Cultural cues
Apr. 14th, 2002 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayWatching a movie with Pat last night ("Frailty", which was a great study of religious psychosis until the last 15 minutes, when it turned into a so-so Buffy wannabe), I noticed the Southern US mannerisms and speech patterns of the main characters... the subtle undercurrents underneath the surface layer of congeniality and politeness. Elements of apparent conflict-avoidance, while underneath a battle raged. Diplomacy sometimes works like this... polite and unassuming on the surface, give-and-take underneath.
Coming from my own cultural background (born and grew up in Georgia), these were readily understandable conventions and I could easily track what was going on under the characters' surface politeness. But I wonder how, say, a native Californian or New Yorker would interpret the plot... would it seem obscure? Slow-moving and indirect? Maddeningly orthogonal to a (direct) resolution?
One of my reasons for being interested in these cultural-cue-interpretation issues is that I personally tend to follow the cues from my native culture, albeit without much of an accent anymore... but in Silicon Valley, instead of say, mutual politeness and initial smalltalk being stage-setting for negotiation (and a means of assessing one's opposition), it gets interpreted as "niceness" and submission. And then when the other party then does something assertive and direct, expecting no opposition, they are surprised when I come down on them harshly (typically irritated by behavior I see as crass or rude). At least two individuals' careers have been torched or badly damaged because they interpreted politeness and indirect engagement on my part to mean that I was a pushover.
Anyone reading this is hereby warned: underneath the polite, unassuming, courteous exterior, I am actually an arrogant smart-ass and a bit of a control freak. I tend to hold grudges (in the tradition of my Confederate ancestors) and am willing to accept Pyhrric victories rather than submit, once convinced that I'm right (in the tradition of my mother's family, where John Brown is a distant ancestral relative).
One of the things I'm fond of regarding She In Whose Direction I'm Kind of Poinging is that she sees my jibes, and recognizes that these are intentional provocations (rather than cluelessness as to the multiple implications of my straight-lines). And she volleys them back ;-). Which I respect immensely. Pat does this too, seeing right through the cultural cues. But, then both SWDIKP and Pat are southerners... hmmm.
Coming from my own cultural background (born and grew up in Georgia), these were readily understandable conventions and I could easily track what was going on under the characters' surface politeness. But I wonder how, say, a native Californian or New Yorker would interpret the plot... would it seem obscure? Slow-moving and indirect? Maddeningly orthogonal to a (direct) resolution?
One of my reasons for being interested in these cultural-cue-interpretation issues is that I personally tend to follow the cues from my native culture, albeit without much of an accent anymore... but in Silicon Valley, instead of say, mutual politeness and initial smalltalk being stage-setting for negotiation (and a means of assessing one's opposition), it gets interpreted as "niceness" and submission. And then when the other party then does something assertive and direct, expecting no opposition, they are surprised when I come down on them harshly (typically irritated by behavior I see as crass or rude). At least two individuals' careers have been torched or badly damaged because they interpreted politeness and indirect engagement on my part to mean that I was a pushover.
Anyone reading this is hereby warned: underneath the polite, unassuming, courteous exterior, I am actually an arrogant smart-ass and a bit of a control freak. I tend to hold grudges (in the tradition of my Confederate ancestors) and am willing to accept Pyhrric victories rather than submit, once convinced that I'm right (in the tradition of my mother's family, where John Brown is a distant ancestral relative).
One of the things I'm fond of regarding She In Whose Direction I'm Kind of Poinging is that she sees my jibes, and recognizes that these are intentional provocations (rather than cluelessness as to the multiple implications of my straight-lines). And she volleys them back ;-). Which I respect immensely. Pat does this too, seeing right through the cultural cues. But, then both SWDIKP and Pat are southerners... hmmm.
