Was Douglas Adams specifically joking about British small talk?

Question

There's this paragraph in the book:

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You are very tall or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?”

Am I correct that Douglas Adams was joking about how British people talk to each other (like, 'Are you all right') using this paragraph? Or is this paragraph just a simple joke without mocking the Brits' culture?

Answer 1

At the time he wrote the original radio series and first novel, Adams had lived his entire life in England, and was writing for a British audience, so a lot of the cultural references are based on that culture. For instance, there are jokes about tea, gin and tonic, and a key plotline in one of the later books revolves around cricket; an American author might instead have referenced coffee, whisky, and baseball.

The distinction between mocking human behaviour and mocking British behaviour is therefore rather blurred, since humanity is represented almost entirely by British people (Arthur and Trillian) and people who've visited Britain (Ford and, briefly, Zaphod).

Probably the most parsimonious explanation is that this passage is mocking how people Adams knew talked to each other, and those people happened to be British as well as Earthlings.

Answer 2

Probably mocking, but gently mocking. When someone has fallen down a 30' well, do you say 'shall I call an ambulance' or 'are you all right'? Depending on the injuries, one is an over-reaction and one an under-reaction. It is possible to move straight to the most dramatic (ambulance, undertaker) or possible to just ask. Yes, it is funny that 'are you all right' (the traditional British comment) is the same phrase you would use if they hadn't fallen down a well.

As to the first phrases, fundamentally - the point of small talk is that it is 'small' i.e. not meaningful. If one takes it as it is meant, no one minds, as at least you are talking, rather than shuffling your feet and being embarrassed, and can then move on to 'big' talk, dates, marriage, children or what you will.