Amen, Phillip.
I have wanted to respond to your postings since you started showing up in
my incoming-list, but was caught up in the catching up whirl. I agreed with
so much of what you wrote, and then there would come one or two points that
I wanted to disagree with, in a thoughtful way... and while I was thinking
the mailstream moved on.
Your "simple test" is just SO striking for me. And as one of the speakers
of another first language, inhabiting an academic system and everyday
surroundings shaped in THAT language... I also know how hard it is to
pick-and-choose among the available English terms when it is also a
differently organized system. Hah! this is the dusha/mind problem in a much
more bureaucratic context!!
Some years ago I used to share an office with another grad student, a
British woman whose husband was a professor at the Uni of Tech here. She
spoke Swedish fluently and even ventured to write in this exotic lingo, but
her husband lived mostly in the English tongue. I was, on some occasions,
quite fascinated to hear them discussing matters of Göteborg Academia: in
English, with cameos of Swedish, for all the specific positions and
procedures in our system!
cheers
Eva
At 08.18 +0000 0-03-03, Phillip Capper scrobe:
>My use of the label 'American' has two sources:
>
>1. I really do believe that the sorts of discussions that have taken
>place here obver the past few weeks are more likely to have occurred
>in a community whose majority is American than in other communities.
>Note that I myself have been careful to note exception in my posts.
>
>2. In my experience one of the things which most Americans find most
>difficult to appreciate is how much their culture continuously pokes
>the chests of other cultures, and how little other cultures register
>with them.
>
>A simple test. If I write Coca-Cola, fifth amendment, Ally McBeal,
>Republican primaries, associate professor, LAX and ask you to tell me
>what those mean and what images they invoke, I would guess that most
>readers, wherever they live, would have a response to most of them.
>
>If I write Lemon&Paeroa, self-incrimination laws, Lynn of Tawa,
>Labour Party selection meetings, senior lecturer, AKL and ask the
>same question there may be half a dozen people on this list for whom
>any one of those terms have meaning. Yet they represent an NZ list of
>terms directly
>analogous to the first one.
>
>There is absolutely no experience I can offer an American in order
>that s/he can deep down understand how most of us experience
>American culture. Some Americans respond to suggestions such as this by
>becoming despairing and by talking about 'Ugly Americans'. But I do
>not personally think that that is an appropriate response. There is
>no element of judgement or contempt in my statement. It says nothing
>about the intelligence, sensitivity, warmth, or general character of
>Americans individually or collectively. It is simply
>the way it is, and it needs to be factored into any analysis of
>discourse within communities which contain both Americans and
>non-Americans.
>Phillip Capper
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