Bill Barrowy wrote:
"Disastrous consequences? I think it is rather pretentious when one who
knows so very little about another's situation can draw such dramatic
forecasts concerning it. But its OK, I've worked for the past decade in
Cambridge, and I'm getting used to arrogance. (Well, maybe not) While the
manner of the message delivery can sometimes be grating, there is often
enough some substance to the message per se."
The sentence that I wrote which Bill is reacting to was:
"When somebody uses 'lbe' and 'best practice' in the same sentence
I worry that this is indicative of a cultural misalignment with the
potential for disastrous consequences."
Fowler's 'A Dictionary of Modern English Usage', says that 'I worry that' is
a tentative stem intended to elicit further clarification. However Brian
Garner's 'A Dictionary of Modern American Usage' says that it is a stem used
to indicate that the writer is concerned because he (sic) believes something
is so. My background is English. Could this explain why Bill believes me to
be pretentious and arrogant? What I wanted him to do was what he did -
clarify what he was describing.
Thus is international misunderstanding born. (Unless, of course, the
explanation is that I am, in fact, pretentious and arrogant. But I don't
think that Bill has enough personal evidence to conclude that).
Now that Bill has given more detailed information I have a better
understanding. Down the road from him at the Harvard Business School and the
Sloan School of Management 'best practice' tends to mean 'practice' -
instrumentally what one does, rather than culturally and philosophically how
one approaches the design of what one does. Out here in this particular part
of the world's outer darkness that is not the United States, the term 'best
practice' is inextricably intertwined with managerialist world views and is
generally avoided in fields other than management because it carries those
connotations.
So in my English Usage 'best practice' would not generally be used to
describe the activities which Bill turns out to be describing. Clearly in
Bill's Usage it is OK. So therefore I misunderstood and raised a concern out
of that misunderstanding.
Ironically the fact that I spend a good part of my year working with
Americans in America, or Americans here, means that I am always
hyper-sensitive to the possibility of usage misunderstandings. Thus I
carefully tried to phrase my message to be tentative - and I STILL got
caught out. My American friends and colleagues and I spend many happy hours
(usually at airports) discussing how this happens on either side of the
oceanic divide, and about how important it is to seek clarification when
apparently unpleasant behaviour occurs across cultural boundaries, but
within the English (Spanish, French....) linguistic family.
If it is any consolation I am so pretentious and arrogant about my skills in
this field that I beat myself up for hours whenever I stuff it up (i.e.
screw up).
However I make no apology for repeating a plea I have made before on this
forum. xmca is an international forum with a predominance of Americans.
Americans act in an exclusive manner, and lose diversity as a consequence,
if they interpret everything that happens here as taking place within
American modes of discourse. I experience grating communications here on a
daily basis, but it mostly turns out that they are to do with the mode of
discourse, rather than to do with the writer's intent or character. We who
are not Americans must learn to double check before reacting if we are to
survive here. To be able to contribute we need the same courtesy afforded to
us.
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 01 2001 - 01:01:34 PDT