2/18/20; Week 7:Differences in Manners

Be Careful with your Food, you Could Cause a War. 

At a round table in the middle of Lebanon, my sister sits with her boyfriend and his family for a meal in a nice restaurant. They laugh and talk, using chopsticks to dip their food into the bowl of sauce they each have. My sister dips her pastry into the sauce, but loses her grip and the pastry plops into the sauce. She tries to go back in to rescue it, but her boyfriend discreetly squeezes her arm and shakes his head firmly with wide eyes. Under his breath, so no one can hear he says "don't reach back in for it." She was to pretend she'd never dropped it. 

In Lebanese culture, they have some strict table manners. My sister nearly broke one of them. It's very rude to dig around in the sauce with your own chopsticks even if you did drop your food in there. He later explained this to her, that his family would have been pretty shocked if she'd done what she was about to. 

Now imagine my sister was a diplomat having an important dinner with an international ally, and no one had been there to stop her from committing such a sin. It could have had disastrous implications. They would have been insulted, or thought she was a slob, which might have caused them to consider her whole country as offenders. A diplomat being rude to another country can cause horrible things- even wars or betrayal. This goes to show how important it is to know about another country's difference in manners. 

Even on a smaller scale, such as the TESOL classroom, a difference in manners and interpretations of those manners can end very badly. Say I'm teaching a class of students in Thailand, and to congratulate them on doing something right, I pat them on the head- a part of the body they considered very sacred. Touching it is incredibly disrespectful. Without knowing I just made that student feel horrible, and probably ruined his experience in class. This can disrupt learning and possibly even self-esteem issues. That's a big deal! 

To think that a difference in a simple mannerism such as touching someone on the head, or doing something to your food that seems normal to you- can cause such a negative reactions in others! It's crucial we be careful of our mannerisms around other cultures- especially our impressionable young students. 











Sources: 

https://video.byui.edu/media/06+Difference+in+Manners/0_xc0a34gb

https://people.howstuffworks.com/13-examples-of-good-and-bad-manners-around-the-world3.htm