"They call me the plantation negro"

A few years back I was asked to look into traditional Caribbean song texts - the main research question being whether and to what extent these would show a different sexual morality. While analyzing these songs I found it hard to interpret the sometimes shocking racism of popular and apparently uncontroversial songs.

In particular:
"They call me the plantation negro,
for work to me is an enemy.
I leave working to the ox,
for God created work as a punishment".
(A mí me llaman el negrito del batey, / porque el trabajo para mí es un enemigo. / El trabajar yo se lo dejo todo al buey, / porque el trabajo lo hizo Dios como castigo).

The history of these songs led me to the following explanation:

Black snow in Omsk

Last week, Omsk was covered twice in black snow. While unusual, one does not need too much phantasy to come up with plausible explanations. No reason for concern, according to federal authorities. Not as bad as when it snowed white powder in summer, although the aluminium silicate crystals did not prove to be unhealthy either. But just to be safe, let's keep our children inside, refrain from sporting activities and not touch the snow with our hands ...

“Look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? Interesting article by Guy Deutscher in the New York Times (summary of his forthcoming book Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages), discussing teories that relate language with ways of thinking.

Deutscher distantiates himself from the Whorf theory giving language absolute supremacy over thinking and quotes Roman Jakobson stating that “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” Gender difference is an example: while French and German oblige their speakers to explicitly distinguish male and female friends, English doesn't; but on the other hand it does not stop its speakers from making that distinction if they wish to do so. Research even hints at the possibility that linguistic gender distinctions determine emotional connotations: Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant.

The most surprising examples relate to how languages refer to space: whereas most languages use both egocentric coordinates (left, right of where I am standing), and geographic directions (north, south, east, west), there are languages that only use the latter type of directions. Speakers of the aboriginal Australian Guugu Yimithirr will therefore say, for instance: “I left it on the southern edge of the western table,” or “Look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Such references are a clear sign of a different awareness of space.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html.

Research Interests

My research interests in a broad sense are related to understanding the development of social theory in a historical context. In my studies of Spanish history, I have been especially interested in the censorship phenomenon, not only by analyzing censorship criteria and mechanisms, but also its repercussions in the development of political and social theory.

More recently my attention has shifted to Intercultural Communication. I found that the explanation of cultural differences in this new discipline is weak or non-existent (“historically eclectic”, as Hofstede states). I am interested in understanding whether observing and measuring cultural behaviour lead to valid conclusions, and to what extent these observations are determined by cultural perspective.

At the same time, my professional interest in the development of higher education curricula has led me to explore the relation between academic learning and professional performance. I especially seek to understand the development of managerial expertise and to apply these findings in the design of hospitality programs.

I-Shou University

Last May 6 and 7 I visited I-Shou University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I gave two guest lectures on "Intercultural Communication" and "Learning Management and Becoming a Manager: Two Different Things".

I-Shou University is part of a large complex on the outskirts of Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second city, with the University (15,000 students), an international school, a hospital, a 4 and a 5 star hotel, a mall and a theme park (both to be opened soon), all owned by the same investor. I understand that the "E" in E-Da World (name of the theme park and mall) refers to the owner, "Da" standing for "big". As all (167!) Taiwanese universities, I-Shou faces the problem of adverse demographics and has opted for an active internationalization policy. Our cooperation is the result of this, and I hope this experience will be extended to the international school and ours in Madrid.

My visit was to the International College of the university. Hard to tell, from a short visit, how good a university really is; facilities are hardly an indicator. I was impressed by the I-Shou students, who not only showed up in large numbers on their (lecture-free) Friday, right before the Mothers' Day weekend, but also asked serious questions. The first thing, almost unthinkable in Europe, the latter very rare; one should expect this to be even harder for more introverted students.

We have two students now doing their internship at the Crowne Plaza during its (sometimes chaotic) opening stage. "After this", they confided me, "we can face any challenge in the world".

A Sampling of Chinglish

For the last two years, the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to clean up English-language signs and menus to rid them of their malapropisms, like these examples.

Source: New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/03/world/asia/20100503_CHINGLISH.html

Working Internationally: the W-Curve

Reflection on the W-Curve of students during exchanges and traineeships abroad

The so-called W-curve is a known phenomenon in literature on expat experiences. Originally it was thought of as a V, reflecting the deep crisis people may go through at the start of their international experience. It turned into a double-U when researchers realised that this crisis would repeat when expats went home after a prolonged stay abroad.

That the W is a reality is something that I have not only experienced for myself; I have tutored many Ws over the years, mainly with Dutch students. The last few years, working with Spanish students, I have noticed a differently shaped, assymetric W though. The homesickness crisis being more profound, home (family) support will not seek to help the individual overcome the crisis, but will exercise pressure to avoid it alltogether by cancelling the international experience.

This can be interpreted as a consequence of the Individualism-Collectivism dimension. Education is not the start of an individual venture, but a socialization aimed at providing the community member with a set of commonly recognizable experiences, and the documents to prove it.

This may be an element that seriously affects both the individual's and the community's competitiveness. I believe we as educators should insist on the development of personal autonomy through international experiences.

Stereotypology and stereotypometry

Since several decades, there has been an increasing interest in studying cultural differences. Initially, these studies focused on ways of approaching people, negotiating and similar practical matters, but since the 1980s the focus has shifted to the underlying patterns of thinking. In his famous Culture’s Consequences (1980), Hofstede set the trend for research into differences in values between different countries. In this paper, I will examine the premises of this type of research and its alleged objectivity. Can these studies really reveal the essential values of cultures around the world, or are they just a scientific cover-up for stereotyping?