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.