Cultural stumbling blocks

Excerpt

Culture affects behaviour and interpretations of behaviour (Pdf)

Hofstede (1991:8) makes the important point that although certain aspects of culture are physically visible, their meaning is invisible: ‘their cultural meaning ... lies precisely and only in the way these practices are interpreted by the insiders.’ For example, a gesture such as the ‘ring gesture’ (thumb and forefinger touching) may be interpreted as conveying agreement, approval or acceptance in the USA, the UK and Canada, but as an insult or obscene gesture in several Mediterranean countries. Similarly, choice of clothing can be interpreted differently by different groups of people, in terms of indications of wealth, ostentation, appropriateness, and so on.
The following examples illustrate this:

Example One

I observed the following event at a kindergarten classroom on the Navajo reservation:

A Navajo man opened the door to the classroom and stood silently, looking at the floor. The Anglo-American teacher said ‘Good morning’ and waited expectantly, but the man did not respond. The teacher then said ‘My name is Mrs Jones,’ and again waited for a response. There was none.

 In the meantime, a child in the room put away his crayons and got his coat from the rack. The teacher, noting this, said to the man, ‘Oh, are you taking Billy now?’ He said, ‘Yes.’

 The teacher continued to talk to the man while Billy got ready to leave, saying, ‘Billy is such a good boy,’ ‘I’m so happy to have him in class,’ etc. Billy walked towards the man (his father), stopping to turn around and wave at the teacher on his way out and saying, ‘Bye-bye.’ The teacher responded, ‘Bye-bye.’ The man remained silent as he left.

From a Navajo perspective, the man’s silence was appropriate and respectful. The teacher, on the other hand, expected not only to have the man return her greeting, but to have him identify himself and state his reason for being there. Although such an expectation is quite reasonable and appropriate from an Anglo-American perspective, it would have required the man to break not only Navajo rules of politeness but also a traditional religious taboo that prohibits individuals from saying their own name. The teacher interpreted the contextual cues correctly in answer to her own question (‘Are you taking Billy?’ and then engaged in small talk. 

The man continued to maintain appropriate silence. Billy, who was more acculturated than his father to Anglo-American ways, broke the Navajo rule to follow the Anglo-American one in leave-taking. This encounter undoubtedly reinforced the teacher’s stereotype that Navajos are ‘impolite’ and ‘unresponsive’, and the man’s stereotype that Anglo-Americans are ‘impolite’ and ‘talk too much.’

Saville-Troike 1997: 138–9
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Example Two

The first time I saw coconut-skating I was so sure it was a joke that I laughed out loud. The scowl that came back was enough to tell me that I had completely misunderstood the situation. In the Philippines a maid tends to be all business, especially when working for Americans. But there she was, barefooted as usual, with half of a coconut shell under each broad foot, systematically skating around the room. So help me, skating. If this performance wasn’t for my amusement or hers (and her face said it wasn’t), then she had gone out of her head. It wasn’t the first time, nor the last, that my working hypothesis was that a certain local person was at least a part-time lunatic.

I backed out and strolled down the hall, trying to look cool and calm. “Ismelda … Ismelda is skating in the living room,” I said to Mary, who didn’t even look up from the desk where she was typing. “Yes, this is Thursday, isn’t it.” … “She skates only on Thursdays? That’s nice,” I said as I beat an awkward retreat from Mary’s little study room. “Oh, you mean why is she skating – right?” Mary called after me. “Yes, I guess that’s the major question,” I replied.

Mary, who had done part of her prefield orientation training in one of my workshops, decided to give me a dose of my own medicine: “Go out there and watch her skate; then come back and tell me what you see.” And so I did. Her typewriter clicked on, scarcely missing a beat, until I exclaimed from the living room hallway, “I’ve got it!” “Well, good for you; you’re never too old to learn.” Mary’s voice had just enough sarcasm in it to call me up short on how I must sound to others. And while the typing went on I stood there admiring nature’s own polish for hardwood floors, coconut oil, being applied by a very efficient Southeast Asian method.

Ward 1984; cited by Lustig and Koester 1999: 41

Source:
What is Culture? A Compilation of Quotations (Pdf)
Compiled by Helen Spencer-Oatey