“The English are not sweet”

[brief notes on culture, communication styles, and interpretation of tone]

Photo by David Hurley on Unsplash

Before I became a theology teacher, in my previous career in the IT sector, I was for many years part of a group with a number of team members based in or from India. As a deacon, the parish in which I served until a recent reassignment is at least two-thirds Hispanic/Latino. What I learned about electronic communication with both Indians and Hispanics (via Skype or Teams with my Indian colleagues and WhatsApp with the Spanish) is that what all my life I have considered ordinary, get-to-the-point efficiency in communication is perceived by them as unfriendly or rude.

For example, messaging an American coworker, I might have sent or received a message like this: “Hi N, do you have the latest report from the new workflow?”

With my Indian coworkers, I learned that I couldn’t do this—and I learned it from how they communicated with me. I remember how odd I thought it was the first time a colleague in India messaged me like this, in four separate messages:

“Hi Steven”

“How are you? Hope all is well”

“About the new workflow”

“Do you have the latest report?”

That open-ended “Hi Steven” really threw me the first time. Just “Hi”? I would never send an American coworker a message like that (or at least I never used to). And then “How are you?” What are we, hanging around the water cooler? I was genuinely puzzled by this chatty intrusion into my workday! “About the new workflow” … well, what about it? Can’t you finish your thought in one message?

What I came to realize is that this is courtesy to them. As far as I could tell—this was just intuition; no one ever spelled it out—a fragmentary query like “About the new workflow” gives the other person the opportunity to respond to the question before it’s asked (“Yes, I’m compiling the report right now, I’ll send it over in a few minutes”). Perhaps it’s politer to let people offer things than to ask for them? Perhaps asking directly can imply that the other person should have been on the ball and sent the report already? I’m not sure of the exact nuances. I learned to adjust to the expectation.

Something similar is true with the Spanish community at my old parish. For example, friendliness for the Spanish is expressed in very casual and frequent use of terms of endearment, even with people you barely know: “hermano,” “hermanita,” even “mí amor.”

Suzanne, who interacted with Spanish parishioners more than I did in her work managing the perpetual adoration chapel, learned that, in person as well as electronically, she couldn’t just ask for something outright. This was also true, in a different way, with parishioners from various African countries; a greeting and exchange of pleasantries is expected in every exchange, and failure to do so can give offense.

A woman from the Spanish community once confided to Suz, rather euphemistically, that “the English are not sweet.” To them, people like us come across as cold and stand-offish. And in a way it’s true: English-speaking Americans do have more of a personal boundaries thing.

Except, of course, it’s not all English-speaking Americans, or at least not to the same extent! Where I live, one often hears African Americans casually address one another as “brother/sister” or call younger people especially “baby” or “darlin.” And of course terms like “sweetie” and “honey” are much more broadly used in the South than in the Northeast where I live.

So I guess it’s my own tribe that’s more prickly than most! Did these experiences change the way I interact with people of my own culture? A little. I think the messaging culture among American team members in my IT job did become more chatty and cordial as a result of the Indian influence.

Mostly it’s helped to raise my awareness and make me more proactive in trying to recognize and adjust to the expectations of others. By now I suppose most older people are aware of the unwanted connotations of punctuation in text messages, particularly with younger generations—another nuance I intuited texting with my children before I began to see confirming news coverage. What I didn’t immediately pick up on is that the aversion to punctuation naturally pairs with an aversion to text messages longer than a sentence or maybe two. Texting Suz or my mom, I can write whole paragraphs, but with younger people it’s one sentence per text, and not too many texts at a time.

All of which makes me wonder: What expectations do I bring to the table to which other people are consciously adjusting? I’m not aware of any, but then I wouldn’t be! And while I don’t think I make judgments about others based on their communication styles once I understand them, the business about being found “not sweet” makes me wonder what other judgments I might be subject to. I’d love to hear other people’s experiences and thoughts in this area.