Assignment

Answer either two questions: each questions need more than 150 words

1. The subtitle of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong is "Why We Love France but Not the French." How would you interpret the title and subtitle of the book?

2. In thinking about North American perceptions of the French, Nadeau and Barlow note:

The way we came to see it, the way the French think is like a landscape on which they built their structures. Different things move the French-as if they had different ropes, gears, and springs inside them. Oddly, Anglo-Americans can see that the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Indians are different, and that these fundamental differences shape national characters and the way things are done in those societies. Why can't we do this with the French? (xii)

What do you think? Why do you think North Americans have a difficult time accepting that French culture might be fundamentally different from culture in the United States?

3. In the Foreword to Au Contraire, Asselin and Mastron refer to the tendency to see one's own culture as the norm and other cultures as abnormal. Think about a time when you were involved in some kind of cultural misunderstanding. Perhaps you misinterpreted an act or gesture and later found out the motivations behind it. Or maybe someone misunderstood you. Or it could be that you witnessed two people that completely misinterpreted cultural signals during an interaction with each other. (We are not talking about language here, but culture.) Share that experience and say what conclusions you drew from this episode?