![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 22nd, 2012 08:30 amWhen I was a child, I was the one the class prodded to ask the blunt question that needed asking. "Not tactful," my family explained it, "but in a nice way." Apparently it hurts people less when one is charmingly direct than if one hits someone over the head with a sledgehammer. This is all very well when one is eleven.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked on matters diplomatic for a full three months*. I learned that the charm helped a great deal and, that to turn bluntness into tact was often a matter of simply formulating a question or thought just slightly differently. That was three months very well spent. I learned how to turn gentleness into prose, to allow for privilege and to write a decent letter.
I was from the wrong background to become a diplomat, it appeared, and I did a bunch of other things with my public service career. But I can write letters. And, most importantly, I can tell the writers of queries precisely why their innocent inquiry will look like a case of cultural imperialism. This happened in an email exchange recently.
There is a way one asks questions in some English-speaking countries and a way one doesn't. The way one doesn't, is to ask about a usage or practice in countries other than one's own while assuming that the usage one knows is the standard. For instance "Does anyone actually drive on the X-side of the road any more?" When everyone says "Actually, that's the standard in your country only, the rest of us do such and such, and, as a matter of fact, we always have" the questioner says "Aha, I thought as much and look, I have more evidence from this person you don't know over the other side of the world to prove it."
What I was taught (and which I bet I get wrong far too often) is that if your conversation even so much as terribly, terribly mildly implies that someone's else's culture is worth less than your own (in this case, by assuming a norm verbally, even when the reality was that the person in question was asking to confirm that the norm was something else entirely) and that what the respondent is telling you is not actually worth that much as evidence, the whole sequence comes across as imperialist/privileged/annoying.
Australia has a problem with imperialism and privilege. We know it. The staff in Foreign Affairs and Trade spend ages teaching graduates to nuance letters so that our we-don't-run-other-countries-really powers don't offend our neighbours on a regular basis. What fascinates me is that the skills are very similar to those one learns as a critic and as a scholar. They are, in fact, precisely the same skill we use with we analyse a novel or discuss politics: it's just framed in terms of "What will this set of words do to the reader's sense of self-worth?" And the assumption is that words communicate privilege and can, with entirely the best intentions, demean the other participants in a conversation.
My thought-for-the day is that this is very easy to say. It was easy for me to spot the problem in a letter exchange between people of entirely different cultures to myself. The mote in one's own eye is more difficult to spot. still, I'm going to remember what I learned half a lifetime ago, that if I take a little longer and place my instinctive formulation of a question or statement with something a bit gentler and a bit more inclusive, it will reduce the amount of hurt I leave in my wake. Good intentions are seldom enough and the only person who can call this particular kind of privilege consistently is oneself.
What I learned in those three months was a greater gentleness of speech and, most importantly, that the way I spoke as a child is not appropriate to many adult situations.
*Actually, it was longer, but I was only in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for a 3 month placement.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked on matters diplomatic for a full three months*. I learned that the charm helped a great deal and, that to turn bluntness into tact was often a matter of simply formulating a question or thought just slightly differently. That was three months very well spent. I learned how to turn gentleness into prose, to allow for privilege and to write a decent letter.
I was from the wrong background to become a diplomat, it appeared, and I did a bunch of other things with my public service career. But I can write letters. And, most importantly, I can tell the writers of queries precisely why their innocent inquiry will look like a case of cultural imperialism. This happened in an email exchange recently.
There is a way one asks questions in some English-speaking countries and a way one doesn't. The way one doesn't, is to ask about a usage or practice in countries other than one's own while assuming that the usage one knows is the standard. For instance "Does anyone actually drive on the X-side of the road any more?" When everyone says "Actually, that's the standard in your country only, the rest of us do such and such, and, as a matter of fact, we always have" the questioner says "Aha, I thought as much and look, I have more evidence from this person you don't know over the other side of the world to prove it."
What I was taught (and which I bet I get wrong far too often) is that if your conversation even so much as terribly, terribly mildly implies that someone's else's culture is worth less than your own (in this case, by assuming a norm verbally, even when the reality was that the person in question was asking to confirm that the norm was something else entirely) and that what the respondent is telling you is not actually worth that much as evidence, the whole sequence comes across as imperialist/privileged/annoying.
Australia has a problem with imperialism and privilege. We know it. The staff in Foreign Affairs and Trade spend ages teaching graduates to nuance letters so that our we-don't-run-other-countries-really powers don't offend our neighbours on a regular basis. What fascinates me is that the skills are very similar to those one learns as a critic and as a scholar. They are, in fact, precisely the same skill we use with we analyse a novel or discuss politics: it's just framed in terms of "What will this set of words do to the reader's sense of self-worth?" And the assumption is that words communicate privilege and can, with entirely the best intentions, demean the other participants in a conversation.
My thought-for-the day is that this is very easy to say. It was easy for me to spot the problem in a letter exchange between people of entirely different cultures to myself. The mote in one's own eye is more difficult to spot. still, I'm going to remember what I learned half a lifetime ago, that if I take a little longer and place my instinctive formulation of a question or statement with something a bit gentler and a bit more inclusive, it will reduce the amount of hurt I leave in my wake. Good intentions are seldom enough and the only person who can call this particular kind of privilege consistently is oneself.
What I learned in those three months was a greater gentleness of speech and, most importantly, that the way I spoke as a child is not appropriate to many adult situations.
*Actually, it was longer, but I was only in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for a 3 month placement.