk, senior Lords official Black Rod and the Serjeant-at-Arms. No person who is not a member of the Upper House may pass the Bar unbidden when it is in session; a similar rule applies to the Commons. They remain standing at the Bar during the speech.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The monarch reads a prepared speech, known as the "Speech from the Throne" or the "Queen's/King's Speech", outlining the Government's agenda for the coming year. The speech is written by the Prime Minister and their cabinet members, and reflects the legislative agenda for which the Government seeks the agreement of both Houses of Parliament. It is traditionally written on goatskin vellum, and presented on bended knee for the monarch to read by the Lord Chancellor, who produces the scroll from a satchel-like bag. Traditionally, rather than turning their back on the Sovereign, which might appear disrespectful, the Lord Chancellor walks backwards down the steps of the throne, continuing to face the monarch. Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Lord Chancellor at the time, sought to break the custom and applied successfully for permission to turn his back on the sovereign and walk down the steps forwards. The next Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, continued the former tradition but succeeding Lords Chancellor have chosen to walk forwards.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The whole speech is addressed to "My Lords and Members of the House of Commons", with one significant exception that the monarch says specifically, "Members of the House of Commons, estimates for the public services will be laid before you", since the budget is constitutionally reserved to the Commons.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The monarch reads the entire speech in a neutral and formal tone, implying neither approval nor disapproval of the proposals of their Government: the monarch makes constant reference to "My Government" when reading the text. After listing the main bills to be introduced during the session, the monarch states: "Other measures will be laid before you", thus leaving the government scope to introduce bills not mentioned in the speech. The monarch mentions any state visits they intend to make and also any planned state visits of foreign heads of state to the United Kingdom during the parliamentary session. The monarch concludes the speech in saying:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: "My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels".


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Traditionally, the members of both houses of Parliament listen to the speech respectfully, neither applauding nor showing dissent towards its contents before it is debated in each house. This silence, however, was broken in 1998, when Queen Elizabeth II announced the government's plan of abolishing the right of hereditary peers to automatically sit in the House of Lords. A few Labour members of the House of Commons cried "yes" and "hear", prompting several of the Lords to shout "no" and "shame". The Queen continued delivering her speech without any pause, ignoring the intervention. The conduct of those who interrupted the speech was strongly criticised at the time.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Following the speech, the monarch and his or her retinue leave the chamber. The monarch bows to both sides of the House of Peers and then leaves the chamber, in the reverse order of the usual procession, before the Commons bow again and return to their Chamber.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: After the departure of the King from the palace, each Chamber proceeds to the consideration of an "Address in Reply to His Majesty's Gracious Speech." But first, each House considers a bill "pro forma" to symbolise their right to deliberate independently of the monarch. In the House of Lords, the bill is called the Select Vestries Bill, while the Commons equivalent is the Outlawries Bill. The bills are considered for the sake of ceremony only, and do not make any actual legislative progress. For the address in reply, a chosen member moves "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as follows". The following is the form used in the House of Lords and is nearly identical to that used in the House of Commons:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The first speech of the debate in the Commons is, by tradition, a humorous one given by a member selected in advance. The consideration of the address in reply to the Throne Speech is the occasion for a debate on the Government's agenda. The debate on the Address in Reply is spread over several days. On each day, a different topic, such as foreign affairs or finance, is considered. The debate provides an indication of the views of Parliament regarding the government's agenda.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Following this debate, a vote is taken on the Government Programme. This vote is treated as a vote of no confidence and losing this vote will automatically trigger a general election. When the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was in force, a general election was not automatically triggered if the vote was lost.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Since 1901 the monarch has opened Parliament in person on all but seven occasions. In 1929 and 1935 King George V was too ill to attend; in 1951 King George VI was too ill to attend; in 1959 and 1963 Queen Elizabeth II was pregnant and did not attend. In each of these years Lords Commissioners were appointed to preside over the opening, with the speech being read by the Presiding Commissioner (namely the Lord Chancellor). The speech was prefaced with the words:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: "My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, We are commanded to deliver to you His/Her Majesty’s Speech in His/Her Majesty’s own words".


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In 2022, when the Queen was absent on the day due to 'episodic mobility problems', the heir-apparent to the throne and his elder son (the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge) were appointed to open Parliament as Counsellors of State, with the Prince of Wales reading the speech from the consort's throne on this occasion.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: On certain occasions through history, some ceremonial aspects of the State Opening have been scaled back for specific reasons (including plague in 1593, threats of assassination in 1679, and war in 1939-1945).


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: On three occasions in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II (in March 1974, June 2017 and December 2019), the State Opening has been conducted in a "dressed-down" manner, due to the snap general elections held in those years. On these occasions the Queen attended in day dress, rather than the traditional ceremonial robes of state; the Imperial State Crown was carried in front of the Queen, rather than worn; inside the Palace, there were reduced numbers in the procession; and outside, motor cars were used in place of horse-drawn carriages, no military escort accompanied them. Otherwise, the ceremony remained largely the same.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In 2021, the ceremony was also scaled down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Queen arrived by car at Westminster, and seating was restricted – 74 were allowed in the Lords Chamber, whilst 34 further MPs and peers were able to participate from the gallery. The Queen also attended in day dress. To prevent the spread of the virus, mask-wearing and testing was enforced, and the Lord Chancellor did not directly pass the speech to the Queen, but placed it on a table next to the throne.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The State Opening in May 2022 also took place with reduced ceremonial, due to the Queen suffering 'episodic mobility problems' (which eventually led to her being absent on the day).


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Throughout the twentieth century (including in wartime) the State Opening took place on an annual basis, with the following exceptions:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In the twenty-first century the State Opening continued on an annual basis up to and including 2010, since when the following situations occurred:


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The Opening of Parliament began out of practical necessity. By the late 14th century, the manner in which the King gathered his nobles and representatives of the Commons had begun to follow an established pattern. First of all, Peers' names were checked against the list of those who had been summoned, and representatives of the Commons were checked against the sheriffs' election returns. The Peers were robed and sat in the Painted Chamber at Westminster; the Commons were summoned, and stood at the Bar (threshold) of the Chamber. A speech or sermon was then given (usually by the Lord Chancellor) explaining why Parliament had been summoned, after which the Lords and Commons went separately to discuss the business in hand. The monarch normally presided, not only for the Opening but also for the deliberations which followed (unless prevented by illness or other pressing matters).


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In the Tudor period, the modern structure of Parliament began to emerge, and the monarch no longer attended during normal proceedings. For this reason, the State Opening took on greater symbolic significance as an occasion for the full constitution of the State (Monarch, Lords and Commons) to be seen. In this period, the parliamentary gathering began to be preceded by an open-air State Procession (which often attracted large numbers of onlookers): the Monarch, together with Household retinue, would proceed in State from whichever royal residence was being used, first to Westminster Abbey for a service (usually a Mass of the Holy Ghost, prior to the Reformation), and thence on foot (accompanied by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in their robes) to the Palace of Westminster for the Opening itself.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: The Wriothesley Garter Book, a 1523 illustration by Thomas Wriothesley, depicts King Henry VIII seated in Parliament in that year. It shows a remarkable visual similarity between State Openings of the 16th and 21st centuries. In both cases, the monarch sits on a throne before the Cloth of Estate, crowned and wearing a crimson robe of state; at his right hand sit Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor, with arms above under a cardinal's hat, and William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, with arms above. Behind stands Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London. The Cap of Maintenance and Sword of State are borne by peers standing before the monarch on the left and right respectively; the Lord Great Chamberlain stands alongside, bearing his white wand of office, near the Garter King of Arms in his tabard displaying the royal arms (Thomas Wriothesley himself, the illustrator). Members of the Royal retinue are arrayed behind the King (top right). In the main body of the Chamber, the Bishops are seated on benches to the King's right wearing their parliamentary robes, with the Mitred Abbots behind them. The Lords Temporal are seated to the King's left and on the cross-bench, the status of peers is indicated by the number of miniver bars (white fur edged with gold oak-leaf lace) on their peerage robes: 4 for a duke, 3½ for a marquess, 3 for an earl, 2½ for a viscount, and 2 for a baron. Thus there are 2 dukes, both wearing ducal coronets, the first holding a Marshal's Baton, thus he is the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England. William Weston, Prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, premier baron in the roll of peers, dressed in black, sits at the end of the cross-bench. The judges (red-robed and coifed) are on the woolsacks in the centre (two Chief Justices, eight judges, and four Serjeants-at-Law), and behind them kneel the clerks (with quills and inkpots). At the bottom of the picture members of the House of Commons can be seen behind the Bar of the House, with Thomas More, Speaker of the House of Commons, in the centre, wearing his black and gold robe of state.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Since that time the ceremonial has evolved, but not dramatically. In 1679 neither the procession nor the Abbey service took place, due to fears of a Popish Plot; although the procession was subsequently restored, the service in the Abbey was not. The monarch's role in the proceedings changed over time: early on, the monarch would say some introductory words, before calling upon the Lord Chancellor (or Lord Keeper) to address the assembly. James I, however, was accustomed to speak at greater length himself, and sometimes dispensed with the Chancellor's services as spokesman. This varying pattern continued in subsequent reigns (and during the Commonwealth, when Cromwell gave the speech), but from 1679 onwards it became the norm for the monarch alone to speak. Since then, the monarch (if present) has almost invariably given the speech, with the exception of George I (whose command of English was poor) and Victoria (after the death of Prince Albert). A dramatic change was occasioned by the destruction of the old Palace of Westminster by fire in 1834; however, the new palace was designed with the ceremony of the State Opening very much in mind, and the modern ceremony dates from its opening in 1852. The entire State Opening of Parliament was filmed and televised for the first time in 1958.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In 1998, adjustments were made to the ceremonial inside Parliament to shorten the proceedings. The heralds, instead of processing with the monarch, arrived at Parliament earlier and had a separate procession. The number of court officials in the procession was reduced, including one of the ladies in waiting and the Crown Equerry. Also omitted were the three Heads of the Armed Services, represented instead by the Chief of the Defence Staff. Silver Stick in Waiting (the Commander of the Household Cavalry) no longer processed, although Gold Stick-in-Waiting (the honorary Colonel of the Household Cavalry) retained a place.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: Similar ceremonies are held in other Commonwealth realms. The governor-general or, in the case of Australia's states and Canada's provinces, the relevant governor or lieutenant governor, respectively, usually delivers the speech from the throne. On occasion, the monarch may open these parliaments and deliver the speech herself. In both Australia and Canada, the last time this occurred was in 1977. In New Zealand, the monarch last opened parliament personally in February 1990.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In India, the President of India opens Parliament with an address similar to the Speech from the Throne. This is also the case in Commonwealth Republics with a non-executive Presidency such as Malta, Mauritius and Singapore.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In the Netherlands a similar ceremony is held on the third Tuesday in September, which is called "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands. Article 65 of the constitution states that "A statement of the policy to be pursued by the Government is given by or on behalf of the King before a joint session of the two Houses of the States General that is held every year on the third Tuesday in September or on such earlier date as may be prescribed by Act of Parliament." In Norway, the King is required by Article 74 of the constitution to preside over the opening of the Storting after it had been declared to be legally constituted by the president of the Storting. After he delivers the Speech from the Throne, outlining the government's policies for the coming year, a member of the government reads the Report on the State of the Realm, an account of the government's achievements of the past year.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In Sweden a similar ceremony as the British was held until 1974, when the constitution was changed. The old opening of state was in Sweden called "Riksdagens högtidliga öppnande" ("The solemn opening of the Riksdag") and was, as the British, full of symbolism. After the abolition of the old state opening, the opening is now held in the Riksdag but in the presence of the monarch and his family. It is still the King who officially opens the parliament. After the opening of parliament the King gives a speech followed by the Prime Minister's declaration of government.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In Israel, a semi-annual ceremony, attended by the President, opens the winter and summer sessions of the Knesset. Though in the past he was a guest sitting in the Knesset's upper deck, the President now attends the ceremony from the speaker's podium and gives his own written address regarding the upcoming session. In the first session of each legislative period of the Knesset, the President has the duty of opening the first session himself and inaugurating the temporary Knesset speaker, and then conducting the inauguration process of all of the Knesset members.


title: State Opening of Parliament

text: In some countries with presidential or similar systems in which the roles of head of state and head of government are merged, the chief executive's annual speech to the legislative branch is imbued with some of the ceremonial weight of a parliamentary state opening. The most well-known example is the State of the Union Address in the United States. Other examples include the State of the Nation Address in the Philippines, a former American dependency. These speeches differ from a State Opening in at least two respects, however: they do not in fact open the legislative session, and they are delivered by the chief executive on his or her own behalf. In Poland, the President of Poland delivers his speech to the "Sejm" and the Senate at the First Sitting of these Houses, which is similar to Speech from the Throne. It is rather a custom than a law. Most Presidents of Poland delivered the Speech to the Parliament. The exception was in 2007, when President Lech Kaczyński, instead of addressing the "Sejm", watched the First Sitting of the 6th term "Sejm" from the Presidential box in the Press gallery. The President of Mexico used to be constitutionally obliged to deliver a speech, similar to the American State of the Union, until 2006 when President Vicente Fox was impeded by the opposition parties from entering the Congress building for his sixth and final speech. Since that incident, the Constitution no longer requires the President's presence at the opening of Congress.


title: Günther (singer)

text: Günther's 2004 song "Ding Dong Song" became popular in Sweden. The song (which featured Günther's backup singers, the Sunshine Girls) topped the Swedish charts in 2004 and would go on to be featured on his album Pleasureman.


title: Günther (singer)

text: In December 2013, Günther released the single "I'm Not Justin Bieber, Bitch". The song features strong electro house influences in its sound. The track's music video has gone viral, gaining momentum among fans and having 5 million views as of mid-2018.


title: Sociological theory

text: A sociological theory is a that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective, drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge. Hence, such knowledge is composed of complex theoretical frameworks and methodology.


title: Sociological theory

text: These theories range in scope, from concise, yet thorough, descriptions of a single social process to broad, inconclusive paradigms for analysis and interpretation. Some sociological theories explain aspects of the social world and enable prediction about future events, while others function as broad perspectives which guide further sociological analyses.


title: Sociological theory

text: Prominent sociological theorists include Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Randall Collins, James Samuel Coleman, Peter Blau, Niklas Luhmann, Marshal McLuhan, Immanuel Wallerstein, George Homans, Harrison White, Theda Skocpol, Gerhard Lenski, Pierre van den Berghe and Jonathan H. Turner.


title: Sociological theory

text: Kenneth Allan (2006) distinguishes sociological theory from social theory, in that the former consists of abstract and testable propositions about society, heavily relying on the scientific method which aims for objectivity and to avoid passing value judgments. In contrast, "social theory", according to Allan, focuses less on explanation and more on commentary and critique of modern society. As such, social theory is generally closer to continental philosophy insofar as it is less concerned with objectivity and derivation of testable propositions, thus more likely to propose normative judgments.


title: Sociological theory

text: Sociologist Robert K. Merton (1949) argued that sociological theory deals with social mechanisms, which are essential in exemplifying the 'middle ground' between social law and description. Merton believed these social mechanisms to be "social processes having designated consequences for designated parts of the social structure."


title: Sociological theory

text: Prominent social theorists include: Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Dorothy Smith, Roberto Unger, Alfred Schütz, Jeffrey Alexander, and Jacques Derrida.


title: Sociological theory

text: There are also prominent scholars who could be seen as being in-between social and sociological theories, such as: Harold Garfinkel, Herbert Blumer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Erving Goffman.


title: Sociological theory

text: The field of sociology itself is a relatively new discipline and so, by extension, is the field of sociological theory. Both date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, periods of drastic social change, where societies would begin to see, for example, the emergence of industrialization, urbanization, democracy, and early capitalism, provoking (particularly Western) thinkers to start becoming considerably more aware of society. As such, the field of sociology initially dealt with broad historical processes relating to these changes.


title: Sociological theory

text: Through a well-cited survey of sociological theory, Randall Collins (1994) retroactively labels various theorists as belonging to four theoretical traditions: functionalism, conflict, symbolic interactionism, and utilitarianism.


title: Sociological theory

text: While modern sociological theory descends predominately from "functionalist" (Durkheim) and "conflict"-oriented (Marx and Weber) perspectives of social structure, it also takes great influence from the "symbolic interactionist" tradition, accounting for theories of pragmatism (Mead, Cooley) and micro-level structure (Simmel). Likewise, "utilitarianism" (aka "rational choice" or "social exchange"), although often associated with economics, is an established tradition within sociological theory.


title: Sociological theory

text: Lastly, as argued by Raewyn Connell (2007), a tradition that is often forgotten is that of "social Darwinism", which applies the logic of biological evolution to the social world. This tradition often aligns with classical functionalism and is associated with several founders of sociology, primarily Herbert Spencer, Lester F. Ward and William Graham Sumner. Contemporary sociological theory retains traces of each of these traditions, which are by no means mutually exclusive.


title: Sociological theory

text: A broad historical paradigm in sociology, "structural functionalism" addresses social structures in its entirety and in terms of the necessary functions possessed by its constituent elements. A common parallel used by functionalists, known as the "organic" or "biological analogy" (popularized by Herbert Spencer), is to regard norms and institutions as 'organs' that work toward the proper-functioning of the entire 'body' of society. The perspective was implicit in the original sociological positivism of Auguste Comte, but was theorized in full by Durkheim, again with respect to observable, structural laws.


title: Sociological theory

text: Functionalism also has an anthropological basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski, and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, the latter of whom, through explicit usage, introduced the "structural" prefix to the concept. Classical functionalist theory is generally united by its tendency towards the biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism. As Giddens states: "Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and the function of social systems and to analyzing processes of evolution via mechanisms of adaptation…functionalism strongly emphasizes the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors, human subjects)."


title: Sociological theory

text: "Conflict theory" is a method that attempts, in a scientific manner, to provide causal explanations to the existence of conflict in society. Thus, conflict theorists look at the ways in which conflict arises and is resolved in society, as well as how every conflict is unique. Such theories describe that the origins of conflict in societies are founded in the unequal distribution of resources and power. Though there is no universal definition of what "resources" necessarily includes, most theorists follow Max Weber's point of view. Weber viewed conflict as the result of "class", "status", and "power" being ways of defining individuals in any given society. In this sense, power defines standards, thus people abide by societal rules and expectation due to an inequality of power.


title: Sociological theory

text: Karl Marx is believed to be the father of social conflict theory, in which "social conflict" refers to the struggle between segments of society over valued resources. By the 19th century, a small population in the West had become "capitalists": individuals who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits, owning virtually all large-scale means of production. However, theorists believe that capitalism turned most other people into industrial workers, or, in Marx's terms, "proletarians": individuals who, because of the structure of capitalist economies, must sell their labor for wages. It is through this notion that conflict theories challenge historically dominant ideologies, drawing attention to such power differentials as class, gender and race. Conflict theory is therefore a macrosociological approach, in which society is interpreted as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and social change.


title: Sociological theory

text: Other important sociologists associated with social conflict theory include Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Rather than observing the ways in which social structures help societies to operate, this sociological approach looks at how "social patterns" cause certain individuals to become dominant in society, while causing others to be oppressed. Accordingly, some criticisms to this theory are that it disregards how shared values and the way in which people rely on each other help to unify society.


title: Sociological theory

text: Symbolic interaction—often associated with interactionism, phenomenological sociology, dramaturgy, and interpretivism—is a sociological approach that places emphasis on subjective "meanings" and, usually through analysis, on the empirical unfolding of social processes. Such processes are believed to rely on individuals and their actions, which is ultimately necessary for society to progress. This phenomenon was first theorized by George Herbert Mead who described it as the "outcome of collaborative joint action".


title: Sociological theory

text: The approach focuses on creating a theoretical framework that observes society as the product of everyday interactions of individuals. In other words, society in its most basic form is nothing more than the shared reality constructed by individuals as they interact with one another. In this sense, individuals interact within countless situations through symbolic interpretations of their given reality, whereby society is a complex, ever-changing mosaic of subjective "meanings". Some critics of this approach argue that it focuses only on ostensible characteristics of social situations while disregarding the effects of culture, race, or gender (i.e. social-historical structures).


title: Sociological theory

text: Important sociologists traditionally associated with this approach include George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, George Homans, and Peter Blau. New contributions to the perspective, meanwhile, include those of Howard Becker, Gary Alan Fine, David Altheide, Robert Prus, Peter M. Hall, David R. Maines, as well as others. It is also in this tradition that the radical-empirical approach of "ethnomethodology" emerged from the work of Harold Garfinkel.


title: Sociological theory

text: Utilitarianism is often referred to as exchange theory or rational choice theory in the context of sociology. This tradition tends to privilege the agency of individual rational actors, assuming that, within interactions, individuals always seek to maximize their own self-interest. As argued by Josh Whitford (2002), rational actors can be characterized as possessing four basic elements:


title: Sociological theory

text: Exchange theory is specifically attributed to the work of George C. Homans, Peter Blau, and Richard Emerson. Organizational sociologists James G. March and Herbert A. Simon noted that an individual's rationality is bounded by the context or organizational setting. The utilitarian perspective in sociology was, most notably, revitalized in the late 20th century by the work of former ASA president James Samuel Coleman.


title: Sociological theory

text: Overall, there is a strong consensus regarding the central theoretical questions and the key problems that emerge from explicating such questions in sociology. In general, sociological theory attempts to answer the following three questions: (1) What is action?; (2) What is social order?; and (3) What determines social change?


title: Sociological theory

text: In the myriad of attempts to answer these questions, three predominantly theoretical (i.e. not empirical) issues emerge, largely inherited from classical theoretical traditions. The consensus on the central theoretical problems is how to "link", "transcend" or "cope with" the following "big three" dichotomies:


title: Sociological theory

text: Lastly, sociological theory often grapples with a subset of all three central problems through the problem of integrating or transcending the divide between micro-, meso- and macro-level social phenomena. These problems are not altogether empirical. Rather, they are epistemological: they arise from the conceptual imagery and analytical analogies that sociologists use to describe the complexity of social processes.


title: Sociological theory

text: The issue of "subjectivity" and "objectivity" can be divided into a concern over (a) "the general possibilities of social actions"; and (b) "the specific problem of social scientific knowledge". In regard to the former, the subjective is often equated (though not necessarily) with "the individual" and the individual's intentions and interpretations of the "objective". The objective, on the other hand, is usually considered to be any public/external action or outcome, on up to society .


title: Sociological theory

text: A primary question for social theorists is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of subjective-objective-subjective. That is to say, how is intersubjectivity achieved? While, historically, qualitative methods have attempted to tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also attempt to capture individual subjectivities. Moreover, some qualitative methods take a radical approach to objective description "in situ".


title: Sociological theory

text: Insofar as subjectivity & objectivity are concerned with (b) the specific problem of social scientific knowledge, such concern results from the fact that a sociologist is part of the "very object" they seek to explain, as expressed by Bourdieu:


title: Sociological theory

text: Structure and agency (or determinism and voluntarism) form an enduring ontological debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context, "agency" refers to the capacity of an individual to act independently and make free choices, whereas "structure" relates to factors that limit or affect the choices and actions of the individual (e.g. social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, etc.).


title: Sociological theory

text: Discussions over the primacy of either structure and agency relate to the core of sociological epistemology, i.e. "what is the social world made of?", "what is a cause in the social world", and "what is an effect?". A perennial question within this debate is that of "social reproduction": how are structures (specifically structures that produce inequality) reproduced through the choices of individuals?


title: Sociological theory

text: Synchrony and diachrony (or statics and dynamics) within social theory are terms that refer to a distinction emerging out of the work of Levi-Strauss who inherited it from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. The former slices moments of time for analysis, thus it is an analysis of static social reality. Diachrony, on the other hand, attempts to analyze dynamic sequences. Following Saussure, synchrony would refer to social phenomena as a static concept like a "language", while diachrony would refer to unfolding processes like actual "speech". In Anthony Giddens' introduction to "Central Problems in Social Theory", he states that, "in order to show the interdependence of action and structure...we must grasp the time space relations inherent in the constitution of all social interaction." And like structure and agency, time is integral to discussion of social reproduction. In terms of sociology, historical sociology is often better positioned to analyze social life as diachronic, while survey research takes a snapshot of social life and is thus better equipped to understand social life as synchronic. Some argue that the synchrony of social structure is a methodological perspective rather than an ontological claim. Nonetheless, the problem for theory is how to integrate the two manners of recording and thinking about social data.


title: Sociological theory

text: The contemporary discipline of sociology is theoretically multi-paradigmatic, encompassing a greater range of subjects, including communities, organizations, and relationships, than when the discipline first began.


title: Sociological theory

text: Strain theory is a theoretical perspective that identifies "anomie" (i.e. normlessness) as the result of a society that provides little moral guidance to individuals.


title: Sociological theory

text: Emile Durkheim (1893) first described anomie as one of the results of an inequitable division of labour within a society, observing that social periods of disruption resulted in greater anomie and higher rates of suicide and crimes. In this sense, broadly speaking, during times of great upheaval, increasing numbers of individuals "cease to accept the moral legitimacy of society,” as noted by sociologist Anthony R. Mawson (1970).


title: Sociological theory

text: Robert K. Merton would go on to theorize that anomie, as well as some forms of deviant behavior, derive largely from a disjunction between “culturally prescribed aspirations” of a society and “socially structured avenues for realizing those aspirations."


title: Sociological theory

text: Developed by Erving Goffman, dramaturgy (aka dramaturgical perspective) is a particularized paradigm of symbolic interactionism that interprets life to be a performance (i.e. a "drama"). As "actors," we have a status, i.e. the part that we play, by which we are given various roles. These roles serve as a script, supplying dialogue and action for the characters (i.e. the people in reality). Roles also involve props and certain settings. For example, a doctor (the role), uses instruments like a heart monitor (the prop), all the while using medical terms (the script), while in his doctor's office (the setting).


title: Sociological theory

text: In addition, our "performance" is the "presentation of self," which is how people perceive us, based on the ways in which we portray ourselves. This process, known as "impression management", begins with the idea of personal performance.


title: Sociological theory

text: Mathematical theory (aka formal theory) refers to the use of mathematics in constructing social theories. Mathematical sociology aims to sociological theory in formal terms, which such theories can be understood to lack. The benefits of this approach not only include increased clarity, but also, through mathematics, the ability to derive theoretical implications that could not be arrived at intuitively. As such, models typically used in mathematical sociology allow sociologists to understand how predictable local interactions are often able to elicit global patterns of social structure.


title: Sociological theory

text: Positivism is a philosophy, developed in the middle of the 19th century by Auguste Comte, that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict a scientific method. Society operates according to laws just like the physical world, thus introspective or intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. The positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, from antiquity to the present day.


title: Sociological theory

text: Postmodernism, adhering to anti-theory and anti-method, believes that, due to human subjectivity, discovering objective truth is impossible or unachievable. In essence, the postmodernist perspective is one that exists as a counter to modernist thought, especially through its mistrust in grand theories and ideologies


title: Sociological theory

text: The objective truth that is touted by modernist theory is believed by postmodernists to be impossible due to the ever-changing nature of society, whereby "truth" is also constantly subject to change. A postmodernists purpose, therefore, is to achieve understanding through observation, rather than data collection, using both micro and macro level analyses.


title: Sociological theory

text: Questions that are asked by this approach include: "How do we understand societies or interpersonal relations, while rejecting the theories and methods of the social sciences, and our assumptions about human nature?" and "How does power permeate social relations or society, and change with the circumstances?" One of the most prominent postmodernists in the approach's history is the French philosopher Michel Foucault.


title: Sociological theory

text: The general theory of crime refers to the proposition by Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi (1990) that the main factor in criminal behaviour is the individual's lack of self-control.


title: Sociological theory

text: Theorists who do not distinguish the differences that exist between criminals and noncriminals are considered to be classical or control theorists. Such theorists believe that those who perform deviant acts do so out of enjoyment without care for consequences. Likewise, positivists view criminals actions as a result of the person themselves instead of the nature of the person.


title: Sociological theory

text: The essential notion of "labeling theory" is that deviance and conformity result not so much from what people do as from how others respond to these actions. It also states that a society's reaction to specific behaviors are a major determinant of how a person may come to adopt a "deviant" label. This theory stresses the relativity of deviance, the idea that people may define the same behavior in any number of ways. Thus the labelling theory is a micro-level analysis and is often classified in the social-interactionist approach.


title: Sociological theory

text: A hate crime can be defined as a criminal act against a person or a person's property by an offender motivated by racial, ethnic, religious or other bias. Hate crimes may refer to race, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation and physical disabilities. According to Statistics Canada, the "Jewish" community has been the most likely to be victim to hate crimes in Canada in 2001–2002. Overall, about 57% of hate crimes are motivated by ethnicity and race, targeting mainly Blacks and Asians, while 43% target religion, mainly Judaism and Islam. A relatively small 9% is motivated by sexual orientation, targets gays and lesbians.


title: Sociological theory

text: Physical traits do not distinguish criminals from non criminals, but genetic factors together with environmental factors are strong predictors of adult crime and violence. Most psychologists see deviance as the result of "unsuccessful" socialization and abnormality in an individual personality.


title: Sociological theory

text: A "psychopath" can be defined as a serious criminal who does not feel shame or guilt from their actions, as they have little (if any) sympathy for the people they harm, nor do they fear punishment. Individuals of such nature may also be known to have an antisocial personality disorder. Robert D. Hare, one of the world's leading experts on psychopathy, developed an important assessment device for psychopathy, known as the "Psychopathy Checklist" (revised). For many, this measure is the single, most important advancement to date toward what will hopefully become our ultimate understanding of psychopathy.


title: Sociological theory

text: Psychopaths exhibit a variety of maladaptive traits, such as rarity in experience of genuine affection for others. Moreover, they are skilled at faking affection; are irresponsible, impulsive, hardly tolerant of frustration; and they pursue immediate gratification. Likewise, containment theory suggests that those with a stronger conscience will be more tolerable to frustrations, thus less likely to be involved in criminal activities.


title: Sociological theory

text: Sutherland and Cressey (1978) define white-collar crime as crime committed by persons of high social position in the course of their occupation. The white-collar crime involves people making use of their occupational position to enrich themselves and others illegally, which often causes public harm. In white-collar crime, public harm wreaked by false advertising, marketing of unsafe products, embezzlement, and bribery of public officials is more extensive than most people think, most of which go unnoticed and unpunished.


title: Sociological theory

text: Likewise, corporate crime refers to the illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on its behalf. Corporate crime ranges from knowingly selling faulty or dangerous products to purposely polluting the environment. Like white-collar crime, most cases of corporate crime go unpunished, and many are not never even known to the public.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: This glossary of names for the British include nicknames and terms, including affectionate ones, neutral ones, and derogatory ones to describe British people, and more specifically English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish people. Many of these terms may vary between offensive, derogatory, neutral and affectionate depending on a complex combination of tone, facial expression, context, usage, speaker and shared past history.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Brit is a commonly used term in the United States, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere, shortened from "Briton" or "Britisher".


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: An archaic form of "Briton", similar to "Brit", being much more frequently used in North America than Britain itself, but even there, it is outdated. An equivalent of the word "Engländer", which is the German noun for "Englishman". The term was also used extensively during the period of British rule in India and is still used in the Indian subcontinent.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: The term originated in the 1850s as "lime-juicer", and was later shortened to "limey". It was originally used as a derogatory word for sailors in the Royal Navy, because of the Royal Navy's practice since the beginning of the 19th century of adding lemon juice or lime juice to the sailors' daily ration of watered-down rum (known as grog), in order to prevent scurvy.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Eventually the term lost its naval connection and was used about British people in general. In the 1880s, it was used to refer to British emigrants in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. By 1925, its usage in American English had been extended to mean any Briton, and the expression was so commonly known that it was used in American newspaper headlines.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: The terms pommy, pommie, and pom used in Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand usually denote a British person. Newspapers in Australia were using the term by 1912. The "Oxford Dictionary" defines its use as "often derogatory", but after complaints to the Australian Advertising Standards Board about five advertisements using the term "poms", the board ruled in 2006 that these words are inoffensive, in part because they are "largely used in playful or affectionate terms". The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority made a similar ruling in 2010. The BBC, the British national broadcaster, has used the phrase on occasion. Disputes about whether the term is offensive have occurred since 1925.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: There are several folk etymologies for "pommy" or "pom". The best-documented of these is that "pommy" originated as a contraction of "pomegranate". According to this explanation, "pomegranate" was Australian rhyming slang for "immigrant" (like "Jimmy Grant"). Usage of "pomegranate" for English people may have been strengthened by a belief in Australia that sunburn occurs more frequently amongst English immigrants, turning those with fair skin the colour of pomegranates. Another explanation – now generally considered to be a false etymology – was that "pom" or "pommy" were derived from an acronym such as POM ("prisoner of Millbank"), POME ("prisoner of Mother England") or POHMS ("prisoner of Her Majesty's Service"). However, there is no evidence that such terms, or their acronyms, were used in Australia when "pom" and "pommy" entered use there. Other theories are that they come from the use of "pom-pom" guns by the British in the First and Second Boer Wars, from a corruption of "Tommy Atkins", or from "Pompey", a nickname for Portsmouth.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: A pejorative used colloquially in Ireland, referring to the Black and Tan forces supplied by David Lloyd George to Ireland during the Irish War of Independence in order to assist the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in combating the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The force was composed mainly of First World War British Army veterans, who wore distinctive Khaki British Army uniforms with dark RIC overcoats. The term's use is often used in Irish republican contexts. By extension, Great Britain is sometimes referred to as "Tanland".


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: The name Tommy for any soldier in the British Army is particularly associated with World War I. The German, the French and the British Commonwealth armies used the name "Tommy" for British soldiers. "Tommy" is derived from the name "Tommy Atkins" which had been used as a generic name for a soldier for many years (and had been used as an example name on British Army registration forms). The precise origin is the subject of some debate, but it is known to have been used as early as 1743. Rudyard Kipling published the poem "Tommy" (part of the "Barrack Room Ballads") in 1892 and in 1893 the music hall song "Private Tommy Atkins" was published with words by Henry Hamilton and music by S. Potter. In 1898 William McGonagall wrote "Lines in Praise of Tommy Atkins". The term is still used today in the British Army in the abridged version "Tom", especially in the Infantry Regiments, to specifically refer to a junior enlisted soldier.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In Finnish the abbreviation of iso-britannialainen (literally "Great/Large Briton") Britti is colloquially most commonly used for a British person, often also referring interchangeably to a person from England.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In Polish a common formal term to describe an Englishman is Anglik, derived from the Polish word for England, Anglia, with the word Brytyjczyk meaning Briton, from the Polish name for Great Britain, Wielka Brytania. Derogatory or disdainful (or sometimes just amicable) terms coined in recent years are Angol and Brytol respectively; however, due to negative connotations they are not used in formal writing or by the media.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In the Czech Republic the term Anglán is often used, which has the same roots as the Polish "Anglik" – the Czechs call England Anglie. This word carried no derogatory connotations. However, unlike the formal Angličan, it is not used by the press because of its informality.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In Hungary the English people are called angol or in plural angolok. England is called Anglia. British people in general are called brit or in plural britek but the term is less widespread. Great Britain is called Nagy-Britannia but the United Kingdom is called Egyesült Királyság.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Inselaffe ("island ape") is a pejorative German term allegedly dating back to English scientists Darwin and Wallace's publications on evolution.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: The original explanation of the French term rosbif is that it referred to the English tradition of cooking roast beef, and especially to the song "The Roast Beef of Old England".


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In Portugal, the term bife (literally meaning 'steak', but sounding like "beef") is used as a slang term to refer to the English. There is a feminine form, bifa, mainly used to refer to English female tourists in Portugal.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: "Les goddams" (sometimes "les goddems" or "les goddons") is an obsolete ethnic slur historically used by the French to refer to the English, based on their frequent expletives. The name originated during the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) between England and France, when English soldiers achieved notoriety among the French for their frequent use of profanity and in particular the interjection "God damn".


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In one of the Vindolanda tablets from Hadrian's Wall the pejorative Latin word "Brittunculi" (wretched little Britons) is used – presumably by a Roman official – in a commentary on the Britons' military tactics.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Afrikaans speakers may use the term rooinek (literally 'red neck', another reference to sunburning) in reference to the British, or to White South Africans of British descent. During the Second Boer War, the British became known as khakis, in reference to the colour of their uniforms – which, by then, was no longer the red coats as those were unsuitable for the South African climate.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Another common term used by Afrikaners to describe the British in South Africa is soutie or soutpiel, meaning 'salty' or 'salty penis' respectively. The meaning behind this is that they have one foot in Britain and one foot in South Africa, leaving their penis to hang in the salty sea water.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In the East African Bantu languages mzungu has come to mean any white European but more often than not especially the British or English, due to their prior presence in the region.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: During the British Mandate in Palestine, British troops were often referred to as כלניות or "Kalaniot", being Hebrew for Anemones, reflecting the troops' red berets.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Some Arab people refer to mostly people from the western world or predominantly white countries as "Khawwāja". This name is referred but not limited to white people only, although if a person belongs to such a country and speaks the tongue he is also classified as one.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In Hindi, Hindustani and Urdu the term Angrez is used to refer to the British. This word has its origin in Portuguese "Inglês", meaning 'Englishman'. A derivative is the term Angrezan or Angrezni, meaning an Englishwoman. Among the Europeans, the Portuguese were the first to arrive in India. The influx of the Portuguese led to language contact between their tongue and the local languages. As a consequence of this, a Portuguese pidgin developed that served as the lingua franca.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: The term Farangi ("Franks") has been used in Persian language since the 13th century to refer to all Europeans, Western Europeans in particular. Hindustani/Hindi has adopted this word from Persian and it is used to refer to the Europeans in general (including the British).


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: The adjective Gora (Gori for females) is also commonly used amongst Britons with subcontinental roots to refer to white Britons, although the term literally translates to 'fair-skinned one', and thus could and is applied to individuals of any ethnicity with a fair complexion, including British Asians themselves. The adjective has also been used as a noun to describe white people – hence its potential usage as a racial slur.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: In Nepal, the British are often referred to as Kuires/Khaires, which means 'people of white or pale colour'. It is also used in general for any European person with white skin.


title: Glossary of names for the British

text: Ingraj is used in Maharashtra (Marathi) and West Bengal (Bengali) in India to refer to British people.