I like the idea of giving people some help expressing themselves at work. You might be interested to learn about the Power Distance Index, and the body of work on PDI and work culture.
You’ll see if you read the comments here that some people are like “the alternatives are bullshit corporate speak and infuriate me”, and some are like “yes, at last, a way to help people be more polite / better communicators”. There’s a smattering of “this is passive aggressive” thrown in.
One of the broad pitches PDI at work types make is that the lower the PDI, the more direct communications are preferred; the higher, the more ‘diplomatic’ the communications are preferred. My vibe on your list is that it’s just a tad more diplomatic than Silicon Valley wants to be, hence the slight negative ‘passive aggressive’ reactions.
Some of the lowest PDI countries in the world are Israel, and many Northern European countries, and it fits my experience that in those places additional respect is given for bluntness - as Jan Maas in Ted Lasso says “I’m not rude, I’m Dutch.” As a broad stereotype using the alternate wordings you give would be a sign you are not someone to be respected in that environment.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s PDI is high, and I would bet that some of your alternate list there would still be much too rude; just a guess, I haven’t worked in Saudi.
Anyway, thanks again for this; if you stay interested, you might consider reworking this into different ‘cultural norms’ lists to help people acclimate / go both ways; at that point, I think it would be a very broadly useful resource.
One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
(and pupils in Denmark will absolutely not be sent to headmaster or parents contacted if they use it. At most it will be a glance from the teacher if they use it too much).
There is a rule, never swear in a foreign language, or meow at a cat, you just don't know exactly what you are saying.
Saying fuck is very context dependent. It can make you seem familiar, in a formal context that would be unwelcome (ie, we are not friends so don't talk to me as if we were pals (eg: tu, vs vous in french))
It could be a sign of directness and frankness. It can be somewhat comedy, or it can be crass, or it can be ignorant and uneducated (ie, no other way to Express yourself without cursing, a limited vocabulary)
It also depends on how often one curses and hears them. High schoolers curse every other sentence, but when their (teacher, parent etc) curses once and for the first time in years, it means seriousness and is powerful. So something like "you little fuck" can be all the way from endearing, to the most serious of threats
I understand the sentiment, but can’t follow the rule. I meow at cats whenever I meet them. It just always seemed the right thing to do. Granted, I don’t know exactly what I’m saying when I meow (or otherwise, really) - but then I don’t know what they’re saying, either, so I figure we’re even.
In any case, none of the cats I’ve meowed at over the years have ever seemed too offended - perhaps I’ve just been lucky. Barking at dogs has been a totally different story, though…
When you work as a foreigner in Japan, you can be afforded a lot of leeway in business custom and etiquette - as you as you are polite. You are assumed to be a well-meaning Gaijin who doesn't know better/proper form.
I've always assumed it is the same with meowing at cats: "we appreciate your effort. At least you didn't shit in our litter box like Jerry"
Meow at your cat and you might just learn something. I’ve successfully learned my cat’s “language.” Thankfully it’s a small vocabulary. Unfortunately, they know that I know what they want when the subject of cat treats comes up.
Funny enough, our second cat learned the local dialect after joining the family. I guess the moral here is to just gauge the room and hope for something fishy to come out of the cabinet.
Cats only meow to communicate with humans, they don't make the sound around other adult cats. It's a holdover from kittenhood that turned out to be advantageous at getting human attention, so when they self-domesticated, so they kept it. So basically if you meow at a cat you're just saying "I'm baby".
"There is a rule, never swear in a foreign language"
I'm an anglophone - en_GB.
The word fuck has been adopted by pretty much the world as a naughty expletive that generally doesn't cause complete outrage but is expressive enough to be generally outside normal and polite conversation. I think it is a triumph of people getting something right: As a complex species with disparate concepts and languages, we have managed to pick a single word to cover quite a few concepts and situations. Fuck's time has come (ooerr).
To be honest, I'd like to be able to swear in a foreign language (I can manage German and French so far but without much enthusiasm). Please feel free to reply with your finest swearing and put downs.
If you replace 'fuck' with 'procreate' or 'fornicate', it should be more polite: Oh procreation, what have you done now?
However, as Hollywood managed to promote 'fuck' as a generic expletive with no meaning, these are actually less polite, as they emphasis the meaning that was gone.
I also wonder why people write f*ck. If you want to swear, do it. If you want to be polite, don't do it. If a censoring system won't let you use fuck, be more creative. F*ck with a star just seems to say you're a pushover.
> Please feel free to reply with your finest swearing and put downs.
How about strange?
I binge-watched all of Farscape in under a month during college over a decade ago, and "frell" (usually in the form "frelling ____") seems to have become a permanent part of my vocabulary. The word is a 1:1 translation of every meaning of "fuck", used very liberally in the series.
There's a bunch more swears and work-inappropriate sayings they also leave "untranslated", but "frell" was probably the most used.
The Irish deploy the work "feck" in nearlly the same way as the English word "fuck" but it isn't considered rude. I should probably know the full etymology of both words but can only comment on the Eng.Ang/Sax version which is basically: fuck. WP etc seem to waffle about wind fuckers/fokkers etc but fundamentally, I think the word means exactly what it means - that is how words work!
Feck is a bit more intriguing. I think feck really means the same as fuck but it is the Irish sticking it to the English and turning a rude word into a simple expletive that Mummy can use. If so - good job. I would love to hear some thoughts about this from someone from the Isle.
Same in some parts of the UK—north east of England in my case. It's fine among friends, but I'd never say it in a business meeting or to my grandmother. It's all about the context and delivery—calling someone a cunt will be taken very badly indeed if you do it in the wrong situation.
It's unclear whether you're talking about the English word "fuck" or some Danish "equivalent". Either way, the word doesn't necessarily mean the same thing to people who speak different languages, or even just different dialects, do it's unclear to what extent the difference you're referring to is cultural or linguistic.
(Is there even a clear distinction between "cultural" and "linguistic"?)
The English word, used in the way we picked up from American cultural expression like TV, movies and music. The meaning is the same but the sensitivity to it is different. To us Samuel L Jackson characters are colourful and funny, not rude or abrasive, perhaps that was lost in translation.
Lenny Bruce's 1962 "Dirty Words" album is on Spotify and Apple Music; worth a listen if you've never heard it.)
Jackson's use of fuck is typically to add emphasis to a statement, and actually, I think he uses "motherfucker" a lot more than bare fuck[1], but in any case, fuck has different meanings depending upon context. Consider: Oh fuck. Fuck off. Fuck you. I'm fucked. Hey lady, you wanna fuck?[2] This fucking bug. Let's get the fuck outta here.
It's an adaptable word but still bleeped on the air in 2022. At the same time, it's okay to allude to it on primetime TV as in: "Holy mother forking shirt balls!"
Malcolm Tucker in “The Thick of It” made extensive use of the word “fuck”, my favourite being responding to a door knock with “Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” - an impressive 33% fuck content.
I feel “on the air” is a bit misleading and antiquated, and I think that’s quite relevant, because you seem to be using “the air” as some barometer of social acceptance.
Even the “cool” elderly people I know stopped listening to the radio and broadcast TV years ago. Nowadays, everything is Podcasts, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc. and none of them censor “fuck”. Our culture is generally becoming a lot more open and accepting when it comes to the use of words like “fuck” and “shit”, however words like “cunt” are still fairly taboo.
From my perspective, broadcast TV and radio are simply a measure of how many Americans are hanging onto an antiquated culture, and I’m sure there’s significant overlap between “people who listen to broadcast” and “people who still find ‘fuck’ offensive”, and it’s likely no longer just a function of age.
Thanks for sharing the Lenny Bruce but, I had no idea that inspired Carlin!
Literally the only reason i do not use Television or terrestrial radio broadcast is the advertisements. I got sick of the advertisements back in 2001, and i have never had a CATV subscription. I have an aerial now because PBS has a channel aimed specifically at children and as it's publicly funded the advertisements (including product placement) are benign or at least unobtrusive, not loud, and not about medicines. Doctors aren't watching children's programming (generally) so that's the last refuge from the billions pharma spends on marketing every year.
90% of the freemium streaming services are the same, and i'll include SiriusXM as well.
That all being said, I personally consider sectioning off parts of the language (colorful or whatever) a net positive. In my opinion, disallowing words that have "universal meaning" forces children (and people who want to run for office, be an instructor, whatever) to find better and more descriptive ways to express themselves. The alternative, as an extreme, would be two utterances: "Fuck yes!" for good things, and "aw, fuck!" for bad things.
I may just be a simple big city technologist, but there's something really vim-like about broadcast that I thoroughly appreciate. I sure hope I'm not the only one who sees value in such things!
God should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is religious and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is old school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.
The other problem is who are these people imposing those rules on us? Is this the thought police who hide behind the anonymity of public outrage and public morals but typically work for media outlets as editors, or legislators or law enforcement and judiciary? Are they an anagram of Non Technical Computer Users?
The "these people" are us, and I don't believe there's actually a formal list of banned words. Rather, Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast[1].
It's then up to us, the public, to work out whether content falls into one of these categories. NBC could, for example, choose not to bleep fuck during a daytime podcast. That would probably lead to a bunch of complaints to the FCC. The FCC would then fine NBC, and I gather, ultimately could revoke NBC's broadcasting license.
What's offensive changes over time[1]. Maybe fuck won't be seen as offensive some day, and then networks will be free to broadcast it over the air because no one complains to the FCC about it.
> Not using it in vain is one of the ten commandments:
Religion has only been around for about 2000-3000 years, and if it was banned so we couldnt utter the word god anymore, I wonder how long it would take for the epigenetics to work out of the gene pool.
In todays world, I have a hunch most kids have learnt to swear by the time they start primary school, so why the mental bondage to use a euphemism and to have an excuse to beat a kind mentally and/or physically for saying it?
Would it really bring that much chaos to the world, considering the psychological idea that something banned or illicit is more highly treasured?
Consider what happens when I say "the 'n' word" - do you think of a racial slur in your head? If so, because I do in fact mean the slur but I am not allowed to say it regardless of context, should I have just said the word to begin with anyway? Am I free from obscenity because I used a euphemism and you are a racist for thinking of the non-euphemism? The mental burden concept is iffy here.
If I was younger under the legal guardianship of my parents the N word would be No. However the news & social media has been very informative and educational at hilighting other peoples vulnerabilities giving would be agent provocateurs new angles of attack, so now I tend to associate the N word with a subsection of society getting angry at the non subsection of society using it. What I see is a subsection of society trying to own a word which can only be used by themselves. I think this happens when a subsection dont have many material possessions to keep them occupied with like toys for kids so like with religion, if you dont have much you start inventing things and laying claim to things that where there is no proof.
As to the cognitive dissonance angle, for having racist thoughts regarding a non euphemism, there is nothing quite like cognitive dissonance to mess people up, but what I find interesting about it is how it affects us as our chemistry changes, ie we age, we get more intelligent, we get wise, so then we start employing innuendo to avoid the legal and societal constraints, and there is another subsection of society which does innuendo brilliantly.
Kale should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is a health nut, and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is new school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.
Yes it was traditionally a pro health fad food - and this is precisely one the reasons Wendy’s is marketing it. That and it still has a little panache as being more “upscale” than iceberg.
In the 00sKFC tried to market their chicken as a pro health Atkins type food with none other than Jason Alexander. That one was so bad that even the fucking ad industry criticized it. Marketing the unhealthiest of fast food as somewhat healthy is not a new thing.
KFC was considered healthy by the uneducated long before that. Growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, I remember my family and my friends' families treating KFC as the healthy fast food option.
It really wasn't until the Double Down era that the absurdity of KFC was apparent to everyone.
Kale is also high in Oxalate. If you have had kidney stones, you care about this.
It's not as high as Spinach or Almonds, but it's still in the top ten.
So, maybe they need to be sued by someone who has had kidney stones, before they reconsider that idea, or at least required to put a huge warning on that item?
if you have a bunch of lettuce (like iceberg or whatever) and do an extraction - i'm not sure what type other than distillate - the resulting compound is narcotic.
You can go online or to a drug store and buy wild lettuce and/or lettuce extract and take it for pain or inflammation.
Most plants that we class as food have been domesticated to avoid some of the wild experiences that might get documented on Erowid.org but in the past were explained away as religious experiences and documented as such.
I take wild lettuce, and tumeric with black pepper fairly often. in 1998 or so there were "tobacco-less" cigarettes that my partner at the time bought me to try, i think they're probably used as props on movie sets and for people who want to look "smoker cool" without the whole cancer and emphysema aspects - these were 100% wild lettuce, and smelled like what, at the time, i assumed was marijuana. I've since discovered that more people around that area were smoking catnip/wild lettuce than weed, since they're different, and it's not really that subtle.
Plants, and how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of.
> how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of
Well if you want a laugh then, try some L-Tryptophan, a few grams a day but you can do more spread out over the day.
You gut bacteria will turn it into serotonin and you'll know why serotonin is found in the outer shell of seeds. Lets just say it can give you a toilet experience much like having a hot spicy curry, you see serotonin irritates the gut in animals so the seeds get pooped out pretty much in tact so the plants can spread around, but serotonin can cause some tissues to sting enormously which is why curry can also sting.
About 20 years ago I was also bothered by people bringing in their religion in my face too much. Then I realized that they have the right to speak their mind, same as I have the right to speak my mind, and their view of the world is as good to them as it is mine to me. I had no problem with any religion per se (I grew in places with antagonistic religions and I learned to be neutral), just with their "in your face" attitude, but I realized there is a huge differences between being polite and banning.
I dont think you realise how dangerous some of these people really are, which is why banning is essential. Cognitive dissonance is extremely dangerous and religions have caused a lot of unnecessary deaths.
This really depends on the company, at least in tech. In the US, I've never felt awkward using the work "fuck" in meetings but I've also only worked in less uptight cultures. We also would prefer the direct phrases instead of the passive "polite" ones in the posted site.
Ahh this brought me back! I wrote a paper in college about swearwords, taboo words, and euphemisms in first and second languages and interviewed one of my Danish friends, who shared similar sentiments about the word fuck. As an American, I feel trepidation to even type that word out here in a public forum lol. At least what I remember him saying is that he learned it from the film Raw by Eddie Murphy.
And you've brought me back to a childhood memory of my older brother, age 13 with a big smile on his face, brought me into the closet where he had a portable cassette player and a newly acquired copy of Raw, and we listened to it and had our vocabulary suddenly expanded to a new level.
Lol, the level of secrecy we had back in those days, no two-way headphones, no phones, just had to scurry into corners to do the things our parents would say are bad, even though they did them just in their own scurried away corners. Thank you for sharing this story :-D
One thing that is more inappropriate and offensive than using the word "fuck" is suggesting that someone is mentally ill because they're not comfortable doing so.
Such a comment annoys me, even if in jest. I feel glad that I pause to think about how my words may impact people based on their expectations. I'm not sure what you were trying to imply by "go and visit a therapist"—that I should not care at all about how others feel? Maybe you think I care too much about how they feel and too little about how I feel but I still said the word, more to share how I believe HN has an expectation of not using that word too often.
EDIT: I also have my name attached to my words here and in most places on the internet, so I'm more mindful of how things said here can be read in other contexts where certain words are more taboo.
Also just realized part of it is the worry that I'll get downvoted with little to no knowledge of why, which is one thing that bothers me on HN. This "am I playing by the rules" uncertainty, which I even feel as I type this. Is this a meta-comment that breaks some HN rule? Doesn't have enough curiosity?
All that to say there are often platform-specific norms about these things and I rarely see curse words on here.
I would say this is generally true, except in SV start up culture. "Fuck" is used so ubiquitously there that it's almost seen as weird if you don't use it frequently.
Fuck is generally very acceptable in meetings at my (large tech) company (in US at least), depending of course on context. I hear it a lot less from our APAC and EU offices though.
There is going to be a word (or several) in your native language that your grandparents would never expect to hear you say, and you would get at the very least severe talking-to from your parents if you said it in public as a young child. For those who grew up in english-speaking countries, fuck is one such word. It falls below other words, such as cunt and whore, (which I struggle to type out without asterisks or somesuch self-censoring) but it is not tolerated in children.
There are plenty of less severe words in english that can be used, such as "bloody" or "damn" which roughly equate to how those who speak english as a second language use "fuck"
> One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
Reminds me of a slide[1] DHH did at a Rails conference presentation.
I’m currently interviewing for jobs in Israel and their “straight talk” habit is honestly number one problem for me.
People never schedule meetings, they just ask for your phone number and call whether it’s appropriate for them. They interrupt you in the meetings, tell your solution is bad.
It may sound refreshing on paper, but honestly you feel treated like a low-skilled worker in a laundry or a kitchen. I’m not a Westerner, but I do come from a background of working with an English company and the difference in respect to boundaries and time is night and day.
Radical honesty is something that I would appreciate and find quite refreshing.
Offensiveness just for the sake of being offensive and trying to make other people feel powerless around you, that kind of thing I would not appreciate.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between these two.
Now, scheduling, I'm not quite as bad as the Germans, but I do require that stuff get put on the calendar, and you make a really strong effort to hold to that schedule.
If you think you can just call me whenever you want, then you can just fuck off. Not even my wife can just call me whenever she wants. Fortunately, she knows this.
I've worked in hi tech in Israel for 20 years and now have a completely international clientele that I work with, and I don't think Israelis in general are like that.
My general impression is that “corporate” structures may have some veneer of a professional workplace culture in Israel, but with startups all bets are off.
I felt like being at a bazaar where a stranger talks to you like a person they know all their life. Which probably sounds appealing for people tired of Western sugarcoating and is probably great at a party when drinks flow freely. But at workspace it just feels unprofessional and disrespectful.
Local friends explained to me that this is cultural. Workplace in Israel is catered to locals and they rarely hire outsiders or expats. People have very short distance, they serve in army together, go to parties together, hide from bombings together. So hierarchy and workspace mannerisms make little sense in that context.
Being Dutch might influence my take, but I love the no BS communication in Israel. What you describe as troublesome cuts both ways BTW. You are allowed to be as direct. Got no time? Say so. Got other priorities? Say so. Just be clear and to the point and do not waste the callers time with an elaborate story.
The explanation I got was that no one has time to beat around the bush since every single day might be your last.
That was 30 years ago when things where a lot less safe than it is now.
Thank you for sharing your insights and information about PDI (will be looking more in depth about this), and I agree with what you mentioned how based on demographics and the relationship between the two person can totally change how you communicate with them.
The basic intent of the project was to curate a list of things what you might feel like saying vs how you can say it (more professionally I guess)
Would be happy to see how the data can be improved which can be better suited for majority of people.
Idea: alter the repo to add a diplomacy dimension with a few notches in it, and invite contributions of alternate wordings appropriate for different scenarios. (The focus being on creating an obvious void in the hope people fill it with insight)
From there, I was originally imagining the site could use a slider to cycle back and forth through wordings, but the associative and comparative value of just displaying them all simultaneously in columns under each heading is probably worth the tight information density.
Maybe also alter the site (now, while trending!) to indicate you're looking for additional data (for both the situation and diplomacy-level dimensions) - the GitHub link at the bottom is a tiny bit... I have to go looking for it myself, which is very good, but you might be able to passively collect that bit more low hanging fruit by making it more of a (polite :D) call to action.
Here in Finland, if you honestly think something sounds like a horrible idea, you're essentially duty bound to say "that sounds like a horrible idea". Be prepared to say why, but don't mince words.
Even I as a New Yorker had to acclimate to that level of bluntness.
(I hate nationalistic stereotyping, but all the same I did always love this joke/guide to workplace culture):
You've just finished your report, which happens to absolutely awful in every way. You send copies to each of your colleagues and later today, talk to each of them about their thoughts.
American colleague: Good job! Excellent! Great piece of work!
English colleague: Some great material in here. A few parts might benefit from a rewrite, but its a great start.
French colleague: I think we can probably use a lot of this, but there are substantial parts that really need rewriting.
German colleague: This is pretty terrible. A few parts are ok, perhaps, but it needs a complete rewrite.
Israeli colleague: This is shit. We'll get someone else to do it.
Yes, but as vassanas points out, you are not achieving this - because it is different from culture to culture!
If you add the specific culture / region you are targeting this at, it could already mitigate that issue.
As vassanas points out, the phrases you suggest would work to your disadvantage in more confrontational cultures, because you will be perceived as bullshitting and beating around the bush, but not as a serious contributer one should listen to.
I currently work for a federal public sector client. The substitutes are all I hear day in and day out.
We can talk about what oughta be all day long; and that's a fun and important conversation of its own; but should not be confused with what is -- at my current client/project, you definitely need to learn the language if you want to be successful. And not in a "BS-y management successful", I mean get anything done including architecture and development. C'est la vie!
(FWIW, after decades of complaining and moaning, I decided to approach people / projects / relationships with at least a fraction of analytical mindset and effort that I take to technical problems. It's been both rewarding and effective and fascinating, and dear gawd I wish I paid attention to it earlier rather than spending all that time moaning and complaining. Again, we can have a discussion about how ideal world should be, and we can work toward changing it, but it absolutely has to start with actually understanding it. I'll take a look at the PDI, anything that helps understand the mechanics of work relationships is beneficial - thx! :)
As an Israeli, I'm fully accustomed and conditioned to tell others their solution is idiotic and their ideas are dumb. But having worked abroad, I've come to depreciate this "quality" more as just bad taste and lack of manners, and less as "straight talking".
It really adds little to the conversation. It's just an IDF inheritance that should be eradicated.
I think PDI negatively correlates strongly with social safety. In the IDF you are unlikely to be punished for speaking up, and in general that's true in Dutch and Israeli culture for locals talking to one another. Frankness is not punished. In more hierarchical societies where you can be put in jail for pissing off the wrong cousin, frankness can be severely punished, and stories are abound of such.
So when the social consequences shift for an individual who is moved to a new setting, then the PDI for that individual will shift hard. Hence you find this working abroad and you've adapted your communication style. But we can do thought experiments on the PDI for the following situations:
- Arab talking to Israeli, inside Israel vs inside home country
- Israeli outside Israel talking to Jewish vs non-Jewish person
- Consumer Salesperson (small commission product, very frequent close opportunities) vs Enterprise Salesperson (large commission product, lots of confirmation pre-close meetings across org, leading to the final sale)
I think in each case the PDI will correlate with the negative consequences for the speaker speaking out of turn, once they become habituated to the situation of course.
I remember asking an American vet what the communication style was within the US military and he said, "Someone who outranks you tells you what to do and there's always someone who outranks you."
How you would describe the communication style within the IDF?
It depends on your commander, you can buff your commander and tell him he is suggesting something stupid, though if he pushes it you have no real option but to do it. Though if the specific commander was all too happy to assert his rank you knew not to bother.
I guess it also depends on what unit you are in, there is likely a very big difference between fighting units (infantry, armor, artillery) with which I'm more familiar and the back-office units.
I've not heard of the "PDI" concept before this, but I believe the same thing can be achieved by simply adapting to your audience.
The problem is actually knowing your audience (as individuals) well enough to assess how they will interpret your words.
Can you assume that all Saudi's, for instance, will react well to the somewhat cloying language suggested by the OP's post? I think not. But if you don't personally know the audience it's also tricky to know what each culture's acceptably polite "default" is.
I've gotten myself into some etiquette faux-pas in the past by using sarcasm and irreverent humor around Chinese colleagues. My previous experience with Chinese folks had been limited to grad school and I had just (wrongly) assumed that such communication was OK as the default.
The minimum of polite language is higher. Profanity can get you in trouble like getting a written warning, and graphic profanity can land you in handcuffs, like insulting someone's mother. Saying son of a bitch is a misdemeanor.
My experience in big corps is that the PDI is high but the power isn't so concerned with neutral formal phrasing. Phrasing in Saudi culture can be shockingly informal even at the highest level, since open tribal gatherings were the highest authority in the land until recently. The King and Princes still run open tribal gatherings where citizens can speak informally. Corporate speak is new and still seen as intrusive to how we do business.
How PDI would express itself would be preserving face, I guess. You can't contradict superiors or even coworkers too openly and directly, you can't openly disrespect or be irreverent. All possibly disruptive feedback must be private or you're bringing shame to yourself and others.
Startups are not like that at all. They're young, irreverent, and passionate. The young people really express themselves in those spaces with barely any hint of the old school social expectations. Guys and gals taking smoke breaks together and focusing on getting the job done.
I'm really curious how this interacts with display rules, or the emotions we're allowed to show/communicate in different contexts.
When you talk of preserving face:
> You can't contradict superiors or even coworkers too openly and directly, you can't openly disrespect or be irreverent. All possibly disruptive feedback must be private or you're bringing shame to yourself and others.
Are you saying that you're not allowed to express anger to superiors or coworkers in public? Is it the way it's said, the emotion behind it, or something else that seems to matter the most?
I'll give more details, but keep in mind Saudi society's norms are in massive flux. Even specifically the things I'm saying are changing. The new nationalism is bringing down a lot of old hierarchies. This might be more useful to understand the past than the future at this point.
It's not specifically the way it's said because like I said informal speech is accepted at all level. I meant that the act of embarrassing others is very scandalous.
It's a concept called الستر (the veil or the cover) which has a high place in both the faith and the culture. Hide your own flaws, helps others hide their flaws, and if you see another's flaw don't look too closely. You could translate it to shame but it doesn't have the inner shame or guilt connotation. It's more about conducting yourself in public.
Another common concept is قطع الأعناق و لا قطع الأرزاق (rather cut necks than cut livelihoods) which puts affecting people's livelihoods on the same level as murder.
So if you criticize openly, and jeopridize someone's career, it probably won't matter whether you're right or wrong. You're violating many social contracts and there will be social consequences. The preferred way would be to approach someone privately, tell them what you think, and even better, provide a solution that includes a cover story for why things weren't done correctly in the first place.
Oops, turns out I waited too long to edit it so I'll reply here.
> I'll give more details, but keep in mind Saudi society's norms are in massive flux. Even specifically the things I'm saying are changing. The new nationalism is bringing down a lot of old hierarchies. This might be more useful to understand the past than the future at this point.
I appreciate you saying this.
> It's not specifically the way it's said because like I said informal speech is accepted at all level. I meant that the act of embarrassing others is very scandalous.
Ah, so then it's less about the delivery and more about the result?
> It's a concept called الستر (the veil or the cover) which has a high place in both the faith and the culture. Hide your own flaws, helps others hide their flaws, and if you see another's flaw don't look too closely. You could translate it to shame but it doesn't have the inner shame or guilt connotation. It's more about conducting yourself in public.
I'm curious if this applies to not just flaws but a more general "don't share too much about one's own or another's internal/private life with strangers," because, I would think it would be hard to a priori determine what is considered a flaw or not. Would this concept equally apply to publicly sharing, for example, one's biggest dreams and hopes as well?
Also, I've tried to search the internet for الستر but am struggling to find any links. Will you share some with me so I can learn more about it?
> Another common concept is قطع الأعناق و لا قطع الأرزاق (rather cut necks than cut livelihoods) which puts affecting people's livelihoods on the same level as murder.
Ah, yeah, I wonder about the etymology of that phrase. I've read a lot about how excommunication historically could equal death, as being kicked out of the human group doesn't bode well for surviving in the wild. Yet, I think it still applies today in different ways, as being ostracized or losing one's job can really wreak havoc on our emotional lives, leading to suicide, murder, and many other mortal results.
I'm curious, if one's reputation is tarnished in a part of Saudi Arabia, is it tarnished throughout? In other words, how quickly and pervasively do you think gossip spreads?
I'm not trying to single out Saudi Arabia, more so to try to understand if it has that small-town feel, where if one person hears something, everyone will hear it, or more like a NYC, where a person could reinvent themselves in some way.
Also, how easy/difficult would you say it is to choose a new career/profession?
> So if you criticize openly, and jeopridize someone's career, it probably won't matter whether you're right or wrong. You're violating many social contracts and there will be social consequences. The preferred way would be to approach someone privately, tell them what you think, and even better, provide a solution that includes a cover story for why things weren't done correctly in the first place.
I imagine this approach also works pretty well in the US (where I'm at). I think private 1-on-1 conflict resolution can be much easier than public 1-on-1 resolution, as in public, there are so many other people watching and listening and reacting in different ways.
When I think of living in a place (again, not just Saudi Arabia, I'm talking of the dynamic which I think happen in many places) where people are constantly giving cover stories, I imagine I would start to distrust a lot of what people say. Do you think that most people 1) see through the cover stories and 2) get annoyed with hearing cover stories all the time but feel afraid to say they feel annoyed?
I'm so grateful for you writing this and helping me reflect more, thank you.
I enjoy talking about Saudi culture so I'm glad you're interested.
> Ah, so then it's less about the delivery and more about the result?
Yes it's definitely about the result. The politeness of something is measured by the embarrassment it caused.
> I'm curious if this applies to not just flaws
So the origin of الستر is the Islamic command to conceal the sins of a Muslim, unless they're a known repeat offender. Here's an article about that: https://www.arabnews.com/news/480916#:~:text=If%20someone%20... So in Islam it's always worse to sin in public than to sin in private. This also leads to non-Saudis misunderstanding about rule of law and the penal code, because the punishment for drinking alcohol was whipping, but what it doesn't say is that no one was ever caught privately drinking alcohol at their own home. They get caught smuggling, producing, with alcohol in their car, at a large party, or publicly drunk. It is very rare for a victimless private crime to ever be investigated, and bringing it to public is itself a sin. You can apply that to apostasy, drinking, sex, homosexuality, etc.
So that's the Islamic origin, which is taught to grade schoolers. How it presents itself in culture is a lot more general. It's concealment of all flaws. So if you tell someone a story that makes you sound laughable, you might say استر علي (conceal me) which calls on this religious and cultural value to conceal flaws and therefore not retell this story. Or you called in sick and you coworker saw you taking a trip, etc. As far as what constitutes a flaw, it's anything embarrassing or puts you in a bad light. It could be anything.
I don't believe it extends to sharing any and all information. It's not a general tight-lipness. So it wouldn't apply at all to dreams and hopes, unless there's something specifically bad about them.
> Ah, yeah, I wonder about the etymology of that phrase.
It's not a religious text, but it's very popular to reinforces a religious and cultural value. It's also not literal in its comparison. It's an exaggeration to show how sacred livelihoods are. And in a sense there is a belief that they are sacred. Muslims believe livelihood (رزق) is granted by God, and so interfering with that is an ugly crime.
It present itself in a very funny way in today's world. You go to a small town baker's Instagram page, and then a customer would write a negative comment about stale goods or high prices, and the comments would gang up on the customer rather than the business! They would use that specific phrase, advise them to go private, if you don't like it don't buy, and so on.
> I'm curious, if one's reputation is tarnished in a part of Saudi Arabia
Yes reputation is very important. I don't have a concise description for it, but here's an example. If you're marrying outside of your tribe/community and proposing to "strangers", a lot of asking around will happen. Providing references is common. The bride's father will want to talk to your friends, your boss, and anyone in your circle. Before they ask them about you, they will remind them of integrity and honor, and tell them he's asking for his precious daughter, "imagine if he was marrying your sister or daughter would you accept him", and so on. People whose reputations are ruined, for example a man who's a known drunk or criminal, might not be able to marry any Saudi woman.
This kind of social investigation also happens for jobs to a lesser extent. What people say will be more important than the CV. It's commonly known that when you're asked such questions for a job seeker or marriage suitor, that the truth is a matter of integrity and honor, rather than concealment. After all they're asking in private.
In that sense it's not gossip. It's commonly practiced and formal. Gossip, of course still happens, but also seen as a sin against the value of concealment.
Although this all happens, I can say I don't know of anyone who's completely locked out of an industry that way, not for a small thing. I heard of a man who forged a contract at work once, and he got fired and became completely unhirable. He had to leave the country. But that case seemed exceptionally sensitive. Livelihood will always be more important than reputation.
Barring such glaring ethical issues, I think switching careers is not too difficult. The actual obstacle is that people kind of pigeon-hole you into your major/job like "you studied computer science we can't fund your agricultural business" kind of thing.
> Do you think that most people 1) see through the cover stories and 2) get annoyed with hearing cover stories all the time but feel afraid to say they feel annoyed?
It can be difficult when accountability is important. Everything can be systemized these days and information is abundant. I imagine it was extremely difficult in the past when your entire workforce colludes to hide their flaws, and the leadership colludes to hide the organization's flaws, and so on. But unless uncovering the cover story is of practical importance, you're expected to let it go.
It's simply a different environment. I've seen it play out for good and for bad.
Good kids caught by police doing dumb things being let go to cover for them, backstabbing and blackmail might hurt the person doing it more than the target, you feel safer because even your superiors cover for you, and so on.
But the incompetent, the lazy, the corrupt also abuse an environment where accountability is flexible. While a normal person with a conscience will appreciate the cover when they slip up, it's very hard to get rid of the people you need to get rid of. Everyone knows they're lazy but they keep their job to avoid scandal and cruelty.
For example, if a coworker is obviously and visibly missing, their teammates will still scratch their heads if asked about them. "I might have seen them. They're around." Saying they didn't come today when asked, out in the open, is as rude as it gets.
"I feel really angry that you said my colleague was lazy. As her manager, I know that she has been working late every day, including the weekends, to hit these deadlines."
EDIT: Another example: "I feel quite angry right now and it probably has less to do with what you did and more to do with the fact that I haven't eaten yet. So before we do my performance review, could we get lunch so I might be in a better mood to hear it?"
I think that would be a way to express anger connected to facts. Do you think that is still something people should keep to themselves?
I'd say it could be a slippery slope. But so can passive aggression. I believe the emotion often leaks out in other ways regardless, whether thru our comments or our distancing or more distrust etc. I guess I believe that articulating it can stop the slope from slipping so much.
I definitely have my bread buttered on the low PDI side, but this is a fascinating concept and I'm sure will help me manage cultural differences productively.
I did have a read about that, the PDI makes a lot of sense to me and is pretty interesting if a little pseudoscientific (nowhere can quite seem to pin down how the numbered ratings are calculated but it seems arbritrary) - this being said its not clear if a thing such as cultural difference can have numbers put to it easily if at all, and I'd largely agree with the ratings of countries I have experience with.
But man that got me into looking at some of the other measures used alongside that, and the "Long Term Orientation" might be some of the most inane, incoherent garbage I have ever heard. I'd say it's asian exceptionalism but it's not even that - it just doesn't make sense. Every explanation of it seems different, and most explanations aren't internally consistent, literally including examples of the same thing at opposite ends as though it were different. As far as I can tell the original concept seems to have started out with "lets make a rating that puts china at the top/I heard of yin and yang once" and gone from there, but even then as described it usually is stupid, putting things like "belief in tradition" and "desire for stability" as things in the SHORT term column and "adaptability" in the long term column like lol what
People that aren't in power not being able to communicate equally with those in power is why we have 1.Gossip[1] 2.Sarcasm[2][3] and 3.Passive Agressiveness[4]. Sometimes it even manifests as quiet protest and doing small destructive things like not meeting deadlines or other small acts of sabotage[4].
This is rarely understood by those in power though, they would see it only as disrespect rather than the only way to regain some small amount of power.
It's also worth thinking about not just broad strokes societal culture at a national level, but also family culture, like the metafilter post[5] about guess vs ask cultures explains, some feel comfortable asking for anything leaving the responder to say no (putting the load from the requester to the requested) while others guess and try to predict and will only ask when they know it will likely be a positive response (putting the load on the requester instead of the requested). Ask culture is probably more healthy, but despite that the real problems are when the two clash.
I appreciate so much in this post. I also had never heard of the Ask/Guess culture description. I wonder if there could be another component, a Tell culture. I don't ask you, I don't guess, I just tell you how it is or what you'll do.
I think that's another way we communicate and often is even more so a way to avoid the possibility of being rejected. If I ask, you can say no. If I guess, then I can maybe figure out if you say no before you actually do so you don't have to. If I tell you, then there's not much way for you to say no, or if you do, then it is a clear violation of the agreement.
I think this happens with some people who are in military culture or other top-down hierarchies where there seems to be a "Tell culture" (I don't like labeling cultures too much with such identity descriptors because I think it can lock them into existence). And I think that can be one of the hardest things for people trying to reintegrate as veterans, to go from telling people what to do and being told what to do to telling your 5-year-old what to do and they say no...and then having to learn to guess or even ask...or more deep down, opening up first and then asking, maybe the most emotionally raw version.
Direct language also suggest commitment, so clearly you dial that back in higher positions where every word is put on a scale.
It still remains bullshit corporate speak as the language isn't just more polite, it tries to stay non-binding, basically a refusal at communication.
It doesn't say anything about hostility either. A support worker will still smile while having unsavory thoughts about the customer. Hence many people think of it as a dishonest form of communication which it basically is.
If you represent a company in public, you have no real choice not to use it. Rules of amoral businesses.
Your comment on different communication styles between cultures reminds me of a (famous?) metafilter comment, the difference between Ask Culture and Guess Culture:
That is a hilarious thread. My take is that the initial request is quite rude, not for asking, but for including a veiled threat that they won't be able to see each other if it doesn't work out. This is classic manipulation, and I hope the couple said no!
"I hope this works out /so/ we can see each other!"
Implies that they won't be able to see each other unless the host allows the guest to stay with them. Of course, this only works as a threat if the guest assumes the host wants their company in the first place. I don't find it to be a threat because the guest would only be withholding something the host doesn't want in the first place. That said, changing one word makes a big difference:
"I hope this works out /and/ we can see each other!"
This way seeing each other is disconnected from the hosting.
FWIW I don't find the request rude in the first place. The asker doesn't know she's making the request of someone who doesn't like her. Jeff seems offended that the woman mentioned his name ("I don't even know this woman.") But to me, that's just being polite as opposed to leaving him out entirely or referring to him generally (i.e. "you and your husband").
Thanks for explaining. I'm a native English speaker who grew up in a (fairly?) strongly guess culture, and I'm still really surprised that anyone would find this rude or threatening. It's interesting to see the very different interpretations.
"I hope this works out /so/ we can see each other!"
It's not physically threatening, but this makes a strong implication that the relationship will be potentially damaged by refusing to comply with the request. Consider this alternative, "I hope this works out. It would be great to catch up either way!" This makes it clear that the relationship will not be harmed if this doesn't work out.
Yes, I am reading into things, and I was raised as a Guesser but consider myself bilingual. IMO being an Asker is fine, but if you hold the relationship hostage, it's Demanding, not Asking.
I can't speak for my culture generally, but my personal interpretation of the quote is that it is fairly neutral in its current form. I read it as saying that cohabiting will make it easier for the guest to see the hosts.
That is to say, I interpret this:
"I hope this works out so we can see each other!"
As this:
"I hope this works out because I would like to see you and by living under the same roof for a short time we will be able to see each other!"
I have to say, though, that this might be dependent on my relationship with the person. If I like them, I'm more likely to have the generous interpretation of this phrase.
No[1]. Unless a surprising proportion of the Jews from the "Former USSR" are from the Baltics, there are far more Israeli Jews from e.g. Morocco than from Northern Europe.
What are some good resources for learning more about the PDI, its meaning and how it's measured?
Also, how does one apply this information?
Lastly, what about international teams? I have colleagues from different parts of the world - how would this apply in a meeting where some are USAnians, some Canadians, some German and some Eastern a European.
Lastly, the US is huge. SoCal is probably different from Missouri from Cambridge, MA.
Living in the UK I used to find all the French acted very rude. Then I spent enough time in France to realize the French don't find each other rude, it's just the way they communicate. Once you understand the culture it all makes sense, they're not trying to be dicks.
I like the idea of giving people some help expressing themselves at work. You might be interested to learn about the Power Distance Index, and the body of work on PDI and work culture.
You’ll see if you read the comments here that some people are like “the alternatives are bullshit corporate speak and infuriate me”, and some are like “yes, at last, a way to help people be more polite / better communicators”. There’s a smattering of “this is passive aggressive” thrown in.
One of the broad pitches PDI at work types make is that the lower the PDI, the more direct communications are preferred; the higher, the more ‘diplomatic’ the communications are preferred. My vibe on your list is that it’s just a tad more diplomatic than Silicon Valley wants to be, hence the slight negative ‘passive aggressive’ reactions.
Some of the lowest PDI countries in the world are Israel, and many Northern European countries, and it fits my experience that in those places additional respect is given for bluntness - as Jan Maas in Ted Lasso says “I’m not rude, I’m Dutch.” As a broad stereotype using the alternate wordings you give would be a sign you are not someone to be respected in that environment.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s PDI is high, and I would bet that some of your alternate list there would still be much too rude; just a guess, I haven’t worked in Saudi.
Anyway, thanks again for this; if you stay interested, you might consider reworking this into different ‘cultural norms’ lists to help people acclimate / go both ways; at that point, I think it would be a very broadly useful resource.