OLET1115 Essay: Exploring (Im)Politeness in Global Society

This essay analyzes a scenario involving a British teacher and Italian church officials, highlighting cultural differences in communication and politeness. The essay emphasizes how differing cultural norms led to misunderstandings. The teacher's insistence on cleaning the marble walls and discussing payment, contrasted with the father's calm acceptance and the Italian preference for indirect communication, illustrates the clash. The essay also discusses broader aspects of cross-cultural communication, including forms of address, topics of conversation, asking for things, and body language, using examples from various cultures. It suggests strategies for navigating these differences, such as personal communication, teaching appropriate lessons, accepting cultural norms, and cross-cultural training to avoid similar misunderstandings in a globalized world.

Running head: ENGLISH
English
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

2ENGLISH
The situation that is happening in the given scenario is because of the cultural
differences. The teacher and the students were from British grammar school and they were on a
trip to Florence, Italy at the Church. It is clear from the incident that the teacher was angry with
her students and wanted to apologize for the father in the Church. Father, on the other hand, said
that it was okay and there is no need for any further apologies or cleaning of the marble walls as
was urged by the teacher.
The tension in the situation was mainly rising because they kept on repeating the same
thing over and over again without paying attention to what the other person was saying. On the
other hand, people in Italy will likely try to speak or express their opinion in a loud and clear
manner in the company friends or close acquaintances even when speaking on a controversial
topic. Apart from this, the father in this scenario was still maintaining a very mellow and calm
organized attitude (Isosävi 2020). However, in Italy people do not like to express their own
opinion publicly in front of someone senior like boss or teachers (Walker 2017). However, the
teacher from the British grammar school was unaware of this and kept on insisting cleaning the
marbles of the wall and also for paying the money when needed. However, this is not right
because the father of the church kept on saying that they will get grants and will be able to clean
off this scribbling on from their marble walls. The teacher, on the other hand, kept on insisting
on knowing the details of payment and if they can pay for the cleaning. However, she was asked
to compensate for the damage caused by her students but this was heating the situation even
more as she was not listening to the instructions being given by the father.

3ENGLISH
This situation could have been handled by following the norms of politeness. It is not
polite in some places like Japan and China to express their own opinions on a public forum in the
presence of any senior. The same is in the case in Italy. However, they do encourage expressing
opinions clearly and loudly in the presence of closed ones but not in any public forum. However,
the teacher was violating this norm (Michno 2017). It was a social platform and a place of the
public visit where she should have listened to the father rather than expressing her own opinion
or ideas. This was rude and impolite on her part.
If I imagine myself at the place of the teacher then I would try to solve this situation in a
personal one to one session with the father in a very patient and polite way and not in front of the
children. Moreover, when all the other kids were scribbling names on them all, I would not have
punished my students. I would have taught them the right lesson in a different way. I would have
accepted the opinion given by Church father and also gained some knowledge about culture and
norms in Italy, I would have also arranged for a cross-cultural training session for my students so
that they gain a piece of good knowledge. Cross-cultural training is always useful for students to
survive in a Global context (Türker and Akbarov 2016).

4ENGLISH
References
Isosävi, J., 2020. Cultural outsiders' reported adherence to Finnish and French politeness
norms. Journal of Pragmatics, 155, pp.177-192.
Michno, J., 2017. Greeting and leave-taking in Texas: perception of politeness norms by
Mexican-Americans across sociolinguistic divides. Spanish in Context, 14(1), pp.1-27.
Türker, L. and Akbarov, A., 2016. Cross-cultural variation in perception of politeness
norms. British Journal of English Linguistics, 4(6), pp.1-10.
Walker, T., 2017. Politeness norms: a pilot study on the accomplishment of apologies by learners
of Italian. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, p.28.