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| Intercultural
differences ! (1) |
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Harriet
Welty Rochefort and webmaster Philippe Rochefort doing what the
French love to do most - earnestly discussing life with a French
friend, over a cup of coffee on the terrace of a bistro. |
A few stereotypes of
how the French and Americans often see each other....
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The Americans see the
French as ...
Read about the image of France
in the US press.
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The French see the Americans
as ...
- arrogant and sure they are always
right and good, moralizing and overly religious
- people who do not know other
nations and whose press never addresses international issues
: read more about
it, see a few examples,
try our French Quiz and
read a funny letter
about it
- people
who do not take criticism
(see some of them...)
- de grands enfants (ie, people who are naive and have no,
or a too short, history)
- people who have free access
to guns and who use them to shoot each other when things go wrong
- people who are arch-capitalists
and only think about money
- Clik for the image of America
for the French in history,
the popular image
of America and what the French
do not understand about America
- etc...
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| Of course these are broad generalizations and once
Americans and French really start talking to each other and explaining
their societies to each other, the stereotyped vision changes.
There's more room for "grey" in what is generally seen
in black and white. See the mutual
stereotypes of the 25 European countries |
A psychoanalytical view....
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Pascal
Baudry is a Frenchman who
lives in California where he runs an organization, WDHB, that
holds seminars on international management. His cyberbook
gives fascinating explanations of intercultural differences between
the French and the Americans :
- For him, the key factor is in
infancy : the fact that Americans are weaned early and toilet
trained late when the French are weaned much later and toilet
trained much earlier (Pascal Baudry is a psychoanalyst, was
trained as an engineer and also got and MBA degree)
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- Later, education
develops major differences : schools help American kids become
independent and autonomous (their mother says : "have fun
") whereas French kids learn the principle of authority
(the mother says : "be good "). Read more details in
French Toast.
- According to Baudry, the major
cultural differences come from infancy and education :
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Americans |
French |
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- optimist and positive : value present
and future ; good at action
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- pessimist and negative : value past ;
good at analysis and criticism
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- binary : "it is true or false"
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- contextual : "it depends"
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- social identity is based on the
individual
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- based on being a member of a group
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- law and contracts must be respected
; everything is in the contract once it is signed
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- try not to get caught ; signing a contract
is just the beginning
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- a contract is not linked to the
relationship
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- the contract is strongly associated
with the relationship
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- process oriented : everything must
be clear and documented ; reacts as planned
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- like grey zones and nuances ; very
creative ; very quick to react and sometimes more inventive
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- try to get a win-win deal
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- if the other one wins, it means
that I'll lose
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- DOING : you are judged on what you
do
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- BEING : you are judged on what you
are
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| An example : with the
same word ("to do" and "faire"), you |
get two very different meanings
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- positive : a "doer" is
someone who gets things done
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- negative : a "faiseur"
is someone who is arrogant and obnoxious
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| DID
YOU KNOW THAT. For Baudry as for many observers, there are fewer
differences between the French and the Japanese than with
the French and Americans ; in both France and Japan, the relation
with the authority principle, the individual and the group, the
importance of not being blunt, etc.. are very similar and both
countries have a long feudal history. Baudry links it to the
fact that they have the same toilet-training and weaning traditions. |
Anti-French America...
| Contemptuous : about the evidence of Iraqi
threat (as brilliantly demonstrated by Colin Powell!) "...so
convincing that only an imbecile, or maybe a Frenchman, could
conclude differently... " (NYT Feb.5, 2003). He was
refering to massive destruction weapons (which are still to be
found). Read my comment
about it and read a letter
from a Harvard student. |
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Some revealing perceptions about France (from a Poll published in Figaro Magazine,
July 2004) :
- Only one American out of five
ranks correctly France in terms of economic power (among the
5 major economic powers) : the American image does not correspond
to the economic reality and is a conventional traditional view
; 25% rank France beyond 10th ! See more
detail.
- Many Americans ignore that many
industrial French companies are world leaders in their field
and keep associationg France with wine and perfume. See more
about it.
- As seen by Americans, France
is a very different country
from the one we know her (read Guillemette Faure about it)
- More to come....
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France and the French, as seen by the U.S. press : zero, except for clichés : read
more about it
Visit miquelon.org, the authoritative site on French-bashing,
with appalling quotes and links to racist and hate sites. See
a few examples
and more about French-bashing.
Hate the French ? See a list
of a few anti-French books...
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And how about French-bashing ?
- A very typical form of French-bashing
is what I would call "collateral
bashing" : you
take one very negative thing on one side, and something about
the French on the other. The reader or the viewer will make an
involontary association and that's it. For instance, you put
in the same article "...Jack the Ripper killed nine women....(and
further along) .... Jacques Chirac declares that it is time to
subsidize cheese..." : the reader may conclude that Jack
the Ripper was subsidized by France. Read my column about it
and see a few documents to substantiate it.
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About French-bashing, visit an
excellent site on French-bashing, read a "letter"
I received and read Paris
Diary (after a trip to the USA). French americanophiles are
very hurt by French-bashing : read a letter
about it.
This is the cover page of the
New York Post (Feb 14, 2003) about "the Weasel Axis"
and Iraq evidence... (still to be found!)
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- Racist ? : Knox (see above) says : "No
other national or ethnic group appears to get the same continually
negative treatment in print media reserved for France and the
French, with the possible exception of Arabs or Palestinians,
and even there, the treatment is not so much cultural as political,
linked to a specific context or event." He also says
"If one were to substitute, for example, "Mexican"
or "Japanese" or "Indian" for "French",
what would reader reaction be ?". Try to do it the next
time you read an article about the French in the NYT!
Read my editorial about American
racism...
- The French are irritating...
In 2002 the British European
Commissioner Chris Patten, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs
Joshka Fischer and his French colleague Hubert Védrine
expressed the same (negative) opinion about the policy of the
US government. Only the latter was heavily criticized by the
US Press and the US government. One year later, Russia, Germany
and Frence opposed the (absurd) invasion of Iraq. Condoleeza
Rice, then adviser to president Georgez W.Bush said : "Forgive
Russia, forget Germany, punish France". Says Colombani:
" ...the President (of the USA) is the headmaster and the
Europeans are the students. Whenever there's noise in the class,
without even turning around, the professor designates the French
student as the author of the disturbance "
- Read Jefferson about the benevolent French
people...
- More to come
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| THE
ANTI-FRENCH QUOTE OF THE YEAR was provided by President George
W.Bush himself when he said "You know the trouble with the
French, they don't even have a word for "entrepreneur"
(!!!)" (Sunday Times, July 21, 2002). |
Stereotypes
: what other countries think of France and the French
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(source
: Francoscopie 1999)
- the Japanese : sophisticated,
conservative, elegant, art
de vivre, noisy, brutal and dirty, cheerful and patient (see
a letter from Japan)
- the Americans : creative, not
open, cold and wary
(and anti-American)
- the Dutch : culture, respectful
of human rights, welcoming and open
- the Danes and the British :
disorganized and aggressive
- the Poles and the Swedes : inveterate
talkers, exuberant, impatient, distant and inhospitable
- the Swiss : unsafe, crime
- the Germans : they say "happy
as God in France"
- the Belgians : messy, inefficient,
self-satisfied
- the Brazilians : the French
do not like children
- all of the above : arrogant.
My God!!
- Read Frischer
and a quote by a writer from Quebec
; Nadeau, who is Canadian, wrote "France is a mouse with
the skin of an elephant ; America is an elephant with the skin
of a mouse" !
And the French about themselves
:
- "The French constitute
the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and
the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration,
hatred, pity or terror but never indifference" (Alexis
de Tocqueville)
- "General de Gaulle is
right to believe he truly incarnates the French, he is wrong
to believe it is flattering" (Jean François Revel)
- Read about France as seen by
Charles de Gaulle in the
History section.
- More later...
It is funny to observe that many
of the stereotypes about the French (arrogant, frivolous, quarrelsome,
etc...) were the stereotypes about the Gauls by Roman or Greek
authors : read a few
quotes about it !
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From the American
Press :
- In
The Washingtonian (who reads that?) dated July 1997, a
certain David Brooks, described as "liking to vacation in
France" (I'd hate to meet him) writes :"Other nations
have accepted their diminished stature. They meekly accept the
spread of American popular culture, American political might
and the increasing dominance of the English language. But not
France ! The French are too great a nation to let their sense
of glory be brought low by something as trivial as reality"
and also :"You despise them (the French) a lot of the
time, but you can't help admiring them, too. Especially because
they always lose".
- "...
Crushing taxation may be one reason that an estimated 5 million
Europeans tried to become permanent U.S. residents last year.
Or perhaps they are
simply tired of drinking lukewarm beverages with Lilliputian
ice cubes, driving Altoids box-sized cars, or smelling too many
Frenchmen who clearly could use a shot of the ozone destroying
effluents formerly found in spray-on deodorants...." (The Washington Times, House Editorial, July
22, 2001)
- "...the
USA and France do have different interests. And on those interests,
the USA will continue to act as a unilateral superpower. It will
because it can. The stark fact is that America is a lot more
important and visible to France than France is to America."
(The International Herald Tribune, February 8, 2002)
- More to come...
The British gutter press
provides an endless flow of anti-French views. Examples of the
traditional French-English love-hate relationship:
- "I do not dislike the
French for the vulgar antipathy between neighbouring nations,
but for their insolent and unfounded airs of superiority"
(Horace Walpole 1787) from the "I Hate the French Official
Handbook"
- "Oh please, spare us
all from France.... What a worthless bunch of bullies and braggarts
the French are" (Julie Burchill, Sunday Times July 7,
1995)
- More to come...
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| USEFUL
TIPS.... The world famous comic strip books "Asterix
and Obelix"
(more than 310 million sold) give an excellent idea of how the
French see themselves : the whole world is against them but they
do not care ! In a small village, totally surrounded, with the
whole world against them and particularly the powerful Romans
(meaning the Americans...?), they have fun eating, singing and
drinking, and the Romans are afraid of them. They survive thanks
to the magic potion elaborated by their druid and which gives
them a formidable strength and because they are more astute that
the external world which keeps bugging them when all they want
is to enjoy their life and eat wild boar in their lengthy banquets...
Read these books (in English) : they are a lot of fun and you
might learn something about the French ! See a cartoon of Asterix and Obelix
and read what Roman authors wrote about the Gauls : you could
write it about the French! Near Charles-de-Gaulle airport, the
"Parc Asterix" is a theme park devoted to these characters
: it is smaller and less spectacular than Euro Disney but not
bad at all. It is interesting to observe that this quintessentially
French character was created by René Goscinny (of Polish
origin) and Albert Uderzo (of Italian origin), illustrating the
melting-pot of the French society. |
French Artists no one knows outside France
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Language
is very important for the French and, in many cases, it does
not translate easily because the themes are so deeply rooted
in French culture that they would not touch a non-French listener
or reader. For example :
- The most largely read French author of
the 20th century was San-Antonio : under this pseudonym,
Frédéric Dard wrote around 200 books, each of them
selling an average 400,000 copies. They illustrate the Rabelaisian
side of the French perfectly (from François Rabelais 1494-1553)
: sex, scatology and puns ; they are clearly impossible to translate
but very funny indeed.
- One
of the most cherished singers of the 1950s-1980s is Georges
Brassens who, accompanied only by his guitar and
a bass, sang wonderfully poetic (and often off color) songs ;
everything is in the words, sometimes from the most famous French
poets (Victor Hugo, François Villon, Lamartine, Jacques
Prévert, etc).
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- The most successful (in France)
French films did not have
a brilliant career (or had no career at all) in the USA : the
film that attracted the largest audience (>20 million) is
"La Grande Vadrouille" (1966), starring Bourvil
and Louis de Funès and "Les Visiteurs"
(1992), with Jean Reno and Christian Clavier, also a big success
in France was a total flop in the US.
- Other very famous (in France)
French artist include Johnny
Hallyday (rock singer), Isabelle Adjani (movie star), Coluche (comedian), Maurice
Pialat (film maker), etc...
- More about French singers
- More to come
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The American artists the French like the best ...
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Of course the French know and
like most major American artists but, not to mention Jerry
Lewis, the French love some American artists who do not seem
to be as widely appreciated in the U.S.A..
- A typical example is Woody
Allen, who is probably one of the most popular film-makers
in France and Michael Moore and Clint Eastwood
are also very well regarded.
- Some American artists living
in Paris - singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, orchestra conductor
William Christie, pianist Jay Gottlieb, dancer
Carolyn Carlson, comedian Django Edwards, actor
John Malkowich (in Provence), writers Douglas Kennedy
and Nancy Huston (Canadian, in Berry), etc...-are also
very popular
- In the past, the French loved
Nina Simone, Mort Shumann, Man Ray, Josephine Baker (before
WWII), Eddie Constantine (in the 1950s), Sidney Bechet
and Kenny Clarke among many Afro-American
jazzmen, Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Chester
Himes, among many Afro-American
writers, etc ... who lived in Paris in the 1950s
- See the choice of American artists
by a very respected left-wing
magazine
- More to come ...
See a
list of American artists and writers having resided in France
and American writers more
popular in France than in the USA ; for the most popular
French personalities, click
here
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More on intercultural differences
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To more intercultural
To intercultural
management
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Back to home
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For more on intercultural
differences, order Harriet Welty Rochefort's
books :
- "French Toast, An American in Paris Celebrates
The Maddening Mysteries of the French",
St.Martin's Press, New York, 1999
- "French Fried, The Culinary Capers of An American
in Paris", St.Martin's Press,
New York, 2001
More on Harriet's books (excerpts, upcoming
events, testimonials, etc..)
Together or separately, Philippe
and Harriet speak about Intercultural
Differences : click
here for information.
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