ibunka TB_U7

Cultural Commentary lt l Co entary

Public Displays of Affection In this unit, we deal Yirst (Comprehension 1) with a topic that is immediately obvious to students: public

displays of affection (PDA). On page 47, an Italian, an American and a French respondent each share experiences. Italian Nadia talks about holding hands and kissing on the street. American Trevor states that for him, PDAs are OK anywhere, anytime: he is happy to “allow people to see that I love her very much.” But not all cultures are so open about affection. French Jacques explains that when he was living in the US he was actually shocked at the way young American couples display intimacy through “holding each other, kissing, and calling each other cute names”. He felt they were “all over each other”. “Get a room!”

Indeed, as Raymonde Carroll explains in the chapter on Couples in her excellent book Cultural misunderstandings : the French-American experience , French people distinguish strongly between two situations. One is when you are with your partner in public, surrounded by strangers, and the other is when you are out with friends. While people in French culture generally have no qualms about kissing in public, they frown upon obvious expressions of intimacy when couples are with their friends, family or other people they are close to. Says Jacques: “In France, that behavior is considered quite rude by people you are with (your friends or your family), as if you are excluding them or ignoring them. So, French people can be extremely individualistic when surrounded by strangers (“We are what we are, so what?”) but rather collectivist when they socialize. Overly affectionate people will be told to “get a room”. So, couples express their intimacy in more indirect ways, like allowing oneself to intervene into their partner's behavior (“I think you drank enough for tonight, darling”) or contradicting each other in debate or even while discussing more practical matters. This kind of doesn’t fail to shock American couples, who would feel uncomfortable to be around such scenes, because for them contradiction in public is tantamount to a conYlict. The triangle model of cultural comparison This is another interesting discovery that Japanese students can make, going further against the misguided notion that all Western cultures are alike. A triangular model replaces the usual us/them dichotomy : • Americans and French people both behave in quite individualistic ways when they are surrounded by strangers in a public space, yet • French and Japanese people control their “PDA behavior” to a large extent when they are in the presence of friends and family (even if there are considerable differences in the way people from these two cultures do this.)

In the Discussion activity, this student chose French respondent’s Jacques as the one that was most interesting to her. She noticed that some aspects of French culture are similar to Japanese culture. But it’s not clear whether she caught the fact that PDAs are accepted in France in the presence of strangers: “in front of people,” is not very clear. If she had written “in front of friends, or in front of people they know”, it would have been clearer.

Reading each other’s minds The unit then moves on to a deeper topic- how do couples expect to manage the everyday details of their relationship? Do they express their needs clearly and directly, or do they prefer to rely on more tacit understanding?

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UNIT 7 | CULTURAL COMMENTARY