View Single Post
(#10 (permalink))
Old
mercedesjin's Avatar
mercedesjin (Offline)
JF Old Timer
 
Posts: 443
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: St. Thomas, USVI
07-09-2009, 06:44 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM View Post
It's a survey of hotel staff who deal with people from all over the world in their hotel...from hotels from all around the world. So sure, there are different cultural ideas, but the question becomes, who makes the effort to not be rude in said culture and who doesn't. It seems the French, in this case, don't make that effort, and is probably why 90% of French travelers don't leave the country.
First, I read that article on Yahoo and I didn't see any references to where this survey was being taken. I didn't see anything said about the survey being taken all over the world. It didn't give a list of specific countries. If I missed it, please point it out.

Moving on from that, though... How can someone make an effort to not be rude in another culture if they don't know about that culture?

If you're going to say that there's information in things such as guidebooks, I personally don't think those are so helpful. I can go out and buy a guidebook to how to act in Japan. I can learn not to sneeze in public and to slurp my noodles. Guidebooks don't teach a person everything about that culture, though. Guidebooks can't teach a person how to act in a culture - not as well as being born and raised into that culture. So while a person can think, "Make an effort to not be rude," I think there's a strong possibility that a person may or may not know what is rude - because, like I said, ideas of politeness vary from culture to culture.

One last thing: maybe you can say "it seems that MOST of the French," because it's not best to make generalizations like that.


LOVE: pass it on
Reply With Quote