Tuesday, December 26, 2017

On missing the cultural nuance that goes with language...a funny

Still working away at my thesis chapter...but here's a quick twitter joke in the meantime


Greetings on this unusually gray day, which looks more like what I think of winter as looking like, even if it still doesn't feel it.  (Last night I fell asleep to the unusual but comforting patter of rain on the roof.  I hope the reservoirs are filling up, though snow would be better than rain, maybe.)

I'm on deadline with my thesis chapter, but I have a couple of good long blog entries meditated, which I promise I will post as soon as possible.  In the meantime, here's a quick funny that I saw in El País this morning, which no doubt published it maliciously, and made sure to run the story in both Spanish and English, because everyone needs a good laugh after Christmas.


Basically, El País is delighted to report that the most re-tweeted story of the year for the Financial Times - the article that truly went viral - was a satirical column mocking Carles Puigdemont's pretensions to martyrdom.  The thing is that it went viral because his supporters didn't realize it was a joke and started retweeting it with triumphant messages about how the Financial Times was supporting an independent Catalunya, unlike stupid papers like El País.

Aside from the fact that independentistes seem to severely lack a sense of humor in any language, I do think that part of the misunderstanding might have been the kind of overconfidence that comes from understanding the words and grammar of a foreign language but not the cultural context.  (I've suffered from this, and I do have some sympathy.  Not that much, but some.)  Most English speakers would have been tipped off that the article was a joke by the first line of the article: "The world has a new and heroic freedom fighter: De Gaulle, Gandhi, Mandela, and now Carles Puigdemont."  In the Anglophone world the combination of "De Gaulle, Gandhi, and Mandela" automatically trips a "one of these things is not like the others" bell, which makes the rest of the sentence suspect.  Aside from the fact that the latter two were known for peaceful resistance and De Gaulle was a military officer, De Gaulle's prestige is nowhere near that of Gandhi or Mandela.  He is honestly acknowledged as a shrewd ally and a formidable enemy, and a fairly tough and calculating politician who cared as much for his country as for his personal glory (though possibly not more).  But he is also good naturedly mocked ("the one with the big honker" on 'Allo, 'Allo, or Susan Sontag's comment that his speeches and public gestures are "almost always pure camp").  Gandhi and Mandela are of a different order and not purely because the British were propping up De Gaulle at the same time as they were putting Gandhi in prison, and setting up the system which would eventually imprison Mandela.  Also on their own merits.

The article continues to gleefully mix political metaphors (the pacifist and the general, the anti-colonialist and the man who struggled with Vietnam and Algeria) by having Puigdemont have an imaginary dialogue with an aide in Barcelona who (when the fictional Puigdemont asks mournfully if he will ever return to gaze again upon las Ramblas) eagerly tells him that he could return "Like Lenin, by sealed train as far as Perpignan."  Of course demanding that the sealed train have a dining car is a pretty unsubtle hint that the article is satire, but again, for those who have grown up in Anglophone educational systems and familiar with Anglo-American political discourse, nothing that pairs Lenin, Gandhi, and De Gaulle is remotely coherent anyway. 

The Catalan independentistes, on the other hand, have built a coalition stretching from the far-left CUP to the pretty far-right PdeCat, and thus see nothing weird about pairing historical figures whose only common characteristic was being hailed as fathers of their countries.  Given that they have sacrificed any kind of consistent political philosophy (also known as having a plan for how to govern), all that would be left to prevent them from taking the article seriously is some sense of modesty in the face of comparison to men who genuinely reshaped the face not only of their countries but of the world.  And generally, to use a lovely Spanish phrase, the Catalans "no pecan de humilde."  (Do not fall into the sin of being overly humble.)

The re-tweeting debacle puts the independentistes incredible arrogance on display, but also their almost touching naivete.  They have really genuinely given no thought to what kind of Republic they are attempting to build, except that it won't be part of Spain.  Authoritarian with a strong executive (De Gaulle)?  Sure.  Communist and leaning toward dictatorship (Lenin)?  Why not.  An attempt at a social democracy to lessen brutal inequality, while at the same time acknowledging historic wrongs (Mandela)?  Yeah, that sounds good.  A very careful balance of an incredibly diverse coalition of competing ethnicities and languages (Gandhi)?  Well, probably not, but he was pretty cool, so why not co-opt him. 

Anyway, today's lesson is: when dealing with international affairs, you would do well to consider the cultural context as well as the actual words of a foreign language before enthusiastically or indignantly taking something up.  Or else you'll be in the position of if it looks like a moron and it walks like a moron and it tweets like a moron....

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