BACKGROUND PAPER
ON
THE CULTURAL IMPACT ON COMMUNICATION
1.
“I am not in my dinner plate today.” “As for me, I’m a tuna fish sandwich.” Without
context or cultural understanding, we’d never know that the first sentence is translated from a
French phrase meaning, “I’m not feeling well today,” or the second from a phrase meaning, “I’d
like a tuna fish sandwich please,” in Japanese. Cultural background can influence not only how
perceive the world around us, but how we attempt to interact and communicate with that world.
In today’s joint, multilateral environment, we need to understand how our own cultural
communicative perception and tendencies translate, literally and figuratively, to other nations
and cultures. When lives are at stake, ineffective communication is simply not an option. Two
major areas worth exploring are direct versus indirect communication, as well as the emotional
aspect of communication.
Since American military culture is different from the greater
American culture, it’s also worth exploring how these two concepts apply to military life. The
combination should give us a better picture of how we relate to the world around us.
2.
To start off, Americans are often seen as blunt, i.e., direct, and indirect communication is
generally criticized1. We are not ones to “beat around the bush,” evade difficult topics, or simply
not speak up.
While there are exceptions to this generalization (politicians, mediators,
diplomats, etc.), as a society, we lean towards direct communication. There is one key area of
speech where we do revert to indirect communication though, and it is somewhat unique to
Americans. We use euphemisms extensively. According to the built-in dictionary used by
Apple Computers, a euphemism is “a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one
considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.”
TSgt Morse/Flight M/M08/671-0286/sam/20 Nov 13
We use euphemisms for everything from curse word replacement (“what the truck”), discretion
(“I’m going to go powder my nose”), and avoidance of guilt (“we need to downsize the company
to reduce overhead”). Just like in the examples in my introduction, these phrases replace words
in ways that defy literal translation, and can cause significant confusion with someone from a
different culture or language background.
Because we use euphemisms to avoid saying
inappropriate or insensitive words, there’s an emotional aspect to the placement of euphemisms.
Let’s look at other ways in which emotions play into American communication.
3.
As much as Americans are direct, we are also excitable. In a recent blog I read where
foreigners chimed-in about what they notice about Americans, a common thread was that
Americans are seen as excitable and dramatic. In their eyes, we think everything we do is
“awesome” or “epic.” Adjectives and adverbs fly in every sentence until even the most intense
descriptors begin to lose their meaning. This penchant for exaggeration has grown so much that
it has caused dictionary editors to redefine seemingly absolute words like “literally” to reflect the
non-absolute, casual usage in the modern vernacular2. This phenomenon is not limited to casual
conversation. Emotional wording has permeated many aspects of societal communication to
include traditional media. The semi-recent boom in Internet bloggers and other social media
producers has caused an influx of emotionally charged content into a once-neutral news
environment. Editorializing runs rampant and even American readers are beginning to have a
difficult time differentiating fact from fantasy (or in this case, personal opinion). We need to be
aware of our society’s continued push towards bigger and better things and make sure what we
say truly lines up with what we meant.
4.
So, how does all of this culture and communication apply to the military? We are
indoctrinated into a culture of direct orders, military communication, chain of command, and
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reporting, all lending themselves to streamlined, direct communication that is generally
emotionally neutral and unbiased.
The Tongue & Quill, our guide to written and oral
communication, further helps us communicate more directly and efficiently. All of this is meant
to simplify communication and minimize misinterpretation. Still, we have our own pitfalls that
mirror our civilian counterparts, albeit with a twist.
Probably our biggest is the use of
euphemisms3. While we certainly use euphemisms in the same ways previously mentioned (e.g.,
avoiding saying a soldier killed someone by saying they “neutralized the target”), we also use
them to declare how “awesome” we are, aggrandizing commonplace jobs and objects. We’re not
cops; we’re security forces. We don’t have a packing list, we have a personal mobility items
checklist. We’re the tip of the spear, the head of the pack, best of the best, leading from the
front, and all the while doing a job of equal importance to the person sitting next to us. We have
to understand how our use of these terms can cause skepticism and indifference from our foreign
partners, and temper them accordingly. Additionally, excessive use of acronyms and jargon,
while intelligible to other Airmen and others in our Air Force Specialty Codes, can lead to
confusion for those who do not understand the context or meaning of the words. These are all
things to keep in mind.
5.
In conclusion, knowing yourself is just as important as knowing who you’re
communicating with, which is also just as important as how the message is communicated. The
three work hand-in-hand to communicate the idea. Airmen in today’s joint environment need to
know their cultural tendencies towards direct, blunt communication, as well as towards
exaggerating truth to make things sound more “epic.” We are not immune to these phenomena
in the military – they just take-on different forms as we use euphemisms to aggrandize ourselves
and avoid talking about breaking things and killing people.
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Works Cited
1
Cynthia Joyce The Impact of Direct and Indirect Communication (The University of Iowa)
Retrieved from
http://www.uiowa.edu/~confmgmt/documents/DIRECTANDINDIRECTCOMMUNICA
TION.pdf
2
Ed Payne and Dorrine Mendoza Dictionaries change: This is literally the end of the English
language (CNN) Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/living/literallydefinition/
3
T.C. Journalese blacklist: Nuclear deterrent (The Economist) Retrieved from
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/07/military_euphemisms
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