Globally Speaking

A language both reflects and preserves many facets of a culture's worldview. When we use language to describe behavior or attitudes, we often think in terms of polarities that are related to our own worldview. Some of the polarities used by various cultures are: a friendly attitude versus an unfriendly attitude, formal versus informal behavior, and useful versus useless activity.

Within our own culture, we're constantly making judgments about others. If a waiter is surly, we say he has a bad attitude; if the sales department shows a record performance, we consider that positive behavior. We judge visible behavior according to invisible assumptions that we derive from our worldview.

Our invisible assumptions aren't universal, however. Take the words fussy and sloppy, for instance. Americans tend to be fussy about personal possessions. We don't like chipped pottery or a scratched glass-top table in our homes, and we would probably replace them promptly. In contrast, Indonesians would not be concerned about such minor imperfections; they take wear and tear on their household items as normal.

So one might conclude that Americans are fussy and Indonesians are sloppy. Right?

Think again. There are other situations where the reverse is true. Indonesians are fussy about wearing a shirt or skirt that has so much as a single wrinkle in it, and they will sweep their yard until every single leaf is removed. How many Americans are this fussy?

If we truly seek to understand another culture, we should reduce our tendency to polarize us versus them. Here's one way to do this: Every time you experience a characteristic that you don't like, look for an example of the same characteristic in your own culture. And balance your view of the other culture by looking for ways in which it shows the opposite characteristic.