Travels in the Riel World

There is no doubt that Twitter has its fans and its detractors. There is also no doubt that this social networking phenomenon is affecting the way that millions of people interact online, as well as the means by which information is distributed. But can Twitter also be having an impact on a culture’s communication styles? Well, perhaps it’s not going that far, but it is certainly provoking a pretty strong conversation about communication styles in India, as reported in this recent news story.

Seems an Indian politician, Shashi Tharoor, used a Twitter post to disagree with a policy favored by his political superiors. And in the process set off a cultural firestorm over communication styles and respect for hierarchy.

That message, along with a few others mildly questioning the merits of India’s new, stricter tourist visa policies, landed him on the front page of most of India’s English-language newspapers, which accused him of a very big mistake in Indian politics: appearing to disagree publicly with his superiors on a delicate issue.

Politicians in democracies the world over have warmed to Twitter, the microblogging service, and other social media tools, like Facebook, to connect with voters…But in India, the world’s largest and most boisterous democracy, it has not caught on with elected officials. Indeed, many of India’s power elite, whether in politics, the news media or business, seem to look askance at Mr. Tharoor’s enthusiasm for a medium that collapses the distance between the governors and the governed and dismantles the layers of protocol and decorum that keep elected officials and senior bureaucrats here aloof from the everyday concerns of those they serve…

Twitter enthusiasts say the news media make a fuss about it because it usurps its traditional role as intermediary and interpreter between the powerful and the masses.

Twitter and culture. Fun stuff. And hey, if you’re interested in knowing what goes in Indian politics, then you too can follow Tharoor’s Twitter account.

Do Arabs appreciate stand-up comedy? They do. At least, that seems to be the consensus of some North American comedians who recently appeared in Jordan. Interestingly, stand-up comedy is not common to all cultures. How can it be, when such comedy often involves insulting groups of people, and in particular governments and politicians? Such freedom of speech is just not as common or as accepted as it is in most Western democracies. Which makes the experience of the comedians in Jordan all the more intriguing.

Amman, which has a reputation as the sleepiest capital city in the Middle East, has decided it wants to be the center of stand-up comedy in a region not exactly known for freedom of speech or self-deprecating humor. Stand-up generally requires a political atmosphere that tolerates the challenging of taboos and the mocking of conventions.

That is not the case here, or around the region. In Egypt, insulting the president can lead to a jail term, and officials even grew furious last year when a comedian poked fun at the national airline, EgyptAir. In Lebanon, Mr. Obeidallah said, “We were told, ‘Make fun of whoever you want, but if you make fun of Hezbollah, you are on your own.’ ”

In Dubai, all scripts must be approved in advance by the official censor. In Jordan, where insulting the ruler can lead to prison, as in Egypt, social codes and religious values emphasize conformity, tradition and respect. So it was a risk when the mayor of Amman, Omar Maani, decided he would try to find a way to bring some levity to a city mired in crisis, with Iraq on one border and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on another.

The experiment started in 2007 when an American comedy group, Axis of Evil — comics of Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian ancestry — came to Amman. “I was nervous it would not take off,” Mr. Omani said.

But it did, in a big way. The next year, Mr. Omani invited them back, and this year his city organized the festival. He said he hoped to make it even bigger next year. But there are rules. No cursing. No making fun of religion. No making fun of the king (or his family). No sex jokes. No drug jokes. And, of course, no alcohol allowed.

See the entire NY Times story for a run-down of some of the jokes and a description of more cultural misunderstandings.

Much has been written about the differences between the cultures of the United States and China, but what in practical terms do these differences mean? Hannah Seligson just wrote a business article for the NY Times about the growing trend of young Americans taking jobs in China, and about the cultural challenges that arise when people from two very different cultures try to work together. It’s a brief but insightful overview of the American and Chinese cultures and business styles. Here is an excerpt that deals with some of the cultural differences in the workplace:

It is imperative for Americans working in China to adjust, said Mr. Norman, who works on management and work force issues for multinational companies operating in Asia. “In the West, there is such a premium on getting things done quickly, but when you come to work in China, you need to work on listening and being more patient and understanding of local ways of doing business,” he said.

Ming Alterman, 25, a senior account executive at Razorfish, a Shanghai-based digital media firm, is the only American among 40 employees. He says Americans need to understand the importance of building so-called guanxi (pronounced GWAN-she). The word means relationships, but has implications beyond the obligatory happy hour, occasional lunches with the boss or networking. “In China, it’s really expected that you become friends with your boss and you go out and socialize in a way that doesn’t happen in the U.S.,” Mr. Alterman said.

The Chinese now rising in the work force were raised and educated in a system that tended to prize obedience and rote learning. Their American counterparts may have had more leeway to question authority and speak their minds. This can affect workplace communication.

When Corinne Dillon, 25, was working at a multinational company in Beijing, she noticed that her Chinese colleagues were sometimes hesitant about expressing their opinions, which she thought was rooted in views about hierarchy.

“Because foreigners are often in higher positions in companies, or even when they are not, there is sometimes an implicit respect given to them that makes Chinese people not want to directly disagree with them for fear of being perceived as impolite,” said Ms. Dillon, who is now director of sales and marketing at That’s Mandarin, a language school based in Beijing.

The difference cuts both ways. Ms. Zhao, of Blue Oak Capital, recalled her first experience working for an American at an American-run agency in Beijing. What her American boss perceived as directness left her feeling humiliated, she said. “I remember I was so embarrassed when my American boss told me he didn’t like something I was doing, right in front of me,” she said. “The Chinese way would have been much more indirect.”

Communication styles, Professor Taras said, can create workplace challenges. “Americans often perceive the Chinese as indecisive, less confident and not tough enough, whereas the Chinese may see Americans as rude or inconsiderate.” This, he said, “can lead to conflicts and misunderstandings, but also affect promotion and task assignment choice, and ultimately performance.”

There are numerous articles and books that explore some of these cultural differences. To learn more, one book you might check out is Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans by Hu Wenzhong and Cornelius Grove.

Language is a great way into the mind of a culture. But if you don’t speak another language, you can at least understand some of how another culture thinks by looking at some its favorite expressions. There was recently an article published on Matador Abroad that took a look at 10 expressions that define cultures. Here are two of them:

Shoganai, Japan - “It can’t be helped.” Japan is for the most part a very non-confrontational culture. Shoganai epitomizes this tendency because by encouraging people not to complain or try to “fight the power.” Circumstances can’t be changed, so why get angry or try to avoid the unavoidable? It’s too hot and you have walk 10 km to the nearest train station? Your boss asks you to work an extra four hours that evening? Just accept it and move on: shoganai.

Mai pen rai, Thailand - Whereas in Japan this “never mind” idea encourages one to endure hardships, in Thailand, it implies that life should be lived at a relaxed pace. This could not be more evident in the idea of “Thai time”: several days late for a gathering of friends? Mai pen rai; it’s no big deal, we can always put things off for another day, a week, a month.

Check out the other eight expressions, from countries such as Brazil, Australia and Mozambique.

There are obviously many cultural differences between the United States and China, which stem largely from the fundamental fact that one country has an individualistic view of the world and the other is a more group-oriented society. In the U.S., individual rights and self-realization are highly valued, while in China considerable importance is placed on hierarchy and respect for societal norms. It’s not a surprise that these differences even show up in the educational system, a forum where cultural values are both reflected and molded.

I recently came across two news stories that emphasized the differences between the U.S. and Chinese styles of learning. The first was a New York Times article that discussed the increasing prevalence of young Americans who are finding jobs in China after college. Within the article, there was a quote from a Chinese executive on some of the business strengths that Americans bring to the job, based at least in part on their educational backgrounds.

Willy Tsao, the artistic director of BeijingDance/LDTX, said he had hired Ms. Berman because of her ability to make connections beyond China…Another dynamic in the hiring process, Mr. Tsao says, is that Westerners can often bring skills that are harder to find among the Chinese.

“Sarabeth is always taking initiative and thinking what we can do,” he said, “while I think the more standard Chinese approach is to take orders.” He says the difference is rooted in the educational system. “In Chinese schools students are encouraged to be quiet and less outspoken; it fosters a culture of listening more than initiating.”

The second article was a profile of some Chinese students who are now enrolled at the University of Arizona. The students are part of a cultural exchange program that allowed them to take classes in China from adjunct professors prior to transferring to the United States, thus getting an upfront taste of the educational differences.

The students took classes from UA adjunct professors while completing their senior year at the prestigious high school. The professors taught English, writing, American government and geography, and taught in a highly interactive way that encouraged group work and discussion.

In China, most classes emphasize a learning style of lecture, reading and memorization, said Scott Bird, associate program director with Yangtze International Study Abroad, which organized the group. ”Unlike many of the international students coming here, they have an advantage in that they’ve had a little taste of it already,” he said.

If you’re interested in learning more about Chinese and American cultural differences, check out the book Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans by Hu Wenzhong and Cornelius Grove.

People in various cultures perceive the world differently. This is one of the main causes of communication miscues between individuals from diverse regions of the world. If you want to see an excellent example of how the meaning of simple words can vary from one person to the next, check out this article in the Christian Science Monitor in which Chris Seiple dissects 10 words or phrases that may be meant one way by a Western speaker but understood differently by a Muslim. An excerpt:

- “Secular.” The Muslim ear tends to hear “godless” with the pronunciation of this word. And a godless society is simply inconceivable to the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. Pluralism – which encourages those with (and those without) a God-based worldview to have a welcomed and equal place in the public square – is a much better word.

- “Jihadi.” The jihad is an internal struggle first, a process of improving one’s spiritual self-discipline and getting closer to God. The lesser jihad is external, validating “just war” when necessary. By calling the groups we are fighting “jihadis,” we confirm their own – and the worldwide Muslim public’s – perception that they are religious. They are not. They are terrorists, hirabists, who consistently violate the most fundamental teachings of the Holy Koran and mainstream Islamic scholars and imams.

- “Religious Freedom.” Sadly, this term too often conveys the perception that American foreign policy is only worried about the freedom of Protestant evangelicals to proselytize and convert, disrupting the local culture and indigenous Christians. Although not true, I have found it better to define religious freedom as the promotion of respect and reconciliation with the other at the intersection of culture and the rule of law – sensitive to the former and consistent with the latter.

Culture is at the root of how we act and how we perceive the world. Whether we like it or not, we are all molded by the assumptions of the culture in which we are raised. So as I read through the news, I like to find examples of actions or statements that can best be understood through the prism of culture. Here are two recent examples:

The case of the Iraqi shoe thrower

Do you remember the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George Bush during a press conference in December? Well, his case has now made its way through the Iraqi court system and he was just sentenced to three years in prison for assault of a public official. In this New York Times story about the sentencing, though, it seems that there are disagreements even among Iraqi journalists about the shoe thrower’s actions.

Among journalists, opinion was divided about whether the sentencing was fair. Some said Mr. Zaidi had been merely expressing his opinion and did not deserve to be jailed, especially since the gesture had not harmed Mr. Bush. Others said Mr. Zaidi had brought shame on Iraq, because in a society where tribal traditions are accorded respect, a host should never insult a guest…

“Internationally, Zaidi’s act is considered a way of practicing democracy, but maybe it is unaccepted in Arab and Middle East countries,” said Ziad al-Ajeeli, the head of the Iraqi Observers of Press Freedom, an organization that supports journalists’ rights.

So he not only threw a show at President Bush but, from a cultural perspective, he also disrespected the Arab tradition of being gracious and generous hosts.

Friends with Libya

The Bush administration often touted, and rightly so, that one of its foreign policy successes was to convince Libya to give up its nuclear weapons program. In return, the U.S. restored diplomatic relations, lifted economic sanctions, and dangled the future promise of military cooperation and cultural ties. According to this International Herald Tribune article, the Libyans are grateful for all of this. However …

Libyans at many levels of the government said that while they appreciated those gestures, they had been promised more…They were also irritated at a recent State Department report that strongly criticized Libya’s record on human rights, saying they expected that a friendly United States would play down the issue.

“You give something, you expect something in return; that’s the Arab way,” (said Khaled Bazelya, a director with Libya’s National Economic Development Board).

So from the U.S. perspective, there was a quid pro quo: you give up your weapons, we’ll lift sanctions and help you out in other ways. But for the Libyans, the deal meant the countries were perhaps becoming friendly. And one doesn’t criticize a friend in public, as the U.S. did with the human rights report.

Just some examples of culture in the news. Do you have any of your own examples?

You’ve heard about the British penchant for the stiff upper lip and their disdain for unseemly displays of emotion. But you wonder how true it really is. After all, we live in an age of emotion. People bare their souls on reality television shows and Facebook pages every day. Old habits, though, die hard. The British may be less formal and more emotional than they once were, but they’re stoic and serious compared to Americans. Or at least that’s what they want to believe.

A perfect example of the battle the Brits engage in between stoicism and emotion came in the public response to Kate Winslet’s sobs of joy during her recent Golden Globes acceptance speech. The event - and its aftermath in Britain - is captured nicely in this story:

Britons are a chauvinistic bunch, proprietary about their place in the world and eager to see their talents recognized abroad. So they were gratified in January when Kate Winslet, one of their favorite home-team actors, snagged a Golden Globe Award, her second of the night, for her performance as a frustrated prisoner of suburbia in “Revolutionary Road.”

That is until, failing her own actorly advice to “gather,” she began hyperventilating and burst into convulsive sobs, right there on stage…

Oh my God, was the general reaction in Britain. “Most people watching actually wanted, literally, to die,” wrote Caitlin Moran in The Times of London…

Why were they so harsh? Part of it was that, despite their increasingly American forays into public displays of feeling … many English people still feel repelled by all that capital-E emoting. Instead, said Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, they stick to the old standbys: self-deprecation, false modesty and humor.

“While British actors are dying to get those awards as much as anyone else, they are supposed to pretend they don’t really care and that it doesn’t really matter,” he said in an interview.

Students who take advantage of study abroad programs have a wide variety of experiences. In the best scenarios, they not only have a fun and enriching life experience, but also come away with nuggets of insight into the culture of a new country. That’s what happened for Laura Corser, who was recently profiled in the Boston Globe after spending a semester in Seoul, South Korea.

One of her key insights into Korean culture:

ACT YOUR AGE: “Korean etiquette is highly focused on age and rank. Often the first question out of someone’s mouth (after ‘what’s your name?’) is ‘how old are you?’ One habit I had to acquire (other than taking off your shoes when you enter a house and several restaurants or eating rice with a spoon) was the style of interacting with elders, like serving them with both hands, or with one’s free hand on the arm if only one hand is required.”

The Chinese are proud to be hosting this year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing, and they certainly want the home team to perform well. But perhaps not too well.

There was an interesting cultural note in a recent Washington Post article about Chinese rooting interests in these Olympics. It seems that while the Chinese are proud of their nation’s growing might on the world stage, some of them think it’s a bit too soon - and too showy - for their athletes to emerge with the most medals this year. It’s typical for the Chinese to be self deprecating, and this reminded me of a Chinese-born woman who used to work with my wife. She was horrified at the thought of filling out a performance review for herself at work because it would be unseemly to be too self congratulatory.

Apparently, that attitude even extends to the Olympics. Here is the telling anecdote from Francesco Sisci in his Post story:

The Olympic Games aren’t just a show for me; they’re a family affair, and one that’s turning out quite differently from what I’d expected. I’m Italian, but I’ve lived in China for about 20 years. My wife is Chinese — and very patriotic — and my two daughters grew up here…So you can imagine my state of mind before these games. I thought we all had to be very patriotic — that is, pro-China.

But when my mother announced before the games that she hoped that China would win the most medals, my wife, Luoyan, looked at me as if my mother had said something inappropriate. “Well,” she replied, “I hope that China comes in second and America will be first.”

She’s not alone. There’s a sizable undercurrent of hope here that the United States will top the medal rankings…The subtle reluctance to win may also be related to China’s being host of the games; by coming in first, China would look like a showoff. It could also be part of an idea that sport stands for economic and political might, and China knows that it certainly can’t challenge American supremacy, at least not yet.

“It’s not our moment. It would be too ambitious and too unreal to be the first in the Olympics now,” said a friend of mine at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the country’s premier think tank. “Many people, even among the leaders, think like this.”

I came across some interesting cultural insights in a recent article about Egypt in the International Herald Tribune. Although the story, on its surface, is about Egyptian perceptions of the U.S., just begin reading and you’ll discover some anecdotes that shed light into Egyptian and Arab culture.

My favorite, at the start of the article, describes the local penchant for giving a wrong answer rather than no answer at all:

Emad Refaat strode out of his workshop with purpose, his grease-covered hands pointing down the road even before he could see the road.

“Come here,” he said, his voice strong with reassurance. “Go to the light, make the first right, that’s Salah el-Din Street.”

Sure?

“I am sure, totally sure.”

But he was wrong, totally wrong..

“I wanted to help,” said Refaat, 28, who was slightly embarrassed when he was asked why he gave the wrong directions with such conviction. “I was actually going to tell you to ask the flower vendor on the corner. He knows all the streets.”

Navigating Egypt can be a challenge of understanding, not just the language, but its culture, values and norms…In Egypt, it is routine, absolutely routine, to get the wrong directions.

That is not because people are mischievous, but because if you ask for help, they feel obligated to try to help - even if they send you off in the wrong direction.

Why in the world, you might now be asking, would someone think it was helpful to give wrong directions? Here is the answer:

Egyptian society values hospitality and personal honor over precision and directness…”Here, even if someone sends you in the wrong direction, he still feels that he did what he was supposed to do,” said Hamdi Taha, head of a charity, Karam al-Islam, and a professor of communications at Al Azhar university. “He doesn’t think he misguided you. He helped. Right and wrong is a relative thing.”

This cultural explanation is as logical to an Egyptian mind as it might be illogical to a Westerner. That, to me, is what makes culture so fascinating.

A few weeks ago, I saw an article in the NY Times about the exploding popularity of “cellphone novels” in Japan.

Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists.

An interesting phenomenon, to be sure, but as I filed the thought away I couldn’t decide what, if anything, it said about Japanese culture. Now, though, thanks to a post on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, I was led to an interesting description of the cell phone novel from the perspective of Japanese communication styles.

Is this the future of literature? In Japanese, maybe. There are a number of features of Japan’s language and culture that make a cell phone novel more palatable than it would be in English. First, Japanese grammar is much better suited than English to the kind of short sentences writing on a cell phone encourages.

As a high-context language, a complete sentence in Japanese can consist of just a single, lonely verb. Japanese speakers and writers frequently and freely omit subjects and objects from their sentences, expecting the reader to figure out what’s going on. Go figure. The use of Chinese characters also serves to compact sentences. Since you don’t have to actually spell out entire words, as in English, but can represent them with an ideogram, you can say a lot more in a much smaller space.

Secondly, and perhaps just as important, cell phone novels tap into long traditions of Japanese prose and poetry. First, even a cursory examination of a cell phone novel will show a visual connection to the poetic traditions of haiku and tanka. The connection doesn’t end there, at its best the writing itself has an economy and - I’ll regret saying this - poetry that taps into the same tradition. The medium - you try typing a novel on the keypad of a cell phone - forces the writers to make every word count, and (in Japanese at least) it shows.

The themes, as well, harken back to traditional Japanese themes. The first “modern” novel (written by Murasaki Shikibu in 11th century Japan), The Tale of Genji, was basically a high school love story, and nothing has changed since then…And the long, long literary tradition there, combined with the frequent use of public transportation, means that books in general, whether written on cell phones or not, occupy a much more important place in Japanese culture than in the West.

If you’re interested in learning more about high-context langauge and other such forms of communication, by the way, you can check out some of the writings of Edward Hall, such as The Silent Language.

Remarkably, about half of the languages currently spoken in the world are said to be in danger of going extinct during the coming century. A story in the International Herald Tribune reports:

Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and likely to disappear in this century. In fact, one falls out of use about every two weeks.

Some languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.

New research, reported Tuesday, has found the five regions where languages are disappearing most rapidly: northern Australia, central South America, North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone, eastern Siberia, and Oklahoma and the southwestern United States. All have indigenous people speaking diverse languages, in falling numbers.

These facts are the result of research done by the National Geographic Society, which also ran a recent story on the topic:

…in most cases, languages die a slow death, as people simply abandon their native tongues when they become surrounded by people speaking a more common language…

“Languages not being learned by children are not just endangered - they’re doomed,” said Lyle Campbell, a linguistics professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

This summer, the Enduring Voices researchers traveled to Australia, whose aboriginal languages are among the world’s most endangered.

In the Northern Territory, the team documented three speakers of Magati Ke. In western Australia, they found three speakers of the little-known Yawuru language. Deep in the outback, they also located a man with rudimentary knowledge of Amurdag, a language previously declared extinct.

“Australia is amazing, because humans have been there for 50,000 years, and they represent an unbroken link to the past in a way that other places on Earth don’t,” Swarthmore’s Harrison said.

The Chinese are busy preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympics. In addition to infrastructure, tourism and environmental projects, the government is also apparently engaged in a campaign to rid Beijing of bad (but humorous) translations on restaurant menus. The Associated Press has the story:

Hungry visitors to next summer’s Beijing Olympics won’t have to choose between “steamed crap” and “virgin chicken” if Chinese authorities succeed in ridding restaurant menus of mangled English translations.

The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list with 2,753 proposed names for dishes and drinks, designed to replace bizarre and sometimes ridiculous translations on menus, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

Foreigners are often stumped by dish names such as “virgin chicken” (a young chicken dish) or “burnt lion’s head” (Chinese-style pork meatballs). Other garbled names include “The temple explodes the chicken cube” (kung pao chicken) or “steamed crap” (steamed carp).

“These translations either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding on China’s diet habits,” Xinhua said.

It’s the latest effort by Beijing Olympics organizers to clean up the city and ensure that the best image is presented to the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected next summer.

There was an interesting cultural snippet in a recent NY Times interview of novelist Dalia Sofer, who was born in Iran but now lives in New York. It came when Sofer discussed the communication style of Iranians.

I would think that Iranian-born women see memoir-writing as a kind of protest against a society that demands so much stillness and silence of them.

Perhaps. Even Farsi, as a language, is elusive and indirect. There’s this whole idea of taarof - you say something you don’t mean, and the other person is supposed to pick up on it.

For example?

If I am visiting you, I may say, “It is getting late; I must go,” and you say, “No, please stay,” and I am supposed to know that you really want me to go. People have to pick up on codes.

Saying what you don’t mean, but with the assumption that you will still be understood. One more example of how communication styles differ around the globe.

That’s the question posed in this recent article in the International Herald Tribune, which in turn quotes from a debate taking place among some French leaders.

France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes’s one-liner, “I think, therefore I am,” and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers. But in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet.

In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

Needless to say, not everyone agrees.

But the disdain for reflection may be going a bit too far. It certainly has set the French intellectual class on edge.

“How absurd to say we should think less!” said Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher, writer, professor and radio show host. “If you have the chance to consecrate your life to thinking, you work all the time, even in your sleep. Thinking requires setbacks, suffering, a lot of sweat.”

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the much more splashy philosopher-journalist who wrote a book retracing Tocqueville’s 19th-century travels throughout the United States, is similarly appalled by Lagarde’s comments.

“This is the sort of thing you can hear in café conversations from morons who drink too much,” said Lévy, who is so well-known in French that he is known simply by his initials BHL “To my knowledge this is the first time in modern French history that a minister dares to utter such phrases. I’m pro-American and pro-market, so I could have voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, but this anti-intellectual tendency is one of the reasons that I did not.”

Of course, perhaps the real lesson is here isn’t whether to think or not to think. What’s more interesting, from a cultural perspective at least, is that the French have found a way to think and debate about whether they should be thinking and debating.

A number of international businesspeople who work in the U.S. or with Americans have apparently spurred the development of a new consulting industry - that of the “accent reduction” coach. There is an interesting article about it in the International Herald Tribune:

It was not what Sergei Petukhov said. It was how he said it. “The way I said ‘accent reduction,’ he couldn’t understand me,” Petukhov said. That was enough for Petukhov, a Moscow native who works for the law firm Kaye Scholer as a scientific adviser, to get his employer’s approval to pay for training to decrease his Russian accent.

He is one of many educated, non-native English speakers working in the United States who take voice training and accent reduction to improve presentations, workshops and everyday conversations with their American-born co-workers.

Petukhov’s accent coach, Jennifer Pawlitschek, said that from her experience in New York, the field is growing. “Here it’s hot, and I think it’s because it’s an international crossroads,” she said, both because the United Nations is in the city and because of New York’s role in global financial markets.

Pawlitschek, who has a Master of Fine Arts degree in drama from the University of California, Irvine, said “the posture of the mouth” affects accent. She teaches how to change “the way you hold your jaw, lips and tongue,” along with stress and intonation.

She contended that the term “accent reduction” is a misnomer. “Accent reduction is learning an accent. It is learning an American accent,” she said.

English has for some time now been a common second language around the globe, used in technology, tourism and business. Now, some universities - particularly business schools - are beginning to teach courses in English, regardless of the language of the country in which the school is located. In part, this is being driven by a desire to attract international students. According to this NY Times article:

In the shifting universe of global academia, English is becoming as commonplace as creeping ivy and mortarboards. In the last five years, the world’s top business schools and universities have been pushing to make English the teaching tongue in a calculated strategy to raise revenues by attracting more international students and as a way to respond to globalization…

Over the last three years, the number of master’s programs offered in English at universities with another host language has more than doubled, to 3,300 programs at 1,700 universities…

“We are shifting to English. Why?” said Laurent Bibard, the dean of M.B.A. programs at Essec, a top French business school in a suburb of Paris that is a fertile breeding ground for chief executives. “It’s the language for international teaching,” he said. “English allows students to be able to come from anyplace in the world and for our students - the French ones - to go everywhere.”

Some argue that this is merely the natural adaptation of an older custom of utilizing a common language for universities.

Santiago Iniguez de Ozono, dean of the Instituto de Empresa, argues that the trend is a natural consequence of globalization, with English functioning as Latin did in the 13th century as the lingua franca most used by universities.

“English is being adapted as a working language, but it’s not Oxford English,” he said. “It’s a language that most stakeholders speak.”