14 July 2016

Why Aren’t We More Curious?

Questions, questions…

by Richard Pooley

Like probably every British immigrant in France, I have been shackled to my smartphone for the past three weeks, following the follies of British politicians. Occasionally I have sought solace in the few bits of non-Brexit news which have managed to elbow their way into the headlines. One that continues to intrigue me is the Village Visitors Mystery.

The village of Kidlington lies five miles north of Oxford. For the past few weeks hundreds of tourists have been arriving in coaches to take photographs, smell the flowers, walk around people’s gardens and even, in one case, ask if they could mow a resident’s lawn. Nobody seems to know who they are or why they have come. They are from the “Far East” it appears but whether they are Chinese, Korean or Japanese is not clear. Villagers and reporters have advanced several theories. Many imagine that Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders and Love Island are so popular in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo that people will come half way around the world to see anything connected with these TV series, however tenuous. One local asked a friend living in China what he thought. The friend suggested that Kidlington was being marketed in China as a typical English village, which visitors can take in on their way to nearby Bicester Village shopping centre. Amusing though much of this conjecture is, what has puzzled me is precisely that: it is all conjecture. Only one person it seems has tried to solve the mystery by asking the visitors themselves for an explanation. One villager said to the BBC “A neighbour did try to ask them where they were from but they didn’t speak any English and we didn’t get very far.”

But if the visitors could not make themselves understood, how come one asked if he could cut someone’s grass and others have asked if they could use residents’ toilets? All Chinese, Japanese and Koreans learn English at school these days (for a minimum of 10 years in the case of the Japanese) and although few still speak it well, they can often read it much more easily. Did nobody think of showing them a map of east Asia and pointing to China with a universally-understood questioning look? Why in all the coverage of this story can I find only one report of somebody asking the visitors the obvious questions: who are you and why are you here?

Why don’t people ask more questions of each other? This is a puzzle that has been bugging me for much of my life. Does part of the answer lie in culture and education?

For example, in my experience people in the USA tend not to ask a lot of questions during a typical dialogue. I well remember a night flight I took from New York to London about 15 years ago. Two American women across the aisle from me began chatting. The conversation went something like this:

1. “I’m going to be in England for 5 days.”
2. “We’re in London for 2 days. Then we go on to Paris and Rome.”
3. “That’s nice. I love Paris. You should go to Notre Dame and take a boat on the river at night. So romantic!”
4. “We have just 2 days there and only 1 in Rome.”
5. “Oh, you can do Rome in a day. We’re only in London for a day this time. Then we go to Bath, Oxford and Stratford. We’ll be taking in a play at Stratford.”

And so on. Now, the two women were having a genuine dialogue. They were listening to each other and commenting on what the other person said. But I didn’t hear a single question. Unlike a typical British dialogue. If two British women had been having a similar conversation flying the other way, it might possibly have started along these lines:

1. “I’m going to be in America for 2 weeks.”
2. “Really? Where are you going to?”
3. “New York and New England. And you?”
4. “Just New York. For work, I’m afraid.
5. I see. What do you do?”

I have been back to the US many times since then on business and for holidays (my daughter now lives in Florida). I have spent a lot of time either on my own or with clients in restaurants. I have listened to a lot of social conversations and made a conscious effort to record how often questions are used when Americans are talking to each other. This is not as sad as it may sound. Part of my job is to teach people how to communicate more effectively, particularly when dealing with people from other cultures. So, this was research.

I have a theory why American social dialogue is question-light. It is because of that great American tradition of show and tell. I learned about it at first hand as the only British child in an international school in Caracas, Venezuela, for three years. The curriculum and almost all the children were American. Every Friday we had to stand up in our class and present something we had brought in from home. If you have ever wondered why so many Americans are such good presenters, here is your answer. But it also explains why Americans tend not to question each other. They expect you to state your opinions and give information without waiting to being asked.

Over the past twenty years I have noticed and noted (literally) that British and Irish social dialogues are dense with questions. French people employ fewer ones than the British but more than the Americans. An ex-colleague, who has spent all his working life in Italy, has found that Italian conversations are similarly lacking in questions as American ones.

None of this is to say that the British are somehow more curious. Otherwise why haven’t the villagers of Kidlington and the British reporters questioned those visitors from Asia? So, I remain curious as to why people in general are not more curious about each other. If any reader can enlighten me, I would be grateful. It’s a serious question. The consequence of not asking questions and not testing assumptions can be immensely harmful. Isn’t that something we have learned in the past three weeks?

 

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