Reading other cultures

[Varzar]

So, I'm Canadian... I've spend a lot of my life trying to learn other peoples facial expressions, tone and whatnot, to figure out what they are thinking/feeling..

Last night, I was watching a reality show from Britain... At the end of the first episode, I turned to my wife and asked, "So, are they not expressing any emotion at all? Or is that just me?". She assured me they were definitely expressing emotions, which she described, but I couldn't see..

I know the English are often described as being more reserved.. But I guess my exposure to "normal" people from England is limited to my brother-in-law.. Other than that, it's mostly actors, like say John Cleese, who definitely is not hard for me to read..

Anyways.. I was just kind of curious if others have noticed more difficulties in reading other cultures, even when they are "same language" cultures... And curious if the British people on here find similar difficulties the other direction (reading American/Canadians).

 

[Tom]

Just in general I thought I detected quite a bit of variation in facial expressions and body language in different cultures. For example I was raised in a very multicultural area and in and around very rough neighborhoods. With one culture if they (teens, young adults) made direct eye contact it was a good sign, with another if they made direst eye contact it signaled potential danger. And later on when spending time in other countries I found similar differences. It could be quite bewildering at first, as learning the local body language was always a priority with me. Hard to mask effectively if you don't know which mask to wear.

 

[Thinx]

Well as a Brit, most Americans and Canadians I have seen are actors or politicians, they've always seemed quite expressive, maybe a tad more emotional than British, especially in the US, but it varies between individual people of course.

I did used to find when I was teaching relationship therapy that texts from the US tended to quote and assume more emotional interaction between couples than one can expect here in the UK , where normally one or more of the couple might have limited emotional language.

I'm not bad at recognising emotions, however I have to remember that to many people they are more important than thinking processes, as this isn't the case for me.

 

[Aneka]

Have difficulty reading indigenous peoples. Especially the Cree, Mohawk and Montagnais. They rarely smile, except to one another in private conversations. They are friendly, especially children, yet quite distant, even suspicious.

Around caucasians they smile more and act differently, than they do when they are with people from their own culture. Likely because the people I do know, have come from remote communities with little contact with others outside their bands.

Please don't use "Caucasian" for "Europeans". The word has fascist roots. The real people from the Caucasus Mountains are Tartarians for example.

Why? Read this: Why Do We Keep Using the Word “Caucasian”?

 

[Varzar]

Please don't use "Caucasian" for "Europeans". The word has fascist roots. The real people from the Caucasus Mountains are Tartarians for example.

Why? Read this: Why Do We Keep Using the Word “Caucasian”?

In this case, I'm pretty sure @Mia was actually just referring to white people in general, not Europeans..

Interesting history of the word caucasian though.. Didn't know that..

As with anything PC though, I appreciate correctness in language. For example, I think it's silly we in NA, refer to people from India as East Indians, as opposed to just Indians, because of history...

But ultimately, I still feel for most PC related stuff, we need to work at changing attitudes of people away from racist/sexist/agist bias, not just say every word in the dictionary is no longer ok to use.. Language does need words to describe both a persons region of origin (like European, African, American, Asian), as well as language to describe skin tone (black, white, brown, yellow).. Those words themselves are simply adjectives to help describe a person. They inherently have no prejudicial meaning, unless our attitudes decide they do.. And that's what we need to fight, prejudicial attitude.

So getting back to this instance, correctness might come into play here.. But either way, I'm certain Mia was not expressing any prejudicial attitude.

 

[Mia]

Please don't use "Caucasian"

I'm described as caucasian by indigenous people in Canada, that's the word they use for people with light skin. I will continue to use that word, there is no stigma associated with it here.