You Said What?! The Importance of Context in Culture
Posted by C. Holland on May 25, 2009Moving to a mission field that speaks our same language, it’s easy for people to feel that it’s one less hurdle to doing ministry in another culture. I now view it as an obstacle that creeps up later, causing distress for many missionaries.
Initially, we did not have to spend months or years learning a totally new language, unlike many of our missionary friends in other fields. This obviously made our preparation timeline go much faster, which isn’t a bad thing. Our contacts in our field gave us a short list of phrases to learn, and we thought we were on our way.
Until one of us asked a young woman a question that, in our mission field’s culture, was very, very vulgar.
Coming from a Christian missionary made the whole scenario even more uncomfortable for her, even though she was used to some of the weird phrases we Americans sometimes say. In our culture, it was completely harmless, something a pastor might have said from the pulpit. No matter how innocent the intent was, her lack of context in our culture (and certainly vice versa) made communication go horribly, horribly wrong despite the fact that we were all speaking English.
Sometimes it’s understanding definitions. On our ministry path we encounter many different denominations, most of which would be recognisable by name in most Christian contexts. However, as we introduced ourselves as Baptists we got a lot of perplexed looks from people. We didn’t fit their definition of how a Baptist dressed or acted, primarily because they see them as what Americans would describe as one particular denomination of Baptist, not the spectrum of Baptists found Stateside. We found the way Charismatics and Pentecostals were defined were opposite of how we would describe each. And the list could go on and on.
I suppose that our biggest lesson in all these situations is to observe and try to understand what things mean, or to anticipate how definitions of the same group may be completely different. And we’ll still make mistakes, I know, but thankfully those in our mission field have given us so much grace in these matters.
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May 26th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Ok, you know you’ve got to tell us what you said!!!
May 26th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Once I went into a store in Nicaragua to buy mattresses for a group that was coming. The Spanish word for mattress is “Colchon” but for some reason I dropped the “L” and told the attendant that I wanted to buy 20 “cochones.” He got a funny look on his face and then another Nicaraguan in the store who had lived in the states turned and said in NY-accented English, “You mean ‘coLchones’, man. You know what you just asked for?”
“No…” I relied. “Well,” he continued, “you just told him you want to buy 20 gay people!” The word “cochon” is Nicaraguan slang for “gay” – prob closer to the English word “faggot.” SO we live and learn!
So, NOOO…my slip could’nt have meant something harmless like “doormat” or “moldy cheese”…it HAD to be something sexual! That’s just my luck! I guess all missionaries have these stories.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:22 am
We asked the young woman if she had “broken in” her new husband. We meant it like new shoes, etc., so I’ll let your mind wander from there.
Love your language error! I’ve heard many when going between two different languages (my Spanish teacher once asked a large Mexican lady if he could warm his tortillas in her bra–he meant oven). But we even heard another one within the English language context that your error reminded me of…
A very Southern man was sent to California to lead a religious denomination. In his first speech to a large group of pastors, he proclaimed that we should all be “flaming faggots for the Lord!” He meant the bundle of sticks, the Californians mistakenly thought he meant something else!