Comments on: Cultural Colloquiums and Blog Writing

By: Blog Struggles: Why Should Your Blog Have a Focus « Lorelle on WordPress

Blog Struggles: Why Should Your Blog Have a Focus « Lorelle on WordPress — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 19:34:38 +0000

[...] Cultural Colloquiums and Blog Writing [...]

By: mrpeteh

mrpeteh — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:26:12 +0000

Lorelle,
Your joke is a great illustration of The Curse Of Knowledge, found in one of my favorite communications books, “Made To Stick”. Read it, if you haven’t.

(BTW, thanks for your many helpful postings; I’m ramping up towards blogging…your encouragement is gonna be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many words preparing to spill out in the days, months, years to come…)

By: Are You Writing Well for the Living Web? « Lorelle on WordPress

Are You Writing Well for the Living Web? « Lorelle on WordPress — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:59:24 +0000

[...] Cultural Colloquiums and Blog Writing [...]

By: Are You Really Writing For Your Blog Audience? at The Blog Herald

Are You Really Writing For Your Blog Audience? at The Blog Herald — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:09:21 +0000

[...] May 4, 2007 at 8:15 am by Lorelle VanFossen – In Cultural Colloquiums and Blog Writing, I shared a joke that I had grown up with and thought was very clever and funny that I told to a [...]

By: Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:25:19 +0000

Your story reminded me of a last minute decision to spend Christmas in Jerusalem. We had plans to leave the country to head out to somewhere with snow and had to cancel. Homesick for the sounds and scenes of the holidays, we headed for a week in Jerusalem. I asked the hotel concierge where we might find some Christmas. He had no idea. We walked into the Old City to find the Swedish Christian Information Center was open, a tourist mecca for Christian tourists, but rarely open during the last few years of the Intifada as there were no tourists.

I went inside and told an elderly woman at the information desk, “I’m looking for Christmas. I haven’t had a Christmas in over 4 years. Where can I find Christmas?”

“Where in the world could you possibly be,” she hissed, shocked and stern at the same time. “And have no Christmas?”

“Israel.”

Her brow cleared as realization dawned. “Ah, yes, well, of course.”

There is no Christmas in Israel. Sure, there are spots of Christmas in the Christian Arab and foreign nationals compounds and other sections inside of Israel. My husband loved it because he could do last minute Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve with no crowds because it was just another day of the week. There is really no Christmas as Americans are used to in Israel.

The fact that she was so outraged that I could be anywhere with no Christmas, when she herself was staying in a country that has no Christmas, was too funny.

Did we find any Christmas? Yes, sorta, kinda, too funny, but that’s another story.

Colloquiums and society sayings are limited to just words. Events, holidays, dates, and cultural symbols are also perceived differently depending upon your familiarity with the culture and society. This all makes you think, doesn’t it?

By: kamla

kamla — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:08:00 +0000

It was our first semester break and a bunch of us (mostly non-US students) were celebrating on Christmas eve. Suddenly one of the students burst into our apartment shivering from the cold, but looked visibly happy that he had finished grading the papers for his prof and mailed the results to the professor at his home address. He was a teaching assistant (TA). We cheered and rushed to get him some food and drink. Out of the blue one of the other grad students (it was his third year in grad school) asked him,”Were you asked to post the results?” The TA answered:”Yes.” The grad student responded: “oh, oh, you better go and rescue that mail from the mail box. What the prof meant is that you needed to post the results on his door so that students can look at their grades the next day.” And, you should have been there to see the utter look of dismay that crossed the TA’s face. He went back and actually tried to retrieve the mail from the mail box. Did you think he succeeded?

Post meants to mail in other parts of the English speaking world. Post, in the US, also means to paste or post something on a board etc.

Then there was the time when my professor and I were speaking at cross-purpose.Why? It all had to do with the word “moot.” That is another story.

“Forhereortogo,” is another term that flummoxed most of us when we went to the cafeteria to order food. You see it translates into: “For here or to go….”

Kamla

By: cardoso

cardoso — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 01:55:32 +0000

Oh well. A few years ago, in a mailing list, Some lady asked about a software. I started a mini-how to, very friendly, with:

OK, let’s do it together, Little Grasshopper…

The women went crazy.

“ARE YOU CALLING ME AN INSECT? DO YOU THINK I’M A BUG? SOMETHING YOU STEP ON? RESPECT ME! I’M A MOTHER, A TEACHER AND YOU DON’T KNOW ME, SIR!”

And went like that for pages and pages.

Of course the 95% of the list who recognized the reference were amused, laughed their lungs off and never moved a finger to help me. (don’t blame, I’d do the same for them)

At the end I explained with a single-line reply and the “humm… oh, sorry then” of hers was great, because the “I made a fool of myself” of her original rant could not be washed out anyway.

By: Petit

Petit — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:59:24 +0000

Really amusing and thought provoking.

Though old enough for The Lone Ranger, and I think it’s been on television her in the Far North, I’m not entitled to a Mensa membership I didn’t get it. Beautiful story!

I remember “Houston, we have a problem” and can connect to that. That was a real event and more severe in its possible consequences.

Thanks for your thoughts on culture and language. Interpretations of of language is always a matter of context and consensus.

A hug also to bloglily for your views on humanity.

By: timethief

timethief — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:56:20 +0000

I live on the West Coast of Canada on a small island that’s popular with tourists from everywhere in the world. Every summer I speak to many potter customers from many different cultural backgrounds and from time to time I have used regional expressions that have caused them to cock their eyebrows in puzzlement and led me into lengthy and not necessarily satisfying explanations.
The most recent one occurred when a Korean lady pointed out a racoon hanging from the wire on the run attached to our chicken house. I immeditately pantomimed shooting a rifle to my husband and sang “Davy Crocket, Davy Crocket, King of the Wild Frontier”. He slipped inside the barn to get a rifle while I tried to explain that running towards the raccoon was not the way to go. They are very clever and very persistent animals and my approach would see to it that my husband made sure that “his tail became a hat”.
I had never considered the many exclusively North American expressions I use every day in terms of blogging. Now you’ve really got me thinking about the use of culturally inclusive and exclusive expressions in my blog writing. Thanks for writing this post.

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:28:35 +0000

The Situation reminds me of the Troubles, in Ireland. The interesting thing about a shorthand like this is that it’s so in the moment — for people in the midst of such violence a simple word is enough because the conflict is already on everyone’s mind. I’m just so sorry such violence exists.

And kudos to you Lorelle for pointing out that we can use language to exclude as well as include. I think you can still use cultural references, you just have to acknowledge what they are for people who don’t know. (For example, I used the phrase “short stack” in a post a month ago and just put a little definition in parenthesis for those who don’t eat pancakes in diners.) One thing I really like about wordpress is how international it is — it’s a great tool for reminding us of how various we are — and, in the end, how much we have in common.