He had no idea he was so clueless

On my first visit to Xi’an where we lived for many years, I met a local artist who became a dear friend to our entire family. She invited me to join her for a meal with several other local friends as well as another foreigner, this one a guy from Germany.

In the midst of our conversation, the German fellow leaned over to his girlfriend and said in Chinese, “That new guy (meaning me) speaks Chinese with an American accent.” She replied, “Well, you speak Chinese with a German accent.”

From the look on his face, that was news to him.

We make all kinds of assumptions about how we communicate, never fully aware of how others really perceive us. We know what we are saying, and we think we know how we are saying it. But we don’t necessarily know how others are hearing us or how we come across to them.

In my undergrad communications class, I had this professor I thought a bit odd. For some reason I considered his bowties corny. But though he was not my favorite teacher, I still remember things he taught me 50 years later.

Professor Bowtie shared the Johari Window with us, a concept that had been developed in the 1950s by two psychologists to help people improve their relationship building skills. I have found it helpful both in personal communication and in building connections across cultural lines. I have also found it helpful in growing as a person.

Picture a square with four quadrants. The left column is what I know about myself. The right column is what I don’t know about myself. The top row is what others know about me. The bottom row is what others don’t know about me.

It works like this:

1. The top lefthand corner is what I know about myself and what others know about me.
2. The bottom lefthand corner is what I know about myself, but what is hidden to others.
3. The top righthand corner is what others know about me that I don’t know about myself.
4. The bottom righthand corner is what is unknown both to me and to others.

There are several takeaways from this model, one of which is that the more others help me understand what they perceive about me, the more I understand about myself. Over time as we open up to others, we shrink the unknownness about ourselves.

I am married to a wonderful person. Kim is truly amazing – hopefully this line gets through her proofreading of this post. As my wife, she is great at helping me see my blind spots. And I am not talking just about the hair sticking out at the back of my head that I will never see without the aid of a mirror or a camera.

I am talking about my quirks that get in the way of what I am trying to communicate to others. For example, I have a penchant for repeating stories and sayings to the point of exhausting my audiences. Have I told you that before?

Because I live with her, I have the opportunity to learn a lot about myself that I would never have known otherwise. This revelation of self can happen in all kinds of settings.

Take that guy from Germany with the Chinese girlfriend. He had no idea he spoke Mandarin Chinese with a German accent. All this time he was thinking he sounded like a native, when in reality he sounded like a German guy speaking Chinese with a German accent. Just as distinctively as my speaking Chinese with my American accent.

When we interact with people different than us, certain things stand out that wouldn’t if we stayed close to our “home” setting. When I moved to Texas at the age of 21, I stood out like a sore thumb. I didn’t look much different from other white Texans. But when I opened my mouth, I revealed my New Jersey roots.

Apparently, few things are as offensive in other parts of the U.S. as sounding like you are from “Joisey.” Never mind that no one in New Jersey talks like that. The “Joisey” stereotype comes from Brooklyn (in New York) and is the way Brooklynites are said to say “Jersey.” Nonetheless, the stereotype sticks and we who are from the Garden State live on in infamy as a result. Well, there’s probably more to our infamy than just our accents.

I always say Texas was my first cross-cultural experience and where I first went through what people call cultural shock. (The use of the word “shock” related to entering new cultures is generally overkill, but it means making awkward or tiring adjustments in a new cultural setting.) Over several years in Waco, known as the Heart of Texas, I learned to adjust to my new home as I worked my hardest to fit in. I even bought a pair of Justin boots from some out-of-the-way store on Route 6 between Waco and Bryan, Texas.

There is a danger in mimicking how people talk, act, and dress. Emphasize it too much and you come off something of a caricature, certainly condescending.  You start talking like a Joisey boy trying to sound like a Texan. Definitely off-putting – and maybe even bad for your health and safety.

But learning a new language is not just about vocabulary and grammar. It is also about how you form the sounds coming out of your mouth.

When I was in Asia, I met a lot of native English speakers from places outside North America. Some of them were difficult to understand. Australian accents were fairly comprehensible to me, but they used lots of lingo that made no sense to outsiders. In contrast, the New Zealanders I met used fairly standard vocabulary, but, boy, did I have a hard time picking my way through their accents.

One delightful gentleman from New Zealand enrolled in a language school I directed in Xi’an. Already in his 50s, I knew he’d have a difficult time learning Mandarin Chinese. But his other problem was his English. One day his Chinese teachers came to me and said they were having trouble understanding him when he spoke in his native tongue. It made it hard for them to get him started in learning Chinese. I laughed and told them I didn’t understand his English either. Then they laughed.

While I was growing up in South Jersey, the Reverend Howard Carter came from England to preach in our church. I was sitting on the front pew with a fellow member of our congregation. John Brown hailed from the mountains of West Virginia. Partway through the sermon, John turned to me and asked, “What language is he speaking?”

Howard Carter’s British English was a bridge too far for Appalachian John Brown. And who knows, but maybe Carter would have returned the compliment.

After we left China, we settled in the Pacific Northwest, a place not known for a distinctive accent, definitely not as distinctive as spoken English in so many other places. Again, I’ve learned to blend in – and it helps that my wife is from the Northwest. Occasionally in a conversation, people will tell me, “You sound like you are from Texas.”

“Oddly enough,” I’ll reply, “I’m from New Jersey.”

To which will come the obligatory response, “Joisey!”

Blending in with my Texanese is of little use in Oregon, at least from what I’ve seen so far. The “Joisey” is even less useful. But what all this tells me is that I keep learning and growing wherever I go, becoming informed about myself as I learn about others – and as I relate to others. I’ve picked up things from nearly every place I’ve spent time in – hopefully all good. All these cultural exchanges help me grow.

The world is filled with amazing diversity – God-ordained and God-blessed. Contrary to the biblical command to go and engage new cultures, our tendency is to keep to our own kind. But the command is that we are to spread the Good News and our good works all over and everywhere. And in so doing, we are bound to find ourselves growing as well.

Even the Good News itself is enhanced by the cultural spread as it incarnates in local cultures. By that I mean, the diversity God has created adds robustness to the Good News story as people of all stripes are redeemed by God’s love. Just read through the Book of Acts and see how that unfolded. As the news of God’s love in Jesus Christ spread from one community to countless others, the Good News took on ever deeper meaning and brilliance.

One of the genetic rules about life is that we humans are not to produce offspring with anyone too much like ourselves. We are to mate outside our own genetic pool – we’re not to marry our own sibling or even our own cousin. Best to find someone from the next village, the next kingdom. Such diversification ensures we don’t produce physically and mentally stunted offspring that leads to the demise of our family line.

There’s a larger principle here. God designed the world for a diversity that is ever-changing and where human life flourishes best through intercultural exchanges. God celebrates dynamic diversity.

You see it in our food sources. A thousand years ago, my ancestors in the British Isles knew nothing of noodles or tomatoes or potatoes or wonderful spices like pepper and curry.

You see it in the exchange of ideas that has produced the amazing range of technology we live with in this 21^st century, technological advances that have occurred because of worldwide interactions. And what about the development of more humane forms of governance and civil order over millennia of cultural exchanges?

You see it in the spread of the Gospel from a remote corner of the Mediterranean Sea to the remote islands where my ancestors lived. And now my generation is benefiting immensely from the global diversity found in Christianity. How blessed I was, for example, by the culturally intermingled hymn singing of the Olympians from Fiji this summer!

Human interactions, diversification, and intercultural exchanges have much to teach us. For starters, consider these points:

1. We as individuals are designed to develop through engagement and interaction, not in isolation.
2. Cultures and nations grow through robust exchange as well.
3. Eternity will be much richer as all peoples, all nations are represented around the Throne of Grace – God’s preferred vision for our human race.

I think back to that initial encounter in Xi’an. At least three countries were represented around that meal. We learned a lot about each other and ourselves that evening!

In my years in Taiwan and China, I had delightful encounters with a wide range of ethnic groups. Traveling throughout the U.S. over the years I’ve engaged with a broad spectrum of our nation’s population. Over my lifetime I have met people from all the earth’s inhabited continents – and nations too many to recall. I am all the richer for each and every appointment.

Such connections have taught me much about God’s world – and about myself. If this is what earth is like now, I can’t wait for the fulfillment of God’s preferred vision. Lord, keep me growing until that blessed day!

I’d love to hear your own experience of learning about yourself as you’ve engaged with others or how you’ve grown through intercultural exchanges. You are welcome to comment below. And you are welcome to keep up with other posts I have on intercultural concerns and what it means to move beyond your cultural comfort zone at Intercultural – On a journey in the borderlands. Subscribe for free at Contact Us!

Photo taken from a project we did at a place called Jade Mountain in NW China.