Jessica Chappell
    section M
    Geoffrey Sauer
    December 6, 1996

    Attributing Cultural Misunderstandings to Inadequate Literacy


    Cultural misunderstandings inhibit people from achieving adequate literacy in secondary languages. As will be exemplified later in the essay, many people are linguistically fluent in a language other than their native, but because they do not fully understand the intercultural differences, they do not possess complete literacy in that language. The prominent differences between any two given cultures usually lie in child-rearing, learning techniques, conversation styles, and social impact. The effects of miscommunication as a result of cultural misunderstandings range from the triteness of name-calling to hostility so violent in nature as to provoke numerous cross-cultural murders. This analysis will hopefully serve as an explanation for the many stereotypes that exist today between cultures, and thus convey the essential understanding not only of a language’s words, but of the different behaviors and ways of thinking that a foreign language may elicit. Clearing up such cultural misunderstandings may merely assist in avoiding awkward situations and giving unintended impressions, or they may go so far as to save lives.

    Perhaps the most commonly known way in which cultural misunderstandings are manifested is through misinterpretations in communication due to ambiguity. Take the word free, for example. Americans often use the word in conjunction with others to form terms such as drug free, conveying the restriction or unavailability of drugs. However, in Japanese culture, people use free to mean they can "do what they want" (Cho 1) . Thus, when an American girl went to school in Japan as an exchange student and asked some Japanese students if the classrooms were smoke free, they responded no because they cannot smoke there (Cho 1). Of course, the American girl understood their negative response as an indication that smoking was permitted in school classrooms. Another cultural mishap occurred when the girl asked for directions to the bath room. While this term indicates both shower room and toilet in America, Japanese refer to it only as a shower room, separate from the toilet, and so they unfortunately led this poor girl to a room where she could procure only cleansing, but no relief (Cho 1). Another young woman from the States experienced an embarrassing moment due to similar mishaps, but this time it took place in England, a country speaking her own native tongue! "I told my host family I needed a belt because my pants were falling down" (Berger). She quickly learned the seemingly higher sophistication of the English spoken in England as opposed to that spoken in the U.S., for in England, people refer to pants as trousers, and they use pants to mean underwear. While this misunderstanding seems simply to stem from a difference in word use rather than in culture, word use is representative of a surface level of culture, whereas American speech is casual, and British is more formalized.

    Because two people may come from disparate cultural backgrounds, one often misinterprets the other’s behavior, and thus negatively judges the person’s temperament (or quite often the entire country’s temperament) based on their mere cultural differences. For example, a woman from Thailand, when presented with a present from an American friend, immediately placed it in her bag after accepting it (Pradittatsanee 1). Some Americans might interpret such behavior as rude or just strange, for in the States it is common, and sometimes even seen as common courtesy, to unwrap the present and then express delight and gratitude all in the presence of the giver. Thais, on the other hand, "rarely express their actual emotions to others. They keep their feelings inside as they unwrap the gift in privacy" (Pradittatsanee 1). Though this temperament may come across to people of other cultures as the Thais’ inability to act straightforward, Varan Pradittatsanee explains that they merely "do not want to make others uncomfortable by expressing their feelings" (1).

    Inadequate comprehension of cultural differences is also reflected in trivial everyday occurrences, such as paying the bill at a restaurant. Carolina Alfonso, a Colombian woman who speaks perfect English, encountered quite an embarrassing situation when paying for her meal at a local diner because she didn’t tip the waitress. "In Columbia we never tip in the restaurants, we only tip in the hair salon" (Alfonso 1). In America, part of growing up and adopting proper social behavior involves learning little conventional actions that seem trite and insignificant until they are absent from a person’s behavior.

    Perhaps the misunderstandings that most obviously inhibit people from achieving adequate literacy in a second language are those that arise in conversation. According to Raymonde Carroll, a French woman fluent in English and highly educated in American culture, in a typical French conversation, a person will speak only briefly before allowing another person to respond or in some way engage in the conversation (Carroll 23). They do not speak at such extensive length as say Americans do without allowing interruptions. "In French, we say that a conversation must be ‘engaged,’ ‘sustained,’ ‘fueled,’ and ‘revived’ if it is ‘dragging,’ ‘rerouted’ if it is ‘dangerous.’ Once we permit a conversation to begin, we owe it to ourselves to keep it from dying, to care for it, to guide it, to nourish it, and to watch over its development as if it were a living creature" (Carroll 24). This explains the American stereotype of the French as rude when they keep interrupting while the American tries to talk with them, and/or they don’t listen to what the American says. He/She probably has exceeded the understood time allotted in French conversation for any given person to speak at once. So while Americans are gasping at the rudeness of the French, the French are yawning at the ennui of Americans’ incessant chatter. "French people often complain that American conversations are ‘boring,’ that Americans respond to the slightest question with a ‘lecture,’ that they ‘go all the way back to Adam and Eve,’ and that they ‘know nothing about the art of conversation" (Carroll 23). Laurence Wylie, a retired Harvard French professor, also makes a commentary on the misunderstandings that arise from varied cross-cultural perceptions of conversation. He claims the French "have a habit of taking turns in conversation in a different way [from Americans]. When the other person wants to talk, he knows how the sentence is going to end and comes in before the beat. This gives an overlapping effect.... And the French have a maddening habit of breaking into dialogues" (Wylie 41).

    However, communication barriers between the two cultures do not end there. While in America (excluding extremes such as New York), it isn’t rare to see two persons who happen to exchange glances with each other while passing on the street smile, nod, or even say hello to the stranger, without further communication (Carroll 30). In France, on the other hand, such behavior would usually be perceived as flirtatious or merely suspicious and out of place (30). Likewise, in public places such as a supermarket, French people wouldn’t dare just strike up conversation with whomever happens to be waiting in line with them, as some Americans often do. Such behavior the French would deem rude and invasive (31), while the American sees it merely as polite or the attempt to avoid anti-social behavior. According to Carroll, Americans are much more inclined to engage in "weather" type conversation with strangers than are French because they don’t place an underlying representation under conversations, whereas in France conversation commits one to another person, as it reflects the nature of the relationship between the two. Conversation is, in Carroll’s words, "one of the ways at my disposal to make the distinction between those with whom I have, affirm, confirm, or want to create ties, and all the others whose social importance in my life I deny by this refusal" (32). The question then arises, how can one possibly claim to be literate in a language if one does not possess the ability to verbally communicate effectively with natives of the language?

    The frustration from the inability to communicate effectively with the French doesn’t arise solely from differences in conversation styles. Parenting styles also produce great dissonance between the two cultures. Scrutiny through the eyes of an American might interpret the French as absurdly strict and authoritative, condemning the severely limited freedoms and the common public reproach of their children (Carroll 44-45). Conversely, a French person may perceive the boundless freedoms and lack of scolding and discipline Americans give to their children as a sign of Americans’ lack of control over their seemingly bratty and spoiled children who "have no manners" (41).

    These cultural misunderstandings lead to what modern psychologists refer to as the actor-observer discrepancy, where an outside person observing someone performing an action attributes the behavior solely or mainly to the person’s character (internal causes), while ignoring the situational circumstances (external causes) that may very well be responsible for this person’s behavior (Gray 498-499). (In contrast, this same observer is more likely to attribute his own behavior to circumstance rather than personality.) Though Americans attribute the strict and harsh relationship the French have with their children towards the general coldness, insensitivity, and arrogance of the French (Carroll 44), the French themselves see their behavior towards their children as mere compliance with society’s expectations for proper children who have respect for their elders and know how to behave. As verbalized by the French parent Raymonde Carroll, the French see their role as parents to "transform this ‘malleable, innocent, impressionable, and irresponsible’ creature into a social being, a responsible member of the society, which is prepared to integrate him or her in exchange for a pledge of allegiance. This means that on becoming a parent, it is first and foremost to the society that I incur an obligation, a debt, rather than to my child, who comes second" (Carroll 47). Wylie likewise asserts the responsibility French parents possess to mold the child into a socially-acceptable adult (57), claiming that since " ‘the infant is believed at birth to incline toward misbehavior, to cry capriciously, to demand feedings irregularly and unreasonably,’ a child must learn from authority.... A child’s personality should not develop spontaneously," but should be guided and shaped by the parent (Wylie 56). While this may be the emphasis in France, Carroll and Wylie both convey the striking difference in American families "where the emphasis is on independence training, getting the child to do things by himself, getting him out" (Wylie 56).

    Wylie analyzes the differences, as a result of discord in what education systems should emphasize, in the ways children of dissimilar cultures learn. The French inculcate children to "see unity in the variety.... The French way of learning the physical environment is establishing all kinds of differences and emphasizing them. In the French textbooks, every unit of the physical environment is different from every other unit. The American emphasis is on abolishing differences and trying to create the sense that everything belongs together" (Wylie 29). He also accounts for behavioral differences between French and Americans by analyzing the way information is presented to them as children. "In French geography books, the chapters all have nouns as titles" (30). In a typical American social studies book, on the other hand, "the chapters usually have participles indicating some kind of action: growing rice, mining coal, etc.," thus giving the children a sense of how people make a living in a given area, an attempt by the education system to inadvertently get the children to empathize with different types of people (Wylie 30). "There is none of this in French text books" (30). Perhaps this absence of empathy from French education explains, as Wylie refers to it, the "typical" French person’s inability to empathize with people outside their social circle (cercles), and thus their general dislike of or indifference towards anyone not in their circle (35). On a broader scale, cultural misunderstandings occur between the two also because of the varied degrees of social mobility within classes, or as with the French, circles (35). According to Wylie, changing easily between circles is impossible because of the feeling the French in general possess that "one cannot evolve, that one is chained to the past, that, in order to change, one must destroy the past. This, I think, is very different from the American point of view"(35).

    According to an interview with a young Greek man from Switzerland, the most prominent difference between Americans and Europeans is the plethora of superficiality that serves as an active ingredient in most Americans’ lives (Iossifidis). Of course, since he is of a culture that, as Carroll and Wylie attest, doesn’t place nearly as much importance on attaining early financial independence from parents as does American culture, perhaps his perception of American superficiality (obsession with the dollar) is merely a cultural misunderstanding stemming from his imperfect English literacy, inadequate because it does not entail full comprehension of the culture. Another example of this inadequacy can be seen in a French professor who, though perfectly fluent linguistically in French, does not fully understand the culture, and thus fails to achieve complete literacy in the language. For example, though she speaks French flawlessly, certain aspects of communication she cannot partake in, such as joke-telling in French. "Jokes I find hilarious I tell to my French friends, expecting an enormous reaction of laughter, but instead receive not even a smile but rather looks of confusion or indifference" (Mclain). Clearly, the ability to communicate effectively (a salient part of literacy) in a language other than one’s primary cannot be solely based upon reading, writing, and speaking. Society cannot confine its definition of literacy merely to these abilities. It must take into account the ability to understand the way of living, thinking, and behaving that is unique to the culture in which the particular language is spoken.

    The effects of cultural misunderstandings extend beyond frustration with failure to communicate an idea or annoyance with misinterpreted conversation, however. Misperceptions and cultural misunderstandings serve to divide in violence Koreans and African Americans in the United States. According to Chris Herlinger, author of the article "Culture Clash," many Negroes in Southern California are "accustomed to intimacy and informality in their personal relationships," while in Korean society, "direct eye contact is considered impolite" (Herlinger 17). This respectable difference ignites in these Southern Californian Negroes the perception that the Koreans who monopolize the convenient store industry are extremely rude, while going so far as to interpret the Korean grocers’ reserved manner as a "sign of hostility and racial prejudice" (Herlinger 17). Further tension is created between the two groups because in Korean culture, grocers refuse to deviate from their set prices, while the culture of black customers born in the Caribbean allows the common practice of "haggling over prices" (17). As a result of these misunderstandings, numerous killings have occurred between Korean merchant and Negro customer in Southern California. Boycotts, riots, and murders are the mere effects of "culture clash"(16). Because Koreans "don’t know the culture of [the U.S.]" (17), clearly their mere ability to speak English does not suffice in possessing adequate English literacy, for miscommunication still exists in abundance between the two races, and the death records surely serve as sufficient proof of this.

    So how must the nation go about procuring more adequate literacy in secondary languages? Laurence Wylie proposes doing this through a more comprehensive and proficient teaching of foreign language in American schools (Wylie 3). He discusses the insufficient curriculum on which many French classes in America base their instruction, and asserts the need for integrating French culture into the curriculum in hope of not only teaching children how to read, write, and speak the language, but also giving them a thorough understanding of French behavior and way of living (Wylie 4). However, not every human being receives a foreign language education, and often the vicious stereotypes that many hold of other cultures are ingrained in their heads at an age long before they have the opportunity to secure knowledge and truthful understanding of that culture. In effect, even adequate inculcation of foreign culture may not obliterate the preconceived negative attitudes people have towards a nationality. America must take it one step at a time, however, and installation of a more inclusive and comprehensive cultural education into the school systems may prove the only practical hope in at least beginning to efface the stereotypes used to identify foreign societies. Cross-cultural dissonance can lead to violent effects (as exemplified by the clash between Koreans and Negroes in California), or it may go no farther than to breed universal ignorance. However, regardless of the apparent severity of international cacophony, the mere fact that we live in a world festering in misunderstandings of our fellow man should serve as motive enough to begin tending the wound. As the Proverb goes, Ignorance breeds fear, and fear breeds hatred. America must start educating its people not only in reading and writing a language, but in understanding foreign cultures and temperaments, lest the nation become overwhelmed by hatred of countries and human beings it has been hypnotically programmed to despise.




    Works Cited