Learning to speak 'merican

I’m puzzled about where Americans get their reputation for being direct from. It doesn’t seem to spring from their use of polite modals or indirect requests. Across the pond, someone else has been investigating a similar question about another nation with a reputation for directness – Germany .

Sabrina Malon-Gerland is an American who has been living in Germany for many years – initially working as a business English trainer and now a cross cultural trainer. She noticed that German speakers may avoid, or even reject, some English pragmatic strategies when they they don’t fit their perceptions of appropriate behavior. So she set out to investigate and began by comparing German and native speaker responses in discourse completion tests.

She found:

Overall, the data shows the German population is relatively well versed in English politeness devices. In fact, if being polite was determined simply through the frequency of politeness devices, it could be said that the German population in this study is politer than the English native speaker group. The German group showed a higher frequency of the following devices to soften their disagreements: I’m sorry; I’m afraid; auxiliary modals; I think; and I suggest… English speakers, among others, stereotypically label Germans as “too direct”, hence implying impolite. If this data represents the kind of language used in German business, it must be asked what exactly is considered to be “too direct”?

To read more on Sabrina’s research, check out her blog.

By: Wendy Firmin

Indirectness is an interesting feature of politeness (which I’ve written about elsewhere). Like most people, I don’t always say what I mean. So for example, I might say, ‘Do you have a pen in your bag?’ when really I mean ‘I want a pen’. And people ask for things indirectly like this all the time.

• Those biscuits look nice (Give me one)
• Is anybody else here feeling hot? (I’m hot. Open the window)
• Have you finished with that newspaper? (I want to read it)
• Are you going past a post box on your way home? (I have a letter I want you to post)
• Are you busy? (Help!)

The ambiguity in requests like these has social benefits. If I can get what I want because you want to give it to me, then life will seem like it’s harmonious and pleasant for us both. And if I haven’t gone on the record with a request, then it’s easier for me to rescind or modify it later. So I might say ‘Those biscuits look nice’ hoping you’ll offer me one. But then if you say ‘Yes, I bought them for my kids’ school’, I can say ‘Oh how old are your children now?’ and we can both pretend I wasn’t asking.

Now people often say Americans are very direct, but I’m not sure how true that is, particularly when it comes requests like these. An American would say cookies instead of biscuits and mail box instead of post box, but they seem just as likely as me to make requests in this roundabout fashion.
In my experience, Americans are pretty much like Brits when it comes to saying what they mean directly. In short, they don’t.