Page 51 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

36 Reading Between the Signs

“Those people are so rude!” may be our immediate response
when we are asked what is considered an impolite question in
our culture. We might be stunned, for instance, on meeting a vis-
iting graduate student from Thailand who proceeds to grill us on
details of our personal life, such as how much money we earn and
the reason for our recent divorce. “For people in Thai society, such
questions would be appropriate and not considered too personal,
let alone taboo” (Natadecha-Sponsel 1993, 48).
Lovejoy gives two examples of the rude red flag: first, a Mo-
roccan living in France who is “shocked when French associates
inquire about his wife. Such questions are a banal form of chit-
chat in France but may indicate to the Moroccan an improper
interest in a private matter.” And second,
an Ethiopian girl visiting in the United States went to a
swimming pool one day with friends. She was shocked
and upset when someone asked her, “How do you stay
so thin?” In the United States, this is not really a re-
quest for information, but a compliment on the fash-
ionable state of a person’s body. But plumpness is de-
sirable for Ethiopian women…[so] she perceived the
questioner as being rude because the question would
have been rude in her homeland. (194)
Other internal judgments to watch out for include “Those
people are so dirty!” “Those people are so stupid!” “Those people
are so cold!” “Those people are hypocrites!” If we catch ourselves
making such negative judgments, we should see if we can rephrase
our feeling of frustration in a more culturally relative form:
“Something’s going on here that seems stupid to me. I wonder if
it seems stupid to them?” (Lovejoy 194–97).
In my own experience, I have found some areas ripe for this
type of judgment: bureaucracy and time are two of my favorites.
When I was living in Paris, there were a lot of things that would
send me screaming into those charming cobblestoned streets, the
worst of which was dealing with the bank. I had an account at a
large French bank that, like my American bank at home, had its
headquarters downtown and many small branch offices all over
the city. While my American bank’s branch offices seem as stan-
dardized and predictable as McDonald’s, going to the bank in Paris
felt like going to a casino—I never knew how much money I was
going to walk away with. One branch office would cash my check,

02 MINDESS PMKR 36 10/18/04, 11:22 AM