This is a modern definition on “English”. What I like about it is it weighs heavily into the civic nationalism, meaning that anyone can be English, irrespective of their ancestry.
A few things stand out about it:
- It’s recursive i.e. it’s a definition that references itself
- While this can’t tell us specifically what English are, it can tell us how they are sustained
- ‘Reproduce’ implies cloning, but we all know that cultures do evolve.
- Where do we draw the line about what can change and how quickly while something remains English culture?
- There still needs to be an “original” English people in the first place in order for there to be anything to sustain
What I don’t like about it is it completely decouples ethnic English from Englishness. By definition this is what civic nationalism is all about, but it does not sit easily to consider the extreme of an England populated entirely by English of foreign ancestry. It just simply seems strange. Most people consider destruction of an ethnicity to be genocide, so how do we square this definition which they fact the English ethnicity must be preserved?
What it excludes are immigrants who have settled in England, irrespective of whether they are paper citizens or not. This is because an immigrants cannot reproduce English culture. They must learn English culture from existing English people. In their lifetimes they could become fractionally English, but I would argue a very small percent would qualify as fully English as they spent substantial time as a child in a foreign culture, which would leave an indelible mark.
Their children on the other hand do have the potential to be English. Not simply by virtue of being born here, but by virtue of being raised English.
How much they are raised as English could vary widely between “not at all”, and “indistinguishable from an English child”. Although the latter would be extremely hard if both their parents were not English as so much of a culture is transmitted from parent to child.
We can see it may take several generations for a foreign family to become English.
Of course there is a shortcut here which is if the foreigner were to marry an English person. There is a much higher chance their offspring would be English. Depending on how well assimilated they become prior to having children here.