Marco Cianci Group D 18/05/2007

Task 2 for “Seeing and saying things in English”

My Double, Steve Irwin, is an Australian that speak Broad Australian English, one of the three varieties of Australian English. So he speaks very directly and he is frank and open to communication. Australian dialect, or Strine, is littered with idioms, similes and invented words that make it one of the world's most advanced English dialects. Ironic humour is also one of the most important features of the Australian speakers so he’s ironic when speaking. Insufficient description of Australian English – minus one point.

My Italian Maxims & Counter-Maxims

Non alzare la cresta, stai al tuo posto.

If you got it, show it.

La mamma è sempre la mamma.

I want to be independent.

Negare sempre, anche l’evidenza.

Admit your guilt.

Posso anche gettare i rifiuti per terra, qualcun altro pulirà per me.

Littering is a kind of crime, we must respect the nature.

Devo rispettare chi è più in alto di me e chiamarlo con appellativi come “signore”, “professore” ed “egregio”.

All men are equal, so I call everyone by the name.

Non esagerare con gli scherzi, qualcuno si potrebbe offendere.

To make jokes is very funny and you’ll get a lot of new friends.

L’Italia ha una grande storia e dobbiamo guardare sempre al nostro passato.

We have to look to our future if we want to live better with us and with the planet

Meglio non dire le cose in faccia alle persone, ma fargliele capire.

The better way to speak is directly and honestly.

Steve Irwin’s Maxims

Respect nature

Respect animals

We must save our planet

Education is everything

We must save endangered species

We must protect our future

All together we can do a lot for the planet

Wild animals are good and not bad. Don’t kill them!

a. What I saw and heard that was "strange"

The very first strange thing that I noticed, in the Italian family I stayed with, is the fact that everyone calls the others by an appellation like “father” or “mother”. This is very stupid. I think you must call everyone by his name, he’s a man like you are! There’s no difference.

The second thing is the fact that they don’t make jokes! Can you believe it? I can’t. Marco’s brother is a fat guy, and when I started to call him fat, at the beginning he laughed with me, but step by step he began to be offended and he told me to stop.

They don’t have animals, and they don’t care about them! Marco’s mother, especially, thinks that animals are bad and dirty, when people are more bad and certainly more dirty.

But the most strange thing is that after lunch, almost everyone went to sleep instead of to go out to do a walk. And they’re not very old, they can very well go out to do a walk.

b. The pressures I felt to conform

I don’t know if they are crazy, or if I am. When I called Marco’s mother Angela, she opened her eyes wide and she told me that she’s my mother, and she’d like that I call her mother, like everyone do. As I said before, when I was joking with Marco’s brother, he told me to shut up because he was offended. When one of Marco’s mother's work colleagues called on the telephone, I treated her like she was my friend, and my mother said to me I have to talk to her with respect.

c. The values that (b.) and (c.) represent

All I said before is the result of cultural differences and cultural clash. People remain shocked in front of another culture and want the other person to adjust because they are mind closed and they think their way to see (and to say, too) things is better than any other way. A different culture is a strange thing so they have to (they want to!) ignore it and go through, taking this person with them, if possible. Now, to go into this specific situation, I noticed that Italians are less expansive than Australians, and very mind closed. They are imprisoned inside their conventions and they try sometimes to escape but they don’t really want to escape. That’s why they call everybody with their appellatives, they are excessive with the respect for the others and they demand respect to everyone for themselves too. That’s the reason why they don’t make many jokes, or they do them but very few, and not very bad ones.

d. The different way that I expressed myself in Italian

I called everyone with their names or mate and I was more expansive with other people than they was. I treated everybody at the same level, like they was all friends of mine.

Few examples of real sentences that I said and reactions

Marco’s father did the same when I put my arm around his shoulder. He look at me with a strange face and he told me if I was crazy. When we were dining, I noticed the fact that there were no animals in the house, and when I asked if they’d like a snake with them, everyone looked at me with their eyes wide open and their eyebrows lifted up. And they remained in this position for almost a minute. Nobody talked. They only looked at me like I was a ghost or something else. Then everybody returned to do what they were doing before. At the beginning of the day, I asked Marco’s mother if I could have a breakfast with a beer, and she laughed like I was joking, so I stop and I didn’t ask again.

Questa esperienza, devo dire anche molto divertente, mi ha insegnato cosa vuol dire veramente trovarsi a contatto con un altra cultura, non tanto per me, in quanto mi trovavo davanti la mia stessa cultura, quella italiana, ma per tutti gli altri che si sono ritrovati davanti la cultura australiana senza saperlo. Vedendo le loro reazioni ho capito che non è facile accettare o anche solamente capire una cultura diversa, anche se simile alla nostra. Soprattutto mi ha aiutato a scoprire quali sono veramente i veri valori della cultura italiana, guardando la mia famiglia con un occhio più critico e con un punto di vista alterato se non completamente azzerato nei loro confronti. E devo dire che gli stereotipi non sono così distanti dalla realtà dei fatti, anche se si fa di tutto per negarlo e per classificarli come cattiverie o, per l’appunto, solo stereotipi.

Per quanto riguarda invece l’apprendimento della lingua, è servito molto per capire come poter comunicare in un’altra lingua (anche se effettivamente parlavo in italiano), o per meglio dire, all’interno di un’altra cultura, per riuscire a farsi comunque capire, riuscire a comunicare anche a prescindere dal repertorio linguistico usato. Alla fine ho capito che non è il repertorio usato a fare una lingua, ma tutto il resto! Infatti anche se parlavo italiano, agli occhi della mia famiglia ero diventato veramente uno straniero (un australiano per la precisione, ma loro non potevano saperlo…) in quanto i miei atteggiamenti, comportamenti, modi di comunicare, non riflettevano quella che è la lingua che usavo, l’italiano, ma ne rifletteva una diversa, l’australiano.