Awesome Speech Habits of Americans
I've been slowly reading through Professor Orlando Kelm's book, When we are the foreigners: What Chinese think about working with Americans, and right in the first chapter I was highly amused by this passage:
Recently, Mr. Jorgensen has been working closely with Xiaoliu Li, the human resources manager for TPC China. Upon entering her office, an aura of competence is immediately apparent. Young, pretty, polished, professional, and easy to engage in conversation, Xiaoliu Li gives the impression that she loves her job. In fact, Mr. Jorgensen usually introduces her to others by saying, "I'd like you to meet our highly competent human resources manager Xiaoliu Li." Almost sheepishly, she acknowledges the the introduction, always noticing, however, how extraordinary it is to hear "highly competent" when making an introduction. Those types of phrases are, in fact, one of her observations about Americans. "You Americans think everything is great, wonderful, fantastic, amazing, cool, or awesome." Not only do Americans think everything is awesome; they also say so, using these terms in both casual and formal conversations. That style of speech and feedback seems out of place among Chinese. "Chinese aren't prone to use those types of words when describing people," observes Xiaoliu Li, "much less when directly talking to them." Basically, My. Jorgensen is oblivious to the effect of the way he uses vocabulary. To him, it's just a matter of having a positive attitude.
My wife has made almost exactly the same observation. She claims that it's hard to know what Americans really feel about something because everything is "great" or "awesome" or "amazing." (This is, of course, the opposite of what is often said about the Chinese, who always seem to be "hiding their true feelings," forever inscrutable to most foreigners.) So to her, it's not that Americans "think everything is awesome," it's that they say everything is awesome, which can, in her mind, only be construed as (at least a mild form of) insincerity. So I guess that's what we Americans get for being positive and enthusiastic about life: suspicion of insincerity!
Anyway, I'm enjoying this book, because instead of trying to make blanket statements about culture, it takes the case study approach and shares real people's views on real incidents. (Now if only I had more time to read…)
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