December 31, 2015 by rgjones

Watson as Life Coach

IBM’s Watson analyzes a Twitter account of a user

Interesting story recently on NPR about Watson, the IBM super computer that won the “Jeopardy” game show. It apparently has now been retooled to analyze texts written by an individual on social media in order to provide insight into personality traits. The assumption is that our choice of words unconsciously reflects who we are. In itself this is nothing new. In the 1990’s James Pennebaker used a computer to analyze individuals’ use of personal pronouns. An abundant use of the first person pronoun, according to Pennebaker is revelatory of someone’s personality and/or state of mind:

If someone uses the pronoun “I,” it’s a sign of self-focus. Say someone asks “What’s the weather outside?” You could answer “It’s hot” or “I think it’s hot.” The “I think” may seem insignificant, but it’s quite meaningful. It shows you’re more focused on yourself. Depressed people use the word “I” much more often than emotionally stable people. People who are lower in status use “I” much more frequently.

According to the NPR story, the Watson program goes well beyond the analysis of pronoun use. It created “personality dictionaries”, correlating words in English to 5 different personality traits, with the acronym of OCEAN: “O for openness, C for conscientiousness, E for extroversion, A for agreeableness and N for neuroticism”. Texts an individual has written on Twitter, Facebook, blog posts and in other online services are collected and parsed. For the story, Facebook posts for the reporter, Aarti Shahani, were analyzed, which she found reflected fairly accurately at least some of her major personality traits. But, as she pointed out in the story, our online identity may be quite different from the identity we have in other contexts. Our behavior and language may differ significantly if we are at home with family, for example, rather than in the workplace. Likewise, our language use online may depend on the medium being used, as well as on the purpose of the communication, and on the particular situation or people we are addressing.

Watson was less accurate in its function as an “emotions analyzer”; it misread the emotions behind some of the statements in letters between Shahani and her ex-boyfriend. You can try out how well your emotions are analyzed using a trial version of the Tone Analyzer available online. A demo version of the writing analysis tool is also available. Given the interest in both big data and social media, it seems likely we will see more such tools, probably as mobile apps. One could well imagine their use in dating services.

December 31, 2015 by rgjones

Blackface

Sven Gatz, a Flemish minister, in blackface

There were many stories this past year dealing with cultural appropriation in one way or another. In the US a number of universities issued guidelines to students before Halloween, advising them not to wear costumes that represent cultures to which they do not belong. One of the specific cautions was the use of blackface, dark makeup used to make someone appear to be black. That has been a controversial issue in Belgium and the Netherlands, surrounding the tradition of “Black Pete” ( Zwarte Piet), the companion to St. Nicholas. This month, the Flemish minister of culture, Sven Gatz, was heavily criticized for a tweet in which he appeared as Black Pete. Earlier this year, the Belgian Foreign Minister likewise appeared controversially in blackface. While the tradition is reminiscent of other companions of St. Nick, in Germany (Knecht Ruprecht) or Austria/Bavaria (Krampus), who either help distribute treats or punish misbehaving children, the Black Pete tradition has been criticized because of the belief that it may reflect lingering racial attitudes from colonial days, an especially delicate issue in Belgium because of the legacy of African atrocities under the rule of King Leopold II in the 19th century. Others believe figures like Black Peter or the Swiss Schmutzli (i.e. “Little Dirty”) are carryovers from pagan ceremonies, associated with the ceremonial use of ashes.

In any case, the appearance of such figures in the US would not be socially acceptab;e. The recent case of Rachel Dolezal brought out strong reactions to what was perceived as an attempt to use skin darkeners and an African-American hair style to pass as black. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Dolezal responded to the accusation of using blackface:

That was a pretty harsh accusation. I didn’t expect that at all because blackface, you don’t look like a light-skinned black woman, you look like a clown. It’s made to be a mockery. Blackface is not pro-black. Blackface is not working for racial justice. Blackface is not trying to undo white supremacy. I would never make a mockery of the very things I take the most seriously…Do we ask women why they airbrush freckles on themselves or why they change their noses? We don’t ask if somebody’s boobs are real or not. I do my hair and my makeup and everything according to how I feel I’m beautiful. Sometimes I use a spray bronzer, sometimes I don’t…Before this happened, nobody was asking me why are you lighter or darker on certain days of the week, depending on how much time I had to get myself together that day; if I had time to give myself a glow. And if I didn’t, I was out the door.

In the interview she says she has been using braids and weaves in her hair for years and does not see that as cultural appropriation, but as a compliment to black women. In fact, as she points out, women have for generations been using perms to change their hair styles. For many people, what is troublesome about the Dolezal case is not so much the change in appearance, but the desire to pass as black without the trials of growing up African-American in the US.

November 30, 2015 by rgjones

Texas in Norwegian

I’ve been familiar for some time with the small German-speaking community in Texas, centered around towns in the Texas Hill Country, particularly Fredericksburg and New Braunfels (home to a very nice German restaurant). Unfortunately, the Texasdeutsch dialect is dying out. The clip below describes the dialect – note the opening scene in the wonderfully named town of Weimar.

But apparently, Norwegians in Texas are doing fine, according to a recent article in The Guardian, about Clifton, the “Norwegian Capital of Texas”, although it’s not evident that the Norwegian language has survived there.

The piece was prompted by an article in Texas Monthly about the use of the word “texas” as an adjective in contemporary Norwegian, meaning crazy or wild. The article cites a number of articles illustrating the use of “texas” in spoken and written Norwegian. It most commonly appears in the expression, “det var helt texas”, describing something wild and chaotic. In a report from the BBC, the use of the word is traced back:

[The use of texas] became part of the language when Norwegians started watching cowboy movies and reading Western literature, according to Daniel Gusfre Ims, the head of the advisory service at the Language Council of Norway. ‘The genre was extremely popular in Norway, and a lot of it featured Texas, so the word became a symbol of something lawless and without control,’ he says.

Ims mentions in the interview that Texas is not the only US state that is used in this kind of metonymy (a thing or concept being called not by its own name, but by another name which is associated with it): “Norwegians also use the term ‘hawaii football’ to describe an ‘out-of-control’ match”.

The Guardian actually asked people in Clifton if they had heard of the “texas” adjective use in Norwegian – no one had.

November 9, 2015 by rgjones

Halloween correctness

James Ramsey, lower right, the University of Louisville president, and his wife, Jane, upper left, hosted a Halloween party in Louisville, Ky. The University has apologized for the photo showing Ramsey among university staff members dressed in stereotypical Mexican costumes. Scott Utterback/The Courier-Journal, via AP

There have been recently in the US media a rash of reports related to what is often called cultural appropriation, namely taking on superficial aspects of another culture (appearance, dress, speech) in a way that can be perceived as prejudicial and insensitive. Today, there was a story out of Yale University, which, as other US universities did for Halloween, issued guidelines for avoiding cultural insensitivity in choosing a Halloween costume – eliminating what used to be mainstays of Halloween costumes such as Native American princesses (Pocohontas) or a Chinese warrior princess (Mulan). At Yale, an email was sent out to all students outlining what kinds of costumes are inappropriate. One of the categories was “Socio-economic strata”, which would have eliminated my stand-by Halloween costume as a kid, a hobo, a term which, too, has become unacceptable. The email sent out to Yale students by the “Intercultural Affairs Committee” prompted a response by one faculty member, Erika Christakis, who commented in an email of her own:

This year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween. I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.

The idea, advocated here, for Yale students to decide issues of appropriateness of costumes for themselves, was met with a storm of protest from Yale students, with one encounter (with Christakis’ husband, also a faculty member) being captured on video. The Atlantic today has a long article about the controversy. One of the points made there is that the students’ strong reaction to Christakis’ email was likely not just caused by the email, but came from feelings of many minority students at Yale that racism was prevalent on campus. A NY Times article details some recent incidents.

The tension between free speech and cultural insensitivity is something that many US universities have struggled with, for example in creating “speech codes” which limit certain kinds of speech. It’s not just college campuses either. The NY times ran a piece recently on fashion asking “Does anyone own the cornrow?”, a hair style associated with black women, but one that has become popular with young white women as well. The case of Rachel Dolezal (the white woman who until recently claimed to be black) also has raised interesting questions of identity formation – is it offensive for someone to try to look black because she feels black and identifies more with African-Americans?

October 31, 2015 by rgjones

Mark Zuckerberg’s Mandarin

Mark Zuckerberg speaking Mandarin at Tsinghua University

The Facebook CEO recently gave a talk at a Beijing university (Tsinghua) in Mandarin Chinese. This follows a public question and answer session in Mandarin with Zuckerberg conducted last year in Beijing. The reaction to his talk has been mixed, with many praising his courage to give a 20 minute speech in Chinese, given that he has not studied the language that long. James Fallows had some interesting comments in the Atlantic. There has been an interesting discussion on the languagelog blog. Victor Mair commented:

He’s intelligent, he’s confident, he has a nimble tongue, possesses strong communicative skills, and is blessed with all the other attributes that make him potentially an excellent speaker of Mandarin. But Zuckerberg has gotten off on the wrong foot with his Mandarin learning. I don’t know what methods he is using, but they clearly are not the right ones.

Mair says the grammar and vocabulary were fine, but the tones were way off. Using the right (of the four) tones right is essential to understanding what a specific phoneme means, as the same short syllable can have 4 or more different meanings, depending on the tone. It’s a similar issue for non-native speakers of English who do not use standard intonation and stress patterns, but can be even more problematic in tonal languages (which include Thai, Vietnamese, other Asian languages and some African languages). Still, Mair says he was able to understand almost everything in the speech, although other linguists who asked native speakers to listen, indicated that for them there were some parts of the speech which were difficult to decipher.

One commenter on languagelog pointed out that how problematic getting tones wrong is in terms of comprehensibility depends on the context:

There is a pretty low upper limit to how complex your vocabulary can get with bad tones. When you are using very common words and constructions, people can infer most of what you mean even if it isn’t clear. But once you are trying to quote weird technology terms from a newspaper or use words that native speakers might themselves have only heard a handful of times, poor tones will make you completely incomprehensible.

In my experience, if you provide enough context (i.e. speak not too slowly and say more than a few words) and have some tones wrong, you are likely to be understood. Despite pronunciation problems, many on languagelog and elsewhere praised Zuckerberg’s willingness and courage to give a public speech in Chinese. Native Chinese are appreciative (and surprised) when non-Chinese (especially Americans) make the effort to speak their language. In fact, the Washington Post last year, after Zuckerberg’s first public use of Chinese, ran an article entitled “A brief history of white dudes wowing people with Mandarin.” It certainly does not harm the cause of promoting Chinese language learning in this country to have the CEO of Facebook make the effort to learn and use the language. And that in a country in which Facebook is banned.

October 30, 2015 by rgjones

Touch Culturally Universal?

Figure via Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans
The areas outlined in blue are the “taboo zones,” which are regions that person group is not allowed to touch.

A recent study in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) caught my attention. It deals with reactions to being touched by others and examined reactions across a variety of cultures (Finland, France, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom). The researchers survey people from those countries using an “Internet-based topographical self-reporting tool”:

Touch is a powerful tool for communicating positive emotions. However, it has remained unknown to what extent social touch would maintain and establish social bonds. We asked a total of 1,368 people from five countries to reveal, using an Internet-based topographical self-reporting tool, those parts of their body that they would allow relatives, friends, and strangers to touch.

The fact that allowable areas of touch are related to group membership is no surprise. We would expect to see significant differences between partners and strangers in that regard. The study also asked about family members and distinguished between male and female subjects (respectively colored blue or red in the chart). Also expected was the study’s results in terms of what body areas are teemed “touchable”, which depended on the nature of the relationship:

Human social touch is particularly dependent on the emotional bond between the parties: The bodily regions where one may touch different individuals in their social network are relationship- specific, with hands and arms being routinely touched by even emotionally distant acquaintances, whereas touching the head, neck, and buttocks is typically restricted to emotionally closer relationships.

One of the findings I found less expected was the fact that cultural differences did not make as much of a difference as did gender:

The sex of the participant and the toucher significantly influenced the TIs [the touchable index]. When considering social network members having the same type of social relationship with the participant (e.g., sister vs. brother), females were allowed to touch wider body areas than males. The sex-related TI differences were significant for all male–female pairs of the social network (P < 0.05, t test). Accordingly, participants also reported stronger emotional bonds with female than male members of their social networks. Moreover, female subjects reported, on average, higher TIs across all members of their social network than males did, with the exception of female acquaintances and female strangers…Female, rather than opposite-sex, touch was, in general, evaluated as more pleasant, and it was consequently allowed on larger bodily areas.

Across the cultures, the most often used reason for touch was in greeting. In terms of cultural differences, some results surprised the researchers: “Somewhat surprisingly to the Finnish and Italian authors of the present study, Finland had larger TIs than Italy.” On the other hand, the culture least comfortable with touch may be easily predicted: the British. Unfortunately, the cultural variety was limited, so the results can hardly be generalized to include cultures from Asia, Africa or Latin American, where there may in fact be significant differences in terms of touch.

September 28, 2015 by rgjones

What language?

Donald Trump and Jeb Bush

Sarah Palin on Jeb Bush’s use of Spanish in conducting a town hall meeting in Florida recently:

“I think we can send a message and say: ‘You want to be in America? A: you better be here legally, or you’re out of here. B: when you’re here, let’s speak American.'”

Donald Trump was critical as well: “I like Jeb. He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.” Later, he retweeted an attack on Bush for “speaking Mexican”.

Aside from the awkwardly incorrect naming of languages, the real bafflement here for me is why the Republicans would go out of their way to discourage their own candidates from trying to connect with Hispanic voters, a group the party badly needs for success in 2016. Jeb Bush may not be a super exciting candidate, and his views may not be conservative enough for many Republicans – while for others, his having actual experience holding political office is a clear disqualification – but he does seem like someone likely to attract at least some Latinos to vote Republican. Of course, that holds true potentially for Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

This is not just a Republican issue, and points to general views on the ability to speak other languages in the US. One would think that we would be happy to have our leaders be able to communicate directly with foreign leaders in a second language. In fact, US voters (and non-voters) tend to be suspicious of politicians who speak other languages. French seems to be particularly suspect. John Kerry downplayed his fluency in the language when he was a candidate for President and Mitt Romney was particularly loathe to admit to his ability in the language. Apparently one may be tainted with socialism by speaking French.

In the case of Spanish, many US citizens are living in denial that the country has become – and certainly will remain – multilingual, with large numbers of US citizens and non-citizens speaking Spanish as their mother tongue. If Republicans continue to embrace the views of this group of deniers, it seems likely they will again go down in defeat in 2016.

September 21, 2015 by rgjones

Good Germans?

Das Sound Machine, from Pitch Perfect 2 - Photo Credit: Richard Cartwright © 2015 Universal Studios.

I watched recently with my daughter Pitch Perfect 2, a movie about a cappella music groups who compete in an international competition in Copenhagen. The main competition to the US group (the focus of the film) is the German group (“Das Sound Machine”), who are portrayed as strange, humorless, threatening, semi-robotic, and focused on winning at any price. Not an unusual stereotype, when it comes to Germans (cf. “Sprockets” from Saturday Night Live). Another popular image is currently being played out both in Munich and in local Oktoberfests across the US (and in many other countries): happy, singing, Lederhosen and Dirndl wearing beer drinkers.

Interestingly, the images of good Germans and scary Germans are playing out in a very real arena today: the reception of thousands of migrants (probably up to a million this year) in Germany, the preferred destination of most of those fleeing Syria, as well as others from Afghanistan, northern Africa, and many other countries. In contrast to their reception in Hungary, many Germans have come out to greet the new arrivals and to provide food, supplies, and toys. Some have opened up their homes to the new arrivals. Angelika Merkel has received a lot of positive press for announcing that Syrians who make it to Germany will be granted asylum. However, now that so many are arriving daily, German officials are taking a closer look at who’s coming across their borders. They also are sending newcomers away from the Oktoberfest festivities in Munich (and away from contact with the thousands of free-spending tourists) to Nürnberg, where they will not mar the fun.

The scary Germans are the ones fire-bombing the centers for housing refugees. This has been under-reported in the press outside Germany. This summer, there have been almost daily arson attacks, particularly in the former East Germany, ironically a part of the country where there have been relatively few foreigners. This is the region that gave birth to the “PEGIDA” movement last year (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident).

If the members of that group think that the influx of vast numbers of Syrians and others will change the character of the nation, they are right. The evidence is clear: the Turkish “guest workers” (who arrived in large numbers in the 1950’s and 1960’s) and their descendants have had a significant cultural impact. Turkish-German music (mostly hip-hop), novels, and films have been phenomenally popular in Germany. Turkish words have infiltrated the German language, not to the extent that English has, but any German today will recognize words such as döner (meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie), babo (boss), lan (buddy), and many others. Just as African-American culture has enriched the US, that has been the case with Turkish-German culture as well, and is likely to play out in a similar way with Syrian-Germans.

The other benefit to Germany, of course, is the influx of warm bodies, to counter-act the declining birth rate – those young Syrian-Germans will be paying for the pensions that allow retired Bavarians to have their Mass (liter) of beer at the Oktoberfest.

August 30, 2015 by rgjones

Language & Identity

Traditional Navajo clothing

The language we speak is a crucial part of our individual identities. Language can also be a social identifier – a way to tell who’s in and who’s out. This has been the case within the Native American Navajo Nation, where a candidate for president was disqualified last fall because he didn’t speak Navajo fluently. That candidate, Chris Deschene, had an impressive resume, having graduated from the Naval Academy, and subsequently earning a law degree and a master’s in engineering, before serving one term as a state representative. But he doesn’t speak Navajo fluently, having grown up away from the Navajo community. According to a story last year on NPR, “Deschene blamed his limitations on what he calls the tribe’s cultural destruction. Up until the 1960s, the U.S. federal government forced thousands of American Indians to attend boarding schools – among them, Deschene’s mother. While there, she was punished for speaking her native language. The U.S. government later relocated his parents to Southern California, where Chris was born.” This summer the Navajo Nation held a referendum on whether the president of the Navajo Nation should be required to speak fluent Navajo. The majority voted no. The story on NPR about the issue included laments from members of the Nation that the vote will erode the connection between the members of the tribe and their culture. It will also, they say, lead to less interest among the young in learning the language. They point out that many rituals and traditional aspects of the Navajo culture are tightly linked to the language.

The Navajo Nation has been in the news this summer also because of the action taken to tax junk food and soda. This too has a cultural side to it. The action was taken because of the very high rate of obesity and diabetes. The intent is to encourage members of the tribe to eat healthier food, especially more fruits and vegetables. One of the problems on the reservation has been the paucity of grocery stores; as a consequence, many people rely on convenience stores and fast food restaurants. To get to a good grocery store, tribal members need to drive off the reservation. According to Denisa Livingston, a spokeswoman for the grassroots group that pushed for the tax:

When people have to drive that many miles across the Navajo Nation in this food desert, it definitely is discouraging because healthy fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy foods will not last a very long time when you have to take it back hundreds of miles across the Navajo Nation.

The tribe plans to use the funds generated from the junk food tax on local farm initiatives. This is the socio-cultural aspect of the plan. Traditionally, Navajo people traditionally lived off the land. New initiatives such as the North Leupp Family Farms have helped about 30 families return to subsistence farming and eat healthier foods.

Moving the Navajo people – or any other community in the US – in the direction of embracing traditional ways of life, including native language use, family farming, and healthy food culture, is likely to be an uphill battle, given the ubiquitous presence of mainstream US media and advertising which point decidedly in opposing directions.

August 29, 2015 by rgjones

Whistled languages

Oaxacan in Mexico using whistling language

I am currently visiting the Manassas Battlefield Park in northern Virginia, where the two battles of Bull Run took place during the US civil war in the 1860’s. It’s amazing to follow the strategies of how the generals on each side placed their troops in anticipation of battle. A major part of that process was the need to gather information about the other side – how many soldiers, how much artillery, where located, etc. There was also the need to communicate within armies during the battles, particularly among groups of the army separated out on the flanks and in other configurations. No telephones or Internet were available, but they did have the telegraph, signal flags, and signal rockets (so-called wig-wag).

As far as I know, they did not use a form of communication which was highlighted in a story on NPR this week: whistling. We’re not talking about whistling songs or whistled cat calls, but rather a fully functioning, long-distance whistling language. The story was about a German scholar studying Turkish whistling in northeastern Turkey, which he fears may be dying out, as mobile phones make long distance communication more efficient (and more private). According to the story, whistled Turkish can be heard as far as 4 miles away. A recent story in the New Yorker discusses whistle Turkish.

This is not the only example of a whistled language. One of the most studied is Silbo Gomero, which is whistled Spanish used in the Canary Islands. It was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2009. Silbe Gomero is complex, using the tongue, lips and hands and requiring users to vary the frequencies at different speeds. Whistled speech is also used in Sochiapam Chinantec in Mexico.

Whistled language of the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands), the Silbo Gomero

July 29, 2015 by rgjones

Character amnesia

Typing Chinese characters in the 1970’2

I’m at the LEARN Conference on autonomous language learning and have just had the pleasure of hearing the keynote today from Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania (I gave the opening keynote yesterday). Mair is a sinologist and regular contributor to the LanguageLog, a wonderful resource for informed comments on issues related to language. He is an entertaining speaker as well as an excellent blogger – his posts are both informative and entertaining. He had a lot to say both about how the Internet is changing the Chinese language and about his views on teaching Chinese.

He talked about the different ways that Chinese characters have been typed over the years, which given the number of characters in Chinese (over 50,000), is a challenge. Early solutions featured elaborate typewriters (see image above), huge keyboards, or keys on a rotating drum. The early keyboards required use of a stylus, as there were so many characters to fit in. Today, Chinese is typed by using Pinyin, the romanized writing of characters. This has led to a de-emphasis on the ability to write characters, which has been a concern in China in recent years, similar to the issues in the US on cursive writing no longer being taught in primary schools. Mair has coined the term “character amnesia” to describe this phenomenon. In his talk, he showed an example of a grocery list by a native speaker of Mandarin in which there was a mixture of characters and pinyin, with some of the words having been begun to be written in characters, then scratched out and written in pinyin, indicating that how to write the characters had been forgotten. Mair calls this “creeping romanization” or “emerging digraphia”. One consequence of the concern over this loss of character literacy is the emergence of Chinese versions of spelling bees, with the contestants having to write the characters that had been read aloud.

Mair says that with the availability of tools for working with Chinese characters, this is a great time to learn the language. He has little good to say about traditional teaching methods, which rely on memorization and writing. He advocates (at least for speakers of European languages) learning to speak first, then learning the characters. He describes the typical four skills approach to beginning Chinese as “inhumane”. He sees no point in teaching characters early.

One of the most interesting remarks from Mair’s talk was his take on his contribution to the Languagelog blog. He writes regularly and estimates that it takes about a third of his professional time. In addition to writing the blog posts, he responds to the many emails he receives asking Chinese language related questions. This “public teaching” activity points to the changing role of language teachers today. For many teachers, this kind of extracurricular work has become a major regular activity. In fact, Mair stated today that he sees this as the most important work he does – more so than classroom instruction or scholarly research and publication. This corresponds to the trends of more and more people learning language outside of formal classroom settings. Internet technology enables this in many different ways.

July 8, 2015 by rgjones

Greeks & Germans: Cultural contrasts

German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble

Former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis

There are a number of contentious issues in the conflict between Greece and the European Union over the country’s economic situation. What we hear about in the media are disagreements related to taxes and pensions. The popular perception outside of Greece, and particularly in Germany, is that the Greeks have not been good shepherds of their resources; they retire early with fat pensions and do not pay the taxes they owe. It turns out that those views are outdated; there have been major reforms of the pension system and crackdowns on tax evaders (see the story in this week’s On the Media about that). But popular perceptions are slow to change, especially when there are compelling and long-established stereotypes at work: Germans are industrious; Greeks (and southern Europeans) are lazy. However, there are indeed some striking cultural distinctions of interest.

One of the aspects of the Greek crisis that I’ve been following with interest are the conflicts that have arisen that have nothing to do with money. A few weeks ago, when the Greek prime minister and other officials were in Brussels to continue negotiations, German TV news conducted an interview with Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister. Schäuble said he didn’t think the Greeks were serious about finding a solution to the crisis. Why? Not because their proposals were deficient, but because the Greek delegation wasn’t showing up on time for meetings. He gave specifics. He also commented on the fact that at the time of the interview, in the morning, the Greeks were having a leisurely breakfast, rather than showing up for meetings. For Schäuble, if you are serious about getting work done, the first requirement is that you be on time. The Greek perspective is different, seeing deadlines as less important. When Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras pulled out of negotiations and announced the referendum that was held last Sunday, he was asked about the problem of missing the June 30 deadline for Greek to pay back 1.6 billion euros. His response: he couldn’t imagine that it would be a problem if there were a delay of a few days while a deal was worked out. Yesterday, the EU officials were flabbergasted that the Greeks did not show up for the meetings of finance ministers with a new proposal. Prime Minister Tsiparas had promised to deliver a new plan within 48 hours, if the Greeks voted “no” in the referendum. The Greeks responded yesterday that they were working on it.

For individuals used to a “monochronic” time orientation (doing one thing at a time; keeping to deadlines), like Schäuble, it was inconceivable that agreed-on time commitments were not kept. For those with a “polychronic” time orientation, time is not seen as segmented, but fluid, and other priorities may have precedence. From the Greek perspective, the Germans were being unnecessarily rigid and unreasonable. The problem here is not really related to being on time, but on establishing and maintaining a cooperative attitude that could lead to a successful negotiation. The Germans, not taking into consideration the different time orientation of the Greeks, interpreted their behavior as one more signal that the Greeks were not serious negotiation partners. The Greeks didn’t help by not being aware of and taking into consideration the German imperative for punctuality. It’s not just the Germans who have this perspective; the Lithuanian prime minister said today that for the Greeks “everything is always mañana“, thus taking a swipe at several different cultures.

This was not the only cultural conflict. Schäuble offered a dramatic contrast in style and tone to the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who announced his resignation yesterday. Schäuble is tight-lipped and serious, being cautious in his pronouncements. Varoufakis, in contrast, is free with his opinions and has not hid his disdain for some EU and German officials. Schäuble wears dark suits with conservative ties; Varoufakis goes for leather jackets. The Greek prime minister also does not wear ties. The German convention is that if you are doing serious business, you dress the part. Of course, the contrast between the two finance ministers is also a case of different personalities, as well as a generational divide. But it remains that if the German and Greeks are far apart on economic issues, they are as well in terms of some social norms and practices.

June 20, 2015 by rgjones

Appearance = character?

Ece B. before her conversion

Ece B. after her conversion

Given the treatment of women by ISIS (“Dash” or the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levan”) it’s hard to imagine women voluntarily joining that radical Islamist group. But in fact a number of young women from Western countries have done just that. The largest number are from Britain, but they have also come from other countries, including Germany. Recently, a 17 and 18 year old traveled to Iraq to Join ISIS from northern Germany. They created a big splash in the German media, particularly because the father of one of the girls committed suicide. One of the aspects of the story that struck me was the gradual change in behavior and appearance of the girls, as they came under the influence of ISIS online propaganda. There was an interview with the mother of one of the girls who remarked on the change in appearance, with her daughter beginning to use a headscarf, then gradually moving to a body-covering outfit. She said in the news story that she had spotted her daughter in town at a bus stop and only knew it was her from the purse she was carrying. She went to her and forced her to take off the robe she was wearing.

In this instance, the way the girls were dressing was a clear indication of their turn to a different way of life, namely radical Islam. A very different case is that highlighted in a new movie called 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, which is about the shooting of four African-American teenagers over the volume of their rap music, killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis, by Michael Dunn, a 45-year-old Caucasian man. One of the interviews that was conducted for the documentary was with Jordan Davis’ mom. She described him, as did other witnesses, as a well-behaved young man. In an NPR story about the film, she was asked about how he dressed, which was often in hip-hop style with this cap cocked to the side. She said that she told him repeatedly to pull up his pants, but he wouldn’t listen. She warned him that if he kept dressing that way, she would pull his pants down in public, which in fact she did at a mall, much to his embarrassment.

In this case, in contrast to the German girls, how Jordan dressed was not indicative of a major change in his worldview. It was just a matter of fashion, not an indicator that he had become a gang member or anything else nefarious. That, however, may not be how some whites view someone dressed that way, which, as in the tragic case of Trayvon Martin, may in this case as well have contributed to his death. The reality is that how others are dressed often provides a powerful first impression, often based on stereotypes of questionable validity.

June 19, 2015 by rgjones

Miss Japan: Is she Japanese?

Miss Universe Japan, Ariana Miyamoto

The recently crowned Miss Universe Japan, Ariana Miyamoto, is an unusual beauty queen selection for Japan, as she is hafu, or mixed-race Japanese, having an African-American father and a Japanese mother. After she won the contest, according to a recent NY Times article, some people posted messages criticizing the judges for selecting someone who didn’t look Japanese. However, more Japanese had positive things to say about the selection

Ms. Miyamoto grew up in Japan, where she says other children often shunned her because of her darker skin and tightly curled hair. That experience has driven her to use her pageant victory as a soapbox for raising awareness about the difficulties faced by mixed-race citizens in a country that still regards itself as mono-ethnic. “Even today, I am usually seen not as a Japanese but as a foreigner. At restaurants, people give me an English menu and praise me for being able to eat with chopsticks,” said Ms. Miyamoto, who spoke in her native Japanese and is an accomplished calligrapher of Japanese-Chinese characters. “I want to challenge the definition of being Japanese.” Her self-proclaimed mission has raised eyebrows at a time when race relations are receiving new scrutiny in Japan, which had long seen itself as immune to the ethnic tensions of the United States.

Japan is usually portrayed as an extremely homogenous culture, with age-old traditions characterizing the way of life. In fact, there are still few immigrants, as the government keeps tight restrictions on the flow of immigrants into the country. As the article indicates, Japan’s relative diversity comes from the ethnically mixed children of marriages between Japanese and foreigners, which is a small but growing population. Ms. Miyamoto’s father was a sailor in the US Navy and returned to the US soon after Ariana was born. She reports that she had to endure many taunts growing up, with other children and even parents called her “kurombo,” the Japanese equivalent of the N-word. It remains to be seen whether having Ariana represent Japanese beauty will contribute to changing views on what it means to be Japanese as well as to people with dark skin becoming more accepted in Japanese society.

June 18, 2015 by rgjones

I identify as black

Rachel Dolezal before and after she was “black”

Rachel Dolezal , head of the Spokane, Washington NCAAP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the largest black advocacy organization in the US, has white parents, whose heritage is European-American, mostly German and Czech, according to her father. She is clearly not African-American biologically. But in recent years she has been active in leadership and advocacy roles for African-Americans, teaching African heritage course. Ironcially, as a college student, Dolezal sued Howard University, a historically black university, alleging discrimation against her in favor of African-American students. The revelation that Dolezal is not black stirred a social media firestorm when the news broke recently. According to CNN:

Some defended her by pointing to her activism and efficacy as a leader while adding that someone shouldn’t be barred from being a civil rights leader because they’re white. Others blasted her for lying and asserting she’d diminished the real struggles of African-Americans by claiming she had suffered hurtful racism like them, even though she grew up white in Montana, and had used that identity to advance her career as an activist.

Her identification as black has been especially controversial in the African-American community. It brings to the fore experiences that that community has had in the US. Historically, if there has been a trace (“a drop” in race laws) of black blood, that US citizen is identified as “black”. Black Americans have not had the option of presenting and performing as “white”, even if they were, like Barack Obama, of mixed white/black heritage. In that sense, Dolezal’s claim to be “black” has been seen as a instance of “white privilege” – white people can choose their race, while blacks can not. The case has also brought up another identity issue currently under discussion: how is that it is possible to choose ones gender (i.e., Caitlyn Jenner) but not one’s race?

On the lighter side is comedian Dave Chapelle’s take on the case: “The world’s become ridiculous…There’s a white lady posing as a black lady. There is not one thing that woman accomplished that she couldn’t have done as a white woman. There’s no reason! She just needed the braids!”

Communicating Across Cultures

Commentary on cultural trends and language issues from Robert Godwin-Jones