Learning languages Requires Us to Let Go and Engage!

Language is much more than the sounds, letters, grammar, vocabulary. That is why so many people struggle learning languages. We were sold the idea that if we learn all that, then we will “know” a language. What a load of bunkum!

Languages are the means we have to express who we are, what we think. They are the means by which we “attempt” to communicate with each other. I say attempt because all too often our communication can go awry and hence the stress that all of us have felt in our lives from these attempts at communication.

The problem is that first of all we have to say something that communicates what we want to express. That is often hard enough, of itself.  And then we want the other person to understand what we said in the way we meant it. When we succeed at both, a miracle! 

I may seem to be digressing from my introduction, but really I am not. What I want to show is that the language we use is meant to express what we want to say. So when we learn a new language it is important that we always keep that connection… ”how can I say what I mean in the new language” is the first step and then “in a way that will be understood clearly by another who speaks that language” is the second. This may seem like nothing new but it is! Let me continue.

Meaning is at the heart of a language. I am here not talking about the kind of meaning that has no life, but about the kind of meaning that moves us to action, to thought, to reflection. The meaning needs to impact who we are in some way otherwise its too easy to keep it at an arms length. That kind of meaning has little chance of being transformed into a new language that we relate to. That is one reason why immersion based language learning has the successes it has. We have no choice then but to react to the language. So it makes the language more personal, not removed (like typical language teaching can be).

When we put on top of all that a cultural overlay, there are even more complications we have to deal with. Unless we are prepared to become vulnerable and let the new culture permeate us, so the meanings stated and implied in another language affects us AND not try to interpret what we hear from our own cultural baggage, we can easily miss what another might be saying.

That is why translation is typically a poor tool for learning a new language. It certainly can sometimes speed things up, and at times may even appear necessary, however we can miss so much when that is the only tool we use to learn a new language.  Culture needs to be experienced for it to be appreciated, especially its subtleties. For that to happen we need to, as much as possible, desist from attachments to and judgments about our culture or the other.  The better we can do this the more effectively we will be able to pick up the nuances of other cultures.

So if you want to learn a language work out some way you can engage with it.  The more fully you do, the better will be your chances. 

Andrew Weiler, 2012

Challenging the concept of ‘culture’ in teaching

Please watch this video called Culture: tishrab ahwa? (Would you like a coffee?), taken from a coursebook called Alif-Ba, to teach Arabic to beginners...

After that, consider this statement and your position about it.

“Ideally, language learning should function as a multicultural discourse in which the ‘strange’ and ‘foreign’ become more familiar, and in which the participants learn new questions, new perspectives relating to the object of their study, thereby gaining an increased awareness of their own attitudes and perhaps develop a more critical consciousness of themselves and their motivation with regard to the subject they have chosen to learn.” (Attar, 1988, p. 9)

I strongly agree with the above statement... and you? Now, in the light of that video and statement, consider the following questions:

-        As an Arab (if you are one), do you think that the video represents the ‘culture of coffee’ in the Arab world?
-        Imagine that you are a beginner student of Arabic. What would you get from that video?
-        Do you think that video is consistent with the previous statement?
-        What is its purpose? Does it provide the learner with any new value/knowledge?

My answer is that the video only oversimplifies the reality which, in fact, is much more multi-faceted, and contributes to foster useless stereotypes. Working as a teacher of Arabic and Italian as foreign languages, I have been noticing more and more how much some coursebooks contribute to foster this kind of stereotypes. Their attempt to give the students a simplified taste of cultures impoverishes the latters and holds them up to ridicules. In my opinion, a teacher should always consider the perspective she/he is presenting to the students, having a constant critical look at her/his practice and - when dealing with language and culture - always considering the socio-historical aspects, avoiding simplification and thinking about what can foster a better intercultural communication, starting from the language itself.

You could be willing to ask yourself some questions, such as: 

a) Is it possible to represent a culture in a simplified way?

b) What is the relationship between representation and power?

c) How can we deal with complexity when teaching language and culture?

d) Is culture something separated from language or are they tightly interconnected?

c) Is it enough, when learning a new language to have a superficial idea and ‘ready to use’ information or is it necessary to follow a more complex path that pushes the learner to look at both the other and him/herself from a new standpoint?

d) Shall we challenge students to be open to negotiate their identity and beliefs?

As for myself, I relate the role of a teacher to a transformative intellectual whose primary goal is to raise awareness and critical reflection. Therefore, I believe that a greater task for a language teacher is to help building bridges and facilitating mutual social, political and historical understanding between nations.

I also believe that learning a language should help to dip ourselves in a new dimension. I suggest we think, here, of Gulliver (in the famous novel Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift). During his journey, Gulliver modifies his perspective, starting to see others’ customs, laws and lifestyle from a new angle and, in order to do so, he feels the need to learn other people’s languages. He learns to listen to other points of view, to welcome them and, in some cases, to agree with them.

The concept of culture can be interpreted in several ways. Generalisation should be discouraged.

“Cultures are not monolithic and a variety of successful behaviors are possible for any type of interaction in any particular culture.” (Peterson and Coltrane, 2003).

P. Casola

Japan, Korea, USA: Are we all the same?

What do you think I would answer if you asked me if I sometimes feel like I don’t know where I belong?

Let me introduce myself a bit. I have a unique background: I am from South Korea and Japan. I was born and grew up in the former till I was 19 and then moved into the latter because of my family circumstances. At the age of 26, I moved, again, by myself, to the United States to learn English and obtain a Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. Recently, I got a governmental job, only a few months after graduating last May.

So, going back to our initial question, I would say I OFTEN feel like I am lost in my cultural identity but sort of proud that I feel that way. And I always think that we are all global citizens as we share that beautiful place called Earth. The culture in which you grow up highly influences the way your beliefs and values are shaped. As a result, it is hard to say that you can describe yourself without telling about your culture. However, it seems to me that many people are limiting themselves by their own thoughts on cultural differences. What is acceptable in one culture may not be the same in another one. But that does not necessarily mean that we are fundamentally different because we are culturally different.

We are all different in a way that we have our own preferences, desires, needs, interests, abilities, thoughts, and ideas, etc.  But we can also say that we are all the same regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, culture, socioeconomic status, age, and disability, etc.  I do not mean that I do not embrace individual differences.  What I mean here is that I am an individual with feelings as you are.  Yes! We all are human, aren’t we?

As a person who has been actively interacting with people from different cultures on a daily basis over the past 6 or more years and who has been trying to shift the focus from differences to similarities while interacting with them, by trying to understand their perspective without letting my prejudices and stereotypes take over, I can say, in confidence, that we are all the same at the end of the day. If we need to deal with cultural issues, we can try to communicate and use the flexibility in our cognition to better understand one another, rather than being automatically defensive or even judging.

YM

Lost in cultural Babel

I'd like to share this idea with you: It's very difficult to step back from our cultural conditioning and look at our own culture with fresh eyes, clarity and impartiality.


And what I mean by this is that if a foreigner says something we don't appreciate about our country/culture, immediately either we take it personally and badly or we deny it or, as a last resort, we try to find a reason or justification. We are seldom able to say: "Wow! Thank you. You just opened my eyes on something I could have never seen by myself." Or: "Yes. It's true, we do this and I now understand it can be weird, or totally non sense, or misleading for a foreigner."


We stick to our culture as if it was the only part of our identity and we miss the opportunity to broaden our mind. Why do we feel this necessity to "defend" something? If someone says something about our culture, why can't we just say: "You're right. That's true."  And that's all. No judgement, no denial, no attempt to camouflage. 


That's something that stirs my curiosity.


On the other side, I experienced how you feel when someone else looks at your culture from the outside and things you had always taken for granted start to become sort of "unconfortable". That's always the same point: we don't want to feel unconfortable. May I suggest this post? Stepping out of our comfort zone: That's one of the most exciting experiences. Feeling lost. Lost in translation.


So, that short experience I was talking about. Here it is: I was watching an Italian movie with British friends, when suddenly I realized that I was not watching that movie as an Italian, but as a British myself, or somehow as a foreigner. Scenes that would have felt right to me at other times, felt weird at that point, because I was watching the movie with them. The family relationships depicted in the movie, the way the two brothers interacted, the way the parents interacted, as well as all the values that that movie was conveying started to be weird to me. "This is not good", I thought, "if they see this, they are going to think that the Italians are this and this and that". And than I thought: "But the Italians ARE this, and this and that." And I felt a little ashamed. But than I thought: "You know what? Let's stop with fake movies for export market, this is REAL, it might sound ridiculous, it might sound weird, it might sound too Italian, but this is just the way we are! I didn't dare to ask my friends what they thought about the movie. Of course they told me it was great, but which British person would really tell you what she/he thinks, since in Britain it's not polite to say something negative?


I'd love to really, really (with no understatements and two-way meanings) know what the British think of that movie. 


E.

The slightness of British difference

This is a short post about how trying to be polite can be very confusing for someone from a different culture.

It took me sometimes to realize that. I'm in England at the moment, attending some courses and I've asked different questions to my teachers. Three or four times it happened that someone or myself said something completely unrelated to what the teacher was explaining and she said: That is a slightly different situation.
And again: That is slightly different from my example. Or: That is slightly different from what we are doing here. Therefore, I recorded in my mind that what I said or my colleagues said was similar (that is what slightly different means) to the teacher's examples. For three weeks I thought I was, and my colleagues were, almost right. So I kept the two alternative examples in mind as both possible.

For three weeks. Until, I finally understood! It was an epiphany for me!

In England, when you say something completely out of topic, your interlocutor will say that it is slightly different from what she or he meant.

So, if you come, like me, from a culture where you "call a cat a cat" (beautiful French saying that goes: Appeler un chat un chat, meaning call things with their real name) you could be puzzled. Politeness can be misleading, because you don't understand what people really mean, and if they really mean what they are saying, included in an academic environment where you wish to clearly understand as much as you can and go back home with consistent and meaningful information.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Polite or not polite, this is the question, politeness can mean something starkly different in different cultures, and here I am arguing that it can even be confusing and cause problems.

All this is fun! But... be careful!

E.

Ulysses reloaded

[Please, give us feedback about this post, the author asked for it!]

I read the Odyssey for the first time when I was 20, but in many ways it was like reading a known story: fragments of it had permeated my childhood since I can remember. Fewer things can stimulate the imagination of a youngster more than epic fights against mythological monsters or avoiding the traps of mischievous divinities, all embedded in the long and winding journey of a hero who eventually returns home in triumph. Sure enough, Homer could have been the first Hollywood producer. However, the Odyssey is not just for kids: it portrays so many aspects of the human condition that one can relate to it still today. When I left my home country 7 years ago on a postdoctoral grant, I was also filled with a thrill for adventure not unlike the one that drove Ulysses to join the Trojan war.

Once you leave your home country, you immediately realize the world is swarmed with modern Ulysses, already back home or still in transit. And with the present crisis looming on us, more and more people will be forced to join this condition. The toils of these modern Ulysses are certainly not as glamorous as the ones afflicting the original hero, but equally important (and painful...): finding an apartment, opening a bank account, wrestling with stubborn bureaucrats or trying to learn the local language are just some of the everyday battles one has to fight.

But let me come back to the Odyssey. One of the things that always fascinated me about the book was that it was not clear (at least to me) whether Ulysses truly wanted to come back home. Of course he says so vehemently, but whenever he has the chance he invariably misses the shot: he acts foolishly, annoys the Gods and is being pushed away from the right path over and over again. If we reflect on the fact that he spent 10 years (ten!) wandering around the Aegean Sea while continuously missing the way home, it is just ridiculous. Even as a kid I smelled something fishy. This had to be done on purpose, otherwise Ulysses was the worst sailor ever!

Likewise, in the course of the last 7 years I have asked myself many times whether my changing countries every 2 years is part of the journey home (as I’ve always been claiming) or I’m just running in circles in fear of making that final step. To be honest, I haven’t figured it out yet, but what I've lately been observing in many of my friends staying abroad is that the need to hit home is a rather sudden call: one has been restlessly wandering the world and realizes, almost overnight, that this seemingly random walk has somehow always been the long journey back to Ithaca. And it works like a biological clock: they urgently feel the need to get home, right there, right now. I'm not at that stage yet, but I would not bet a dime with you that things won't change in a year, or maybe in just a matter of months: I've seen too many hardcore travelers turn back home on short notice not to be cautious. Like with a leaking faucet, your sink might be overflowing before you realize it.

But here comes the crux: what is home? Sure we all have our Penelopes somewhere (family, friends, memories), and the time we spend away from them is slowly but firmly weighing on us. But for how long can we still call a place home when we are away? Is there a threshold or we can always emulate Ulysses’ comeback, seemingly restituting things as they were before we left? Can we spend years away and still expect to come back unscathed? Neither the feedback I get from different returnees nor my own experience sounds like Ulysses's comeback. Not at all. As the years I've been away increase every short visit home is more and more painful: I've gradually lost touch not only with people but also with cultural background; in my family everybody got kids, and so grown-up by now that I completely missed their childhoods; all my reference points are stuck 7 years ago; etc. It's like waking up from a coma... Unlike in the Odyssey, our Penelopes back home have not sown a tapestry at daytime to unsew it at nighttime. The tapestry has been always growing, to the point that now we can barely recognize it. Do we belong there anymore? Is there a place one can still call home?

The same dilemma applied to the original Ulysses, though. Only that Homer, wisely enough, stopped the epopey at the right time and spared himself the pains of telling the readers what happened afterwards. However, other authors thought about it. Interestingly enough, all these sequels show an unadapted Ulysses that ends up leaving Penelope and Ithaca, never to return. Our modern Ulysses would step in here and probably add: indeed, what is the point in staying when your Ithaca does not exist anymore?

I don't know the answer, but maybe the problem is to view things in terms of journeys and destinations. Much the same way we cannot trail back to our childhood, that place we used to call home is not there anymore, it's gone forever. The safety net it once represented has faded into a (potentially dangerous) memory. Live with it or be ready for bitter disappointments. I can easily picture Ulysses back in Ithaca longing for the past, feeling emotionally detached and seeking only the company of the surviving members of his crew. As modern Ulysses we should avoid running into the same pitfalls... However, while writing this post I became aware of the term Ulysses syndrome, used in psychology to identify disorders affecting, especially, immigrant population who cannot adapt to new cultural and geographical environments. As one of my italian friends (also a blogger here) says: "once you get into the Intrazone you will always remain there. You just have to accept it". I agree, and in it we can still choose to behave like the original Ulysses and cry over spilled milk or else adapt and switch gears to always make the best of our changing situations. Good luck to all of you in this endeavour!

by O.C.

Cultural flavors from distant lands

It was my first week in the US. I was walking my two big dogs in the park close to the river, when I gave a shot: “Good morning,” I said, practicing my rusty English, and that old black woman greeted, and stopped to talk to me. Her name was Rose, and she told me about when she arrived here thirty years before, and how it had been difficult to her at that time making friends in a white neighborhood. She stayed there standing for an hour talking to me, a white person, giving me some tips, and stopping people who were passing around, just to introduce me to them. I was a lucky guy.

Never before in my life had I lived abroad, so far away from home. Now I’am forty years old, I found myself living in a small little town in a foreign country. Sometimes, I still feel as if it were a dream: I quit my job, I left my house, and most important, I left my family and friends to start a new life in a different land.
I used to live in abig city, drive for two hours a day from home to work, stuck in the traffic, and work around eighty hours a week; that was the price of living in an expensive big city. I made good money; I cannot deny, but I was tired of that life. I wanted to experience something different.

Now here I am, living in a little town, biking, walking, taking the bus with my backpack, and knowing people from everywhere, from distant places. It has been a great opportunity to get to know different cultures, different ways of living and thinking, which sometimes it is hard to understand and rationalize about; however, those experiences have opened my mind and enhanced my understanding of cultural differences. It is always rewarding filling out that our lives’ blanks. Everyday is a new chance to do or learn something. Everything. That’s why I’m here: to not despise any possible innings of learning. Learning about people, places, costumes, languages, sounds, tastes. Yes, cultural flavors from distant lands, from intricate minds. I really enjoy talking to people, listening to their stories. Learning from them. It can be surprising and wonderful to have those experiences, and I think everybody should try it at least once in his or her life; then, the world might be a better place to live, with less prejudice and bigotry, broadening the people’s minds.

by E. De Maria

Can we learn to laugh in another language?

While having my morning breakfast today, I was thinking of something: building on my previous post, where I was wondering if we can really understand and adapt to a new culture. I would like to ask why you think some movies are made to be exported and others are made to stay in house. Several times in my life, I noticed that the best movies I saw in a certain country were never exported while many less interesting ones were on foreign markets. What factors determine if a film is exported or not? Are they the ones that have the most stereotypes and ignore much deeper and mind-blowing cultural issues (these are the most interesting films, in my opinion)? Yes, I guess.

For example, I was thinking about the movie by John Turturro, Passione. To my knowledge it was not super successful abroad. No doubt, on the other hand, that a movie like Gomorra, about the mafia, sells better. What would an American, Asian, African, Australian, Indonesian, etc..etc.. person "see" in the movie Passione? Would they be able to appreciate it? Movies meant to be exported are often a "simplified" version of local cultures, but why so? Why keep limiting ourselves to stereotypes? Why not export the sincere, incomprehensible movies and slowly let foreigners adapt to them? Is that too complicated? Is that related to our obsession with simplifying everything in order not to deal with complexity?

When living in another country, I always get informed about the local comedians. I want to understand why people laugh with them and, if I don't find them funny, I want some local friends to explain to me why I am supposed to laugh at that particular moment! Someone could argue that you cannot learn culture-based humor, but I would try to challenge that argument. Because I did learn to laugh when French people laughed!

After spending some time living in France, I began hearing people talk about the Bronzés series, I tried to watch that movies and I found them totally uninteresting. But then I thought: I have to understand why everybody in the room is laughing but me. I told a friend and he suggested we watch the movie together, then something super fun happened. In the beginning he was "explaining" to me when to laugh and "why" and I mostly laughed because he was laughing. But then, as the movie went on, I started to laugh "with" him and not "because of" him. I felt great inside: Yes! I had managed to change my culture-based conditioning and get into a new one.

It was only after being able to understand and feel why those movies made people laugh that, in the end, I could decide by myself that that kind of movie was not my favourite one and that that kind of humor was not what cracks me up; but this time it was not because of the cultural barrier, it was just because of my personal taste! I could overcome cultural barriers and start from the same base of a real French person.

On the same token, I did experiments in other countries and with dramatic movies. If I find a movie from another country boring, I always wonder if it's because of my personal taste or because I didn't "get" it. This process is fascinating and this approach brought me to really broaden my mind. Perhaps, relating to my previous post, Competence or awareness, I would say that the simple fact of traveling around the world and living in another country without wondering "why" people like this and that, "why" they laugh for this and that, etc... etc.. diminshes our chances to step out of our cultural conditioning and step in a different one.

E.

Negotiation of identity?

How do we negotiate our identity, or identities, when learning and speaking another language?

Is identity fixed or does it develop and change in a process of continuous negotiation?

How do we perceive ourselves when dealing with different worlds? And how do these worlds perceive us?

Is it necessary to negotiate our identity in order to learn another language, or rather to really “feel” it, instead of simply putting the new words together in shallow sentences? Are we ready to accommodate our identity?

Is the classroom a place where it is possible to reach the stage of negotiation of identity with the new culture and language or not?

Which kind of activities may we suggest to learners, in order to encourage them reflecting on the process of negotiation taking place within themselves? And what if they are not willing to negotiate?

I believe that being ready to negotiate ourselves is very enriching and makes us glimpse new perspectives in life, broaden our perceptions and multiply our viewpoints. Negotiation of identities is not only related to culture and the way we deal with it. It is related to language itself. How do we perceive ourselves when speaking a different language? Our voice changes, and so does the way we shape our thoughts.

As concerns myself and my experience with foreign languages, when I look back, I deeply realize what negotiation of identity means and I clearly see the opportunity to entering several individualities. I perceive myself differently when speaking another language, and I am not talking about an artificial Paola, it is rather another aspect of me, which I, myself, discovered through the contact with the new language and culture. Besides, my life experiences in other countries of which I could speak the language made me widen my perspective and consider my “culture” from several points of view.

I believe that negotiation of identity and the openness to it have a strong link with motivation towards the language in object, especially on an emotional plan. I notice that I can speak the same foreign language well and smoothly in some occasions or periods of my life and then be almost unable to utter a correct sentence in others.

When I happen to wonder about how my life would have been and how I would have seen the world around me, and even myself, if I hadn’t studied Arabic, I am sure it would have been very different from now. Speaking Arabic and living in some Arab countries made me a different person. The process was not easy and smooth. I had several moments of “crisis” and rejection. It was a very deep process which I do not think can happen in a classroom.

Besides, I noticed different “levels” in my learning process: from studying the classical language at university to being able to really speak the daily language and communicating with people. Only the latter gave me the exciting feeling that I was a fluent Arabic speaker. Before that, every time I tried to express myself, in Arabic the person would answer in another language, such as English or French.

With regard to my experience with English, I believe that it is significant to highlight the importance of motivation and emotions in language learning. I studied English for a short while when I was a child and I really enjoyed it because I liked the idea of speaking another language. When I went to middle school, I decided to study French since I wanted to learn a new language.

Later on, at university, where my major was Arabic, I decided to study English as well, but this time my decision was dictated by the awareness of the necessity of speaking English because of its “power” and presence all around the world. Therefore, I started not to like it and I was not able to speak English until I lived and worked in Cardiff for six months. Words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth before that. Then, since my six months in Cardiff were very interesting and enjoyable and I found people very welcoming and open, I started to enjoy the contact with English language and its sound. On the contrary, since I am in London my level of English worsened, both because of the lack of opportunities to speak it (especially with native speakers) and of my perception of London as a not very welcomingcity.

by P. Casola (Italian and Arabic teacher)

A conversation with Chinese and American students

On the wake of my previous post, I would like to share with you a video. Here it is.

It's really interesting, 'cause American and Chinese people talk openly about how they see each other. Some barriers seam possible to overcome, others less.

I constantly question myself asking: Are there cultural aspects you can accept and overcome and others you just can't?

In this video, they talk about PATIENCE, it is a good point indeed.

What about kidding? Is it possible to understand another culture's irony? Will you be able to laugh genuinely after some years living in another country? Is it possible to be able to have fun in a new way? After all, even laughing and having fun are culturally based concepts.

In Italy, we have a saying that goes: Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi. It basically means you should marry someone from your own country. ;-) I don't think I agree but my point is: To what extent can we actually overcome cultural differences? Can we do that in all contexts?

E.

Are stereotypes real?

Stereotypes: Where do they come from? Are they really real?

I started thinking about the nature of stereotypes when I moved from Italy to France. That’s when I had my first baptism about how my people are perceived abroad.

The Italian guy is macho. Women usually stay at home and obey. We live with our mothers until more than 30 years old. We keep loving our mothers even after we leave. We are not very serious and reliable. All men use hairgel and court all women. We are never on time. We like la dolce vita. We use gestures a lot. We speak too loudly. Men often cheat on their partner.

For the first time, I saw an image of myself and my people that I had never seen before.  But that image didn’t really mirror my experiences as an Italian. All the boyfriends I had had before moving to France were Italian, faithful, respectful and never asked me to stay at home and wash dishes, on the contrary they were usually the ones who cooked and cleared the table. I was 24 and I had moved abroad alone. I was always on time and I never liked the movie La dolce vita, even if I watched it several times trying to like it. I used gestures a lot but I spoke very lowly. Oh! I forgot something: My boyfriends had never used hairgel! I was puzzled.

I started trying to understand where all these myths came from and I realized that many of them came from cinema, all those French people had watched all the movies with Sofia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio de Sica, ecc…ecc…  but none of the real people I knew and had been hanging out with corresponded to that image. (To what extent is cinema inspired by real life and to what extent is it based only on a few characteristics and behaviors of the country of origin, extrapolated from a much deeper and much more complicated reality?) 

Later on, when I went to the US, I received a different feedback: Americans saw Italy as a Garden of Eden where everybody wears Prada bags and beautiful shoes, where plants grow lushly and people don’t need to work to eat, because food grows on trees. Mothers cook very well and women are beautiful. Life is dolce and the Vespa is the most wonderful bike ever created. We play beautifully the mandolin, cars are sublime and architecture brilliant. 
They were stressing completely different things. As for me I had never had a Prada bag, I liked beautiful shoes and being well dressed and I knew for sure that food doesn’t grow on trees in Italy, unfortunately.

At this point, I would love to check the opinion of South-American, Asian, African and Australian people about Italy and the Italians. It might be something else again. 

My point is that stereotypes are real and unreal at the same time. They actually stem from some real aspects of a culture but then they are rearranged according to the values of the foreign culture that created them. Everyone spots a part of the whole and interprets it according to their own values. That’s also why some foreign movies are successful in some countries and not in others, because the perception of what they talk about will necessarily be mediated by the target audience’s culture.  


How can we deal with stereotypes ? I suggest to float among them without fumbling about, backing them up sometimes and distancing ourselves from them at other times, 'cause they might be real for certain geographical areas, social classes, religious groups and levels of education but not for others. Maybe Prada bags and the elegant shoes the Americans were talking about are easier to spot in the rich Florence, Milan and Venice, whereas most Italians have surely never seen nor desired them. Social conditions and geographical locations can no doubt contribute to stereotypes. 


So: Does spaghetti really grow on trees? Yes, but only in Ticino and Po Valley. Have a look here. 

  
E.

Brazilians as Latinos (!)

Coming to the US taught me a lesson about my identity. I had always seen myself as being "very Brazilian": I love Carnival, I can dance samba quite well, I drink coffee like crazy. However, being Latin-American was a totally alien idea to me. I never thought of the things Brazil and Bolivia, for example, had in common. Living here made me understand that Brazilians have a lot more in common with "Latinos" than I thought we had.

That perception came through American eyes, who referred to Brazil as "South America", a term that at first upset me. "Why South America?", I thought. "We don't even speak the same language." A year later, I got to know that yes, Americans are right. I am South American, I am Latina, and I love it!

What we call Pão de Queijo (Cheese Bread) in Brazil, Bolivians call Cuñapes. Carnival is very popular all over Latin America. Brazilian soap operas are watched and adored in Colombia, El Salvador, Peru... We do share so many characteristics.

I feel lucky for having learned that. People in Brazil have no idea of how South American, how Latino we are; neither do they think this is a positive thing, I suppose. I guess they would have to understand all the issues about ethnicity always being discussed in the US in order to make sense of what I am saying.

Most Brazilians would be shocked to see that, here, Brazilians are not considered "white people". Here, being white does not only mean having light skin. It means being part of a historically priviledged ancestry, and we Brazilians are not a part of this group. While this would certainly upset some people in my country, it has been a very liberating experience for me.

Now, every time I have to declare my race/ethnicity ( something I had never had to do in Brazil), I am no longer in doubt: I just check the Hispanic/Latino box (even though I do not speak Spanish) and think of all the possibilities this new identity has brought me.   

                                                                                                                   F.

Competence or awareness?

Darla Deardorff wrote a book about Intercultural Competence. But what do you think of this expression?

I personally like it, but I loved it when a colleague of mine from China said she perceived it as arrogant. She asserted that in her home country such a concept would not be understood. Competence? Why do we need to talk about competence? Is that something that someone has and someone else doesn't? In my opinion: yes, but I wouldn't say that this competence is given by only traveling and living abroad.

I often happened to think about this: traveling and living abroad in itself does not give you any competence, you can live abroad but stick to your habits, beliefs, behaviours and not open up to the diversity of the world. Or you can never leave your home town and be the most generous, sharing, helpful and sympathetic person who makes no difference between human beings from different cultures. I know a few people like these both.

So... is competence the right word? How can you acquire such a 'thing'?

It's sure that, for me, everything started when I first visited a non-European country. I felt really lost and shaken up as for my personal and cultural identity and that helped me a lot understanding that not everybody in the world thinks and feels as I was taught to think and feel. But is that a competence that someone can teach us? Can we learn that at school? Maybe we can. Maybe history, foreign languages, literature, geography could be taught in a perspective so to slowly broaden our horizons and perceptions. In that case, people who are not led by their own life experiences to reach that comprehension and awareness, could be helped by forward-looking professors and teachers to bridge that gap. Nevertheless, neither teachers nor professors can teach us something we are not ready to accept. 

Intercultural Competence would be that ability to not judge cultural behaviours and not to look at them as if they were weird, bad or inadmissible. They are just culture-based. Nothing is universal. Everything is cultural. Not even the way we raise up our children, teaching them what politeness is, is universal. So, of course traveling and living abroad can help a lot, but not always, not for everyone.

Sometimes a good teacher can help. Sometimes our own sensitivity will do it all.

So, since that is not something you learn, cause you need to have a correspondence within you, wouldn't it be better to call it awareness or even openness?

E.

Happy new mess

Theories are great. Human beings try to understand themselves and the world around them using categories to make this possible. Statistics, hypotheses, ideas. This is just fine. But can we be flexible and free enough to step in and out of these categories?

I was thinking about this, when I came across Bourdieu’s interview by Laure Adler. He was telling the journalist about a card he had previously received from a friend, saying: ‘Happy new mess’ (in French Joyeux Bordel instead of Joyeux Noël = Merry Christmas). I more and more back this vision of the world where everything is complicated but not incomprehensible, where we can be in the dark without fumbling about.

Although nowadays everything is massive and global, some room should be left for the individual dimension: At the end of the day, the world is made of people and every single person is much more than a theory, fortunately or unfortunately. I very much liked Peggy McIntosh’s approach in her paper published in the book Educating citizen for global awareness, where she identifies four phases in building global awareness. Phase I means womanless and all white. Phase II admits ‘exceptional others’. Phase III is about coming to see and to understand local and global issues of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and so on. It observes power systems and brings in issues of justice and care. But Phase III can be polarized and get arrested in victim studies. Then comes Phase IV, the phase of plural stories, plural experiences, everyone’s experience, anywhere in the world. In Phase IV everyone is a knower, everyone’s daily life is history, politics, literature, drama, economics, psychology and ecology. Within Phase IV, binary thinking is seen as too simple. These four first interactive phases point toward an eventual Phase V: a version in which the world of knowledge is redefined and reconstructed to include us all. The author considers it will take 100 to 200 years to conceive Phase V depending on which decisions we will make in the coming years. I believe we could actively be part of the building of this phase. We could teach our children and students not to be scared of ‘mess’ but rather to accept it and feel comfortable with it. Living with doubt, confusion and a ‘more disturbing’ (pluralistic, multinary) vision of things could be part of our approach to life and teaching. Art can help us with this. 

After all, it is just a matter of habit. We tend to be willing to control everything forgetting that this control-mania narrows our horizons and prevents us from ‘including’. ‘Excluding’ is indeed a form of rejection, of any kind, and rejection comes from fear. The same fear that keeps us away from “mess”. We just cannot bear the ‘non-understanding’ phase. We do not have enough space for it. A constant stepping back and moving forward, as a camera in a shooting, is needed in order to see the details without missing the overall view. Perhaps, we could teach our children and students to dig into stories with no fear, as well as to step back for a moment, every now and then, in order to grasp the global picture. As we could teach them not to be scared of the truth but, on the contrary, to actively look for it. As Bourdieu said: “People consider sociology as a sad subject matter, but I don’t agree with that. On the contrary, I think it is a ‘happy knowledge’ because it is the only one allowing us to get free of determinism”.   

All the above might call for a new and more inclusive concept of identity that I will call “transidentity”, which could go with a new wanted “transdisciplinarity”. Of course “identifying” comes from comparing with what is different, with the other, the alterity (if there was not diversity we would not even know who we are), but once we have experienced this difference and therefore become more conscious about ourselves, we can then access a broader understanding and challenge our sets.

Alterity can, for that matter, also be experienced within our own culture, when we find ourselves not being comfortable with the conformed “majority”. Majority and minority can indeed be relative concepts. We can easily find ourselves passing from a ‘majority condition’ to a ‘minority condition’.

Are we able to accept relativity? Can we deal with confusion? Can we live with mess? Can we include what is different?

I have often thought about the concept of community. In some countries and regions, the surrounding community is there to replace a lacking state and to help people in case of need. This is, in my opinion, a very positive thing but can this ‘community’ stretch enough to receive people from other countries/regions who experience the same social and economic condition and are just in the same need? Can a broader sense of “community” arise? Should the criteria of admission in this community be based on needs and not on ethnical origins? In this regards, I would like to mention a remarkable suggestion that Nel Noddings makes in her book, above mentioned, to replace the concept of ‘rights’ with the concept of ‘needs’, and to focus more on human beings and not that much on citizens.

All this is only possible if we develop more empathy. How could we make this happen? Should we introduce philosophy and ethics as mandatory subject matters in business, communication and administration schools? I have always thought that some economists, managers, politicians are able to make the decisions they make just because they have never seen hunger with their own eyes; they have never experienced directly discrimination, exclusion, injustice. Decisions are easier to make in an elegant office of a lavish building in a luxury street of a rich city. And television does not help at all with that because you just have to press a button and all those plagues become unreal. As if they never existed.

Should we strongly wish that mankind was attacked by a virus from inner space called empathy?  

E.

The reverse culture shock

There is the culture shock. And then there is the reverse culture shock. The latter is when you come back home after many years abroad and you feel like a foreigner in your home country or home town. This can be very common and I would love other people to share their experience with all of us.

It happened to me in many ways, from the very beginning when I started to travel at age 18. I went to Morocco and when I came back I felt like I wasn't the same person as before. But when I was home and people just asked me how my trip was I realized they couldn't really understand what I had experienced, perhaps they just wanted to hear a few words whereas for me an entire book wouldn't be enough to explain why I felt like I had changed so much.

It's just something... you cannot really share. Maybe that was the first time I really felt alone at home. There are the ones who leave and the ones who stay.

It continued like that after every trip I had but even more after living abroad for 8 years. That's where I started liking the German expression Die Wanderung, which is the state of wandering around without belonging anywhere. That can be dreadful. I couldn't squeeze myself enough to fit in my home town, I had seen too many things, talked to too many people, felt the world and experienced its huge diversity, how could I ever be able to share that with my people? Because, human beings feel compelled to share, right? And when they can't... well, it's painful.

Two years ago, the reverse cultural shock was the reason why I left again for another two years abroad. I couldn't bear it. And now that I've decided to come back I still feel vulnerable, like I missed many things of the local history, I'm missing some references and 8 years of my daily life are completely unknown to everybody here. I could have been kidnapped by aliens and come back, that would be the same. It's like a hole of 8 years.

And yet, I cannot say I'm not grateful for the wonderful experiences I had, I'm just striving for a brand new way to creatively find my way in this new globalized world, where more and more of us have, are having and will have this kind of experience.

Global or local? Wise or delirious?

E

Culture, Personality and Learning English

Another wonderful article sent by one of our followers:

I have been teaching English as a foreign language on the Internet for three years now.  It’s work that I love.  I get to travel the planet while sitting at my desk (sometimes in my pajamas!).  I talk with Brazilian engineers, Chinese doctors, Spanish civil servants, French job-seekers, Japanese medical representatives, Egyptian expatriates, and Mexican students, among others.  As I try to de-mystify the English language for my students, I get to hear first-hand what is going on in our small world.  The Present simple: “How is the weather today?”  and “What do you usually eat for lunch/for dinner?”  The Perfect tenses: “How has the family changed in the last 20 years?” and “Have you been personally affected by the tsunami/the revolution/the crisis?”  As a very curious city girl from the USA, now living in a small French town, I can’t think of any other job which could spare me from the collateral damage that inevitably comes with the culture shock.

In fits and starts, one faux pas at a time, I have figured out how to navigate my way in my new country.  Nothing can heighten cultural sensitivity in a curious city girl from the USA like being married into a French family which has lived in the same town for seven generations.  No hugging.  No enthusiastic waving of the hand.   Bread placed on the table, not on your dinner plate.  Hanging out with the locals, who refer to me at times with derision and at other times with pride, as l’américaine, I can really see how American I am and always will be. 

I’ve always shied away from stereotypes and generalizations, preferring instead to greet each individual as just that – an individual.  Someone it is only possible to know over time and through experience.  Yet, my own daily Franco-American experience seems to insist upon the validity of certain national characteristics.  And my daily experience as a teacher of various nationalities seems to confirm this validity.  After all, even as we each have our own remarkably unique personalities, we are all in some way or another, the product of the remarkably unique social and cultural environment in which we have been steeped.   

As if in confirmation of the link between culture and personality, I began to notice that my students interacted with me and approached their on-line lessons in nationality-specific ways. 

 How to explain the meticulous Japanese who always go above and beyond the call of duty?  Why read only one chapter when you can read the entire book, write a synopsis, and create a PowerPoint presentation?  What about all the Chinese who are hard-working students and brimming with undying love for English and English speakers?  The Brazilians who, almost without fail, treat their lessons like verbal physical training programs.  Ready.  Set.  Go!  Even the beginners speak during the entire class without stopping 40, 60, 120 minutes or more minutes.  Then there are all the Italian male students who can’t help but flirt with their teacher.  The Germans who insist that they must improve their English, but who actually speak and write better than the average American (okay, not a fair comparison).  And the Koreans who don’t know that it is possible to have fun in life, let alone while learning English?  Then there are the French who know that it is possible to have fun in life, but who haven’t made that link with learning English.  The French come to English class like most people come to the dentist: flinching, their mouths reluctantly open, but no sound coming out.

Curious girl that I am, I wonder if any other teachers have noticed any such generalizations among their students.  Surely, if student behavior can be categorized according to nationality, surely teachers must exhibit certain predictable characteristics according to the passport they carry.

What are your observations?

M.A. Chester

Limbo or mambo?

The condition F. talked about in a previous post is what my Brazilian friend calls the limbo. One day, he told me something I have not forgotten ever since: Once you leave your own country, you will always live in a limbo and never completely come back: if you stay abroad you'll miss what you have
left at home and if you go back home you'll miss what you have left in the new country.


How are we going to deal with the limbo? Can we make it more pleasant? Or could we just accept it for what it is and learn to deal with that?

Would it be better to keep the desire of leaving but never do it? Is the limbo condition better than regretting never having left? Is it better to be a happy naïve? I've been wondering  about these things for ages.

That's why in my first post I was talking about a nirvana hard to bear...

Should we just dance, dance, dance in order to forget?

What do you think? Send us your comments.


E.

The entire world in my hometown

A great news: Today we received our first sharing. Here it is:

When I was a child, I had the desire to travel far. I did not really feel rooted in my hometown, Vienna, Austria and felt like homeless. Perhaps this was because my grandparents where not from there and the family had migrated often. 


I had the vision that the world would come to us and this has actually happened in the meantime. Vienna is a multicultural city now, and I like it much because I can meet people from different countries and cultures. It was not necessary for me to travel much. But sometimes now I think of leaving my homecountry for a place where things would be easier for me to manage. But when I really have to decide my family stands out against it, and at the end of the day, I feel at home here and would feel strange in another country. 


I would be willing to take many things with me if I moved, in order to feel at home also abroad. The Internet gives me the opportunity to meet people from all nations, too, and it`s easy to connect over far distances. 


I would have never believed that one day this would be real.... Margarete

Intercultural Competence

 I have always been fascinated by the term "cultural shock". Every time I thought of it, I imagined a scene of a an Amish woman walking on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, looking at all the women in tiny bikinis. If this really happened, how would the Amish woman feel? What would she think?

So naive of me. I imagined that culture shock happening in extreme situations such as the one described above, but never with me. After a year living abroad, I learned that culture shock is a much more ordinary event, happening every day with us all. And I think it's good.

I can illustrate the phenomenon with a simple anecdote. I was in a class one day, and one of the students brought her three-week-old baby to class. She had a presentation to make, so she asked the professor to hold the baby for her while she spoke. The professor's behavior was what really amazed me.

In my country, women hold babies in a very maternal way, either talking to the baby with that "baby voice" or caressing the baby's head. The professor did nothing of that sort. While holding the baby, she concentrated all her attention to the student's presentation, as she was supposed to. I, on the other hand, could not do what I was supposed to.

I could not believe how serious and professional my professor was. I could not stop staring at her. She was holding a baby, for God's sake! I thought she was cold, terribly cold to that poor little creature who did not ask to be in a university class in a cold morning. Or was I exaggerating?

The question, then, is: what is the problem with having a cultural shock? I know the answer for that. The problem is not the cultural shock; cultural judgment is what is really problematic.

On my way home after that class, I reflected on my behavior. Who was I to keep staring at my professor during a class, judging her because she was not cuddling the baby as if women in my culture do? I learned a good lesson, then: I am going to experience lots of cultural shocks in my journey here, and they are supposed to enrich me, not to make me judge others. 


                                                                                                                    F.   

The perfect country ;-)

After living in 5 different countries and visiting almost 20, I guess I started to dream about an ideal place where I would gather all the things I liked around the world. I would call this new country Kirghisia.

This country would spend much money on research and pay professors and teachers a lot like the US does; but university would be equally accessible and free like in Italy, with no difference between Grande Ecoles (business schools) and Petites Ecoles (universities). The school system would provide support to any student who might have trouble with any kind of subject matters or topics like in Finland, and kindergarten teachers would be given high credit since they deal with the most sensitive time of our lives (again like in Finland).
In this country, natural beauty products, food and medicine would be affordable and easy to find like in France and Germany.
People would wear Italian cloths and drink Italian coffee. They would also eat Korean kimchi, Portuguese bolinhas de bacalhau, Spanish paella, Mexican tacos, Japanese sushi......... People would have a sauna at home every night like in Finland, and get a massage every day after work like in Southeast Asia. Once a year, Rio de Janeiro's Carnival would take place, and in the beginning of June, the Bulgarian Rose Festival would occur. The sea would look like the Greek sea.

Social security would be like in Northern Europe and far from the US health system. Unemployment benefits would be like in France and there would be free bicycles all over the cities so that everyone would be able to get one and then leave it back somewhere after riding. Bicycle lanes would be everywhere like in the Netherlands. Life would be fun and surprising like in Naples and people would be welcoming and peaceful like in Bali. There would be many little grocery stores instead of huge dreadful supermarkets. There would be no one dying from hunger like in Buthan and Cuba.

Architecture would look like the Italian one and parks would follow the English style. Movies wouldn't be translated but only subtitled like in Scandinavia and France.

Tap water would be free like in Canada and you would be able to return everything you bought but didn't like anymore (before using it, of course) like in the US.

Trains would be always on time like in Switzerland and cannabis would be legal like in the Netherlands.

What else? Help remind....

E

PS: This is just a joke I wanted to share with you all. Of course there is no perfect country, but when I live abroad or travel I always have fun trying to imagine which characteristics of the new country I would keep and which I would discard. Generally, I'm not talking about cultural features, but more about political and social policies.   

Dream or reality?

Living abroad is like being in a dream sometimes. I walk along the streets of my new hometown, and it feels like I’m detached from my body. I look around and people look different; they speak another language; they behave in a peculiar way. It feels like my soul is wandering around while I’m sleeping at home back in my country.

Other times, things here are oddly familiar, as if I had been here all my life. I go to the shops and know where to find all the bargains; I have made friends to whom I feel very close; my dogs swim in the river nearby, having the time of their lives.

I feel I have become this transient soul, coming back and forth, never totally at ease either here or back in my country. If I stay, I know I will be missing so many things which I used to take for granted. If I go, I’ll regret never having tried to live this experience of being abroad for a longer period. Having options can be painful sometimes…

The greatest reward, though, is knowing that, no matter where my journey takes me, wonderful people will be there for me.  
F            

Polite or not polite, this is the question

Some days ago, I was chatting on-line with my sister. At one point, I wrote in Italian: Call me now.
She said something like: Can you please be a little kinder?

This conversation could sound normal and common, but to me it was not.

I felt like Vitangelo Moscarda in the wonderful book One, No one and One Hundred Thousand by Pirandello, when he suddenly finds out, as an adult, something he has never known before: his nose is not completely straight! From that moment on, Mr Moscarda discovers that everyone he knows, everyone is has ever met, has constructed a Vitangelo persona in their own imagination and that none of these personas corresponds to the image of Vitangelo that he himself has constructed and believed to be.

In the same way, I was suddenly hit by this wave: What does my sister mean by "rude"? Is she still from Naples or is she becoming British (which would be great anyway, she should just tell me in order for me to adapt to her new cultural way of communication)? In a nanosecond, 10 images passed through my mind. I thought of so many experiences of miscommunication I had had around the world, especially in France.

I also thought of a Spanish friend of mine. We were once chatting on-line and I started three topics at the same time, he called me Neapolitan and he asserted that in Naples we all talk about at least three things at the same time. Fortunately, he knew this, so he immediately perceived that as a cultural thing and not as an offence. But how could my own sister perceive something that is completely normal for us... as an offence? Was I too Neapolitan or had she become too British?

My seven years in France passed before my eyes: Every time I said directly what I thought, it was perceived as an offence. Is it possible to learn not to say what you think? Is it possible to learn to replace Call me with Would you please call me, if you please dear? Is it fair to judge as rude what could possibly be merely behavior that is influenced by culture? And what is politeness, by the way? I strongly believe that POLITENESS is a relative, cultural concept and I could experience that many, many times in my life. Politeness is not universal nor univocal; many answers, ways of answering, things, behaviors, words can be polite somewhere and impolite somewhere else, even within Europe or the Western world. For example, take the concept of politeness: what French people share is not a universally accepted definition of politeness. In France you have to say Bonjour every time you go into a shop and you're supposed to say both merci and au revoir every time you leave, unless you want to be looked at as if you were a weird, bad-mannered animal; whereas in Italy you don't have to do all this and nobody is going to think that you're impolite. Inversely, in France (especially in Paris) it is totally ok to thrust people in the tube's corridors and to knock them down, and to plow into people in the street, whereas in Italy no one plows into you, no one elbows you and people just move out of their ways in order not to knock you down. So, for me being plowed all the time is really impolite, whereas for a Parisian that is completely normal, but not saying Good morning, thank you and goodbye would be inacceptable. Politeness is a relative concept indeed and we could be more aware of that. Does it make sense to organize a World Summit about rudeness and politeness?

Once, just arrived in Milan from Paris, I tried to apply the Paris' way to walk in the tube: just keep going, don't stop and don't change direction for any reasons. I ended up with twenty people yelling at me for how I was IMPOLITE! That made me laugh! It took me SEVEN years to learn to plow and knock people down in the tube in order not to be plowed and knocked down and now I was yelled at! Life is so funny.

Politeness is indeed, as many other concepts, relative and culture-based. Think of something like freedom, how relative can this concept be?

Other examples are welcome! I'm ready to review my own position.

E

Transcultural Interzone

I've probably come to that state of bliss, where you know you have ethnical and geographical origins and that's ok, but you also know that your identity is far bigger than them. It's like a nirvana. Something I wouldn't exchange with anything else.

My personal experience is, as the definition states, personal. But, perhaps, thousands of people in the world can, in today's globalized world, understand what we're talking about in this blog, recognize themselves in our stories and share their stories with us. 

I'm talking about traveling and living abroad, either for a free choice or under constraint, losing your identity and getting it back... only to lose it again. I'm talking about cultural misunderstandings, intercultural mistakes and transcultural miscommunication. But I'm also talking about being able to overcome that "mis" and get to an understanding and a communication.

I'm talking about that zone, that interzone you can find between yourself and others, your native culture and others', each of your new identities and your old ones. I'm talking about that feeling... when you feel lost, with no roots, only until you figure out your roots are the entire world. It's more difficult to bear, it's too much sometimes, it's not always pleasant nor fulfilling, but it's also fascinating, enriching, huge and indefinable. You are now a citizen of the world, all the world is your home, you can't help but feeling everyone else's pain as your own pain and everyone else's joy as your own joy. This feeling is powerful, you feel like you can see bigger, feel stronger, hear louder and smell the fragrance of a thousand flowers at the same time, flowers you didn't even know they existed before.

So we are talking about that Transcultural Interzone where you can find your place, your identity in a plurality of identities, your culture in a plurality of cultures, never forgetting your origins, and your condition in a single condition: the human one.

Beyond all limits, beyond all obstacles, we are human beings. But this nirvana, as every nirvana, is difficult to bear, so we want you to share your experiences with us and to network with us, we are a huge family around the world, we are the family of travelers, expats, dreamers and searchers. We are many and different from each other, but we can also, for a sec', for the time of a post reading, be one.

Follow us, send us your ideas and posts; share with us your experiences and feelings. And we'll do the same with you.

Stay tuned!

E