In this post I would like to remark on a rather recent event with my language partner that allowed me to observe the way in which individuals within the Polish culture treat anger and confrontation. As usual, my observations concerning the Polish culture in this manner can not truly be assumed to be representative of the entire culture as a whole, however, as my language partner must be part of some specific subset of Poles i.e. the culture in which she was raised in and the culture therefore that her immediate and extended family were most likely raised in.
I have observed that emotions of anger and therefore possibly most disagreeable emotions are dealt with in private and not in a confrontational manner. As professor Grove has explained this may be a result of the cultural concept of "saving face" or the refusal to offend anyone. This cultural tradition of facing the most adverse situations with a smile is largely unintelligible to those of us who have been raised in an American culture. It would seem to us that the most important aspect of a conflict is its resolution so that both parties involved can take part in the more immediate benefit that occurs after the resolution. In our culture, the concept of "getting it off of your chest" is much more readily understood than that of "saving face". As a result of this cultural divide, there appear to be no simple solutions when a conflict errupts between two people that do not share the same cultural understanding of how to deal with emotions. Either party adapting to the other culture's methodology of resolution would appear to be a disasterous occurrence. The American who is unused to the Polsih understanding of "saving face" would be also unused to harboring disagreeable emotions for a prolonged period of time until a natural resolution can be achieved and therefore would be prone to small emotional outbursts in the form of sarcasm or some other affront effectively prolonging the conflict. The Pole who is unused to the American understanding of "getting it off your chest" would most likely lack the practiced model of refraining from recalling past insults and injuries into the conflict among engaging in other frowned upon practices that will also inevitably prolong the conflict. Unfortunately in this case it would seem that there is unfortunately no middle ground by which the conflict can be resolved, no combination between "saving face" and direct confrontation that presents itslef to the logical mind as the two methods employed by their respective cultures are inherrently contradictory and cannot be mixed into some universal understanding.
Besides gaining this beginners understanding of how cultural barriers work, i have recently been expanding my methods of learning polish to the reading of polish children's novels which has been an unbearably slow process (since i am realizing in my frustration that a four year old polish child has a more extensive vocabulary than i do). But at the same time it has proven a great opportunity to learn more about the culture in which polish children are brought up in and hopefully as my ability in and understanding of the polish language continues to increase i will be able to mirror the understanding of polish culture that their children grow up with through this new exercise.
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