Reflections on language and culture
By Gerald Seaman
Associate professor of French and associate dean of the faculty
Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2002
"Let me give you a warning," the old Steve Martin routine begins. "If you go to Paris, France: 'Chapeau' means 'hat.' 'Œuf' means 'egg.' It's like those French have a different word for everything!
"I'm serious," intones the comedian, as the laughter subsides.
Like many teenagers of the day, I memorized Steve Martin's routines from top to bottom. I imitated his voice and gestures. I drove my friends, my teachers, and my family crazy. It was all very silly. Obnoxious. But, at that age, pretending to be Steve Martin was fun.
I'm grown up now. To the wonder and dismay of many, I have a Ph.D. in French. I've lived in France; I've taught French for a fair number of years. I'm raising my sons to speak French. To complicate things further, I am now married to a Chilean who speaks only Spanish in the house. When my wife is on the phone, Spongebob Squarepants is on the television, and my son Mario is singing "Frères Jacques" for the 137th time in a row, our home takes on the aura of something biblical.
Why do I do this, after all?
The truth is, I fell in love with France and the French almost by accident. Steve Martin made French acceptable; I studied it in high school and college. Eventually, I spent a year in Provence. I read great books, observed fine art, stood in awe of marvelous landscapes and sea sides, made dear friends, kissed pretty girls, traveled far and wide, and, in the end, sloughed off my youthful skin and exchanged it for something else, something not quite French, but not quite American, either -- a spiritual and cultural métissage.
The French are rude. Rude!
The following is an unfortunate complaint of travelers:
"I went to France, and I just didn't like the people. They say that, if you know a little French, you can get along better."
This repeats the premise of the Steve Martin routine. Still, many students have said to me: "I tried to speak French with them, but they still weren't helpful. They were just rude." Some people believe that improving your language skills will solve this problem. I think this is only partially true.
Understanding the French language and being able to speak it is a challenge, and it is one that I urge anyone who is interested to meet, but breaking the language barrier is only a partial solution to knowing the French. Understanding the French people and being able to interact with them productively is a similarly important challenge, one that we have not historically confronted in our culture or in our classrooms, though we are beginning to do so now.
Standing on uncommon ground
In some ways, the French are like us. Their political system is democratic, the French economy is largely based on agriculture, their standard of living is very high, the majority religious faith is Catholic. Like ours, French society is largely white, with visible and important immigrant and minority populations. Medical care in France is among the best in the world. The French have excellent telecommunications and transportation systems; in fact, there was a French Internet -- the Minitel system -- years before the World Wide Web. Finally, and perhaps most important, the things most highly valued by the French are also highly valued by Americans: education, family, and financial status.
There is something reassuring about this likeness, but also something misleading. In fact, being so alike causes the casual American visitor to France innumerable problems, many of them stemming from the fact that things in common create false expectations of common ground.
In my office, I have an Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph entitled "Rue Mouffetard Paris 1954." The image is of a little French boy, big ears, short dark hair, smiling eyes, skinny legs extending out of overly large belted shorts; he's carrying two bottles of wine, one tucked under each arm. If you take this image and add it to the familiar one of the Frenchman on a bicycle, with the black beret and long loaf of bread, you are creating what could be called a cultural archetype.
If we poke at this archetype, we will see that it is seriously inaccurate. French children and teenagers dress in ways that are remarkably similar to the ways of American children and teenagers. They wear brand-name tennis shoes, many boys wear caps and blue jeans, and t-shirts are quite common. All of which helps us to realize that stereotypical images only create illusions of cultural identity, and they thus further frustrate and confound the already linguistically deficient American traveler.
My basic argument, not necessarily original, is that the distinguishing cultural characteristics -- and points of contrast and conflict -- between Americans and the French do not derive from appearances (i.e., clothes), institutions, or language. Rather, our habits -- that is, how we behave in our clothes, in our own skin really, and how we use language and expect others to use it -- are what fundamentally set us and the French apart.
Bursting the space bubble
In her book French or Foe? Polly Platt cites an anthropologist by the name of Edward T. Hall who coined the term proxemics. The basic idea behind proxemics is that the use of space is culturally determined. I am sure that many will agree that nothing distinguishes Americans from members of many other cultures like our concept of space. We like space, we need space, we take up a lot of space. We conduct ourselves differently within space; we define personal space differently than the French do, and our interpersonal relationships are therefore conducted in very different ways.
We Americans don't want people too close, we don't want people touching us; people who get too close are strange, suspicious, maybe even dangerous. We like to keep a polite, and safe, distance from the person we are talking to.
This distance is not the same with the French; they have a space bubble (in Platt's terms) that is far smaller than ours. As a result, they also have a sound bubble that is different from ours. Americans abroad seem always to be loud. The French are not loud; they do not shout across open spaces as if that space were meaningless and unoccupied. Shouting is impolite; so is standing too far apart when talking. It is O.K. to touch people, of course; strangers often kiss each other on their first introduction. It is even O.K. to bump people in certain circumstances. If you go to France -- and many other countries for that matter -- be prepared to be touched, kissed, and bumped.
Are the French rude?
Americans generally think the French are rude. Polly Platt has this to say in reply, and I concur with her: "Rudeness is in the eye of the beholder." A rude person, for an American, is someone who is ill-mannered and discourteous. It's the same for the French, believe it or don't. Which begs the question: if we perceive the French as rude, why don't they perceive themselves as rude too?
Well, the French are rude; the French are also excessively polite. Americans are rude; but Americans really try hard, at least superficially, to be polite. The dynamic element in all of this is that, in our two cultures, rudeness and politeness express themselves differently. Platt's book helps us to reflect upon how we express politeness and friendliness in our culture. If we meet a stranger and want to make a connection, we smile. We Americans love to smile, and we expect that people will smile back. Trouble is, the French don't smile at strangers, and, if a stranger smiles at them, they certainly do not automatically smile back. They are taught not to do so. The French have this restrained way with their smiles, and Americans generally resent them for it.
To us, smiling is an indication of harmlessness, sincerity, and friendliness. To the French, Platt says, smiling immediately and broadly to a perfect stranger says one of two things about you: either you are a lunatic or you are insincere and therefore not trustworthy. A tense drawing-up of the body, a turn away, or a terse muttered comment that is explicitly intended to shake off the stranger are typical French replies to the American icebreaker.
We think this is rude; it isn't. It's a reflection of a culturally encoded response to a form of behavior that we find polite and harmless and that the French do not perceive in this way. Given this circumstance, it is easy to see why a purely linguistic response would be inadequate. If you are breaking the ice with a smile and a laugh and thereby eliciting a defiant reply from your French counterpart, no degree of fluency in the language will dispel this initial reaction.
For the French, the equivalent of the American smile is a standard expression intended to denote politeness and to elicit a sympathetic response to a request for help. This is another thesis of Platt's and I've tested it over the course of three summers with students at a variety of levels and found it to be accurate.
It doesn't matter how good or bad your French is, if you use the correct words with a stranger you will get help. These are the words: "Excusez-moi de vous déranger, Monsieur/Madame, mais j'ai un problème." Nothing will alienate you more from your French counterpart than your failure to use the most basic expression of courtesy, "excusez-moi." If you exchange these words for your smile and add "monsieur" or "madame," as Platt recommends, topped off with "j'ai un problème" (I have a problem), you will get places you never dreamed you could go. Believe me, French people, even in the big city, have a tendency to want to help strangers in a fix.
To have a good experience with the French, take the time to learn a little more about them, their culture, and their language; modify your expectations for your encounters, focus on your ability to be aware of, sensitive to, and willing to negotiate what are important differences in habits, behaviors, and perceptions.
We have much in common with the French, but they are not like us. And it is wrong to expect that they should be like us and to believe that everyone would be better off if they were.
Gerald Seaman joined the Lawrence faculty in 2000, coming from the University of Evansville, where he was chair of the Department of Foreign Languages. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1994, he earned his bachelor's degree in political science, international studies, and French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the master's and Ph.D. degrees in French literature at Stanford University. A version of the above was given as a Mortar Board First Chance/Last Chance lecture in Spring 2001.