Some things about dialects

[owlectomy]

Deborah Tannen has an interesting article on "New York Jewish Conversational Style."

I'm interested in following up on Lakoff's discussion of the "rules of rapport"; I think I've seen quite a few conflicts between my family's Canadian-WASP emphasis on deference and the emphasis on camaraderie that's more common among Americans. (Conflicts, I think, that the Americans mostly never heard about, because you can't impose on someone by talking about their rudeness!)

When I started working at my current branch (which is very Jewish, but German much more than Eastern European, so I'm not sure to what extent there's overlap in conversational styles) I often had the experience of feeling -- put on the spot, I guess; like I wasn't being given enough time to answer, or to think of the right way to word something. But the thing is, whenever I start working at a new branch I feel like people are being so mean to me, and then after three months something clicks and I start to pick up on the subtle cultural and linguistic characteristics of the neighborhood, and suddenly I realize that most people weren't being mean to me at all.

I'm not sure if I wrote about this before, but I used to have this interaction a couple times a week and feel really anxious about it:

Patron: Where are your books on Subject X?
Me: Is there anything in particular that I can help you find?
Patron: Just books on Subject X.
Me: Here they are.
Patron: Fine.

In my idiolect*, "fine" in this context almost always means "Unsatisfactory, but I'll accept it's the best I'm going to get right now." "Fine" is what you say when your flight is canceled because of the weather and the person at the airport books you into a hotel that will certainly turn out to be unpleasant and inconvenient. It's when you drop your expensive gadget and support says it's not covered under warranty, but they'll give you a discount on a replacement.

In my patrons' dialect? "Fine" meant "fine," a lot of the time. (I can't be sure it NEVER meant what it means in my idiolect, because we have a lot of unsatisfactory spots in our collection, but I think most of the time it genuinely meant "fine"!)

This blog post on differences in "please" usage between the US and the UK also came to my attention recently. You know what's weird? I've lived in the US for close to twenty years, and I have never once noticed that the American norm isn't to use "please" when you're ordering in a restaurant. (This is one place where Canadian usage -- my Canadian usage, at least -- is entirely British; in fact, if my order is long I'll often start with "Can I please get a ....", say what I'm ordering, forget having said please already, and add another "Please?" at the end.) So I used to bristle a fair bit because my patrons' politeness norms weren't my politeness norms; it took me a little while to figure out that there was no rudeness intended, just different norms.

I hope people haven't been thinking I was rude or weird all this time, but I'm not sure I could break the habit. (I have been trying to change from things like "Please don't run in the library" to things like "The library isn't a good place for running," because of a blog post I read about how much time we spend ordering children to do things. But it's hard to change.)

*Just like a dialect is the version of a language spoken by a particular community, an idiolect is the version of a language spoken only by yourself. I'm often unsure whether a particular linguistic thing I do is from Canadian English, Southern US English, New York English, or somewhere else entirely.

Comments

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

"Patron: Where are your books on Subject X?
Me: Is there anything in particular that I can help you find?"

There's where it would've gone astray for me, because you didn't answer the question. What I was looking for was the location of books on Subject X because I intend to examine them -- quite possibly all of them -- at high speed to find the ones actually containing information I need.

It's like when I order something at a drive-through and the clerk tries to sell me something else. No, I asked for exactly what I wanted. Drives me nuts when people don't follow through what I said, they're going on a script -- and very often it is a literal script by a business that wants them to say specific things whether they are relevant or not. It just gets in the way and bogs down what could otherwise be a perfectly efficient "Aisle 5 where it says BEG-BEM on the sign" or "Here is your sandwich."

And by then I often sound short not because I think the person is rude, but because I have made an explicit request for something that ought to be available and not gotten it and there is no obvious way to be more clear than what I just said.

Following through on what I had said, and then adding something else, is usually okay though. I can just say, "No thanks, that's all I needed."

You're right about how arcane interactions can be, especially across subcultures.

Re: Well...

[owlectomy]

So, here's the thing: this is what I'm trained to do as a librarian. Because it's not a retail transaction, it's an information transaction.

Some of the time, a patron who asks a general question is looking for the answer to a general question - they just want to browse the cookbooks. But much of the time, they're looking for some particular resource or piece of information. They may not ask because they don't know the right question to ask, or they don't want to bother the staff or take our time, or because browsing the shelves seems like a totally fine strategy. But when it doesn't work, the patron just browses the shelves for a while, doesn't find what they want, and then leaves disappointed, and they still have that information need.

So, for example - it often happens that a patron who wants "chemistry books" or "history books" is doing a research paper on a topic that isn't well-covered in a branch library collection. So, what I would want to do is browse the catalog with them for holdings on that topic, but also show them our online databases, and show them how to look up journal articles on their topic.

Or sometimes, if I take the question at face value, I'm answering the wrong question - in bookstores, dating advice and self-help are usually shelved together, but in libraries, the Dewey Decimal system puts them at 155 and 646. People are embarrassed to ask for dating advice books, so they always ask for "self-help," and if I just take them to the self-help books they won't find what they're looking for. Sometimes you mishear the question without even realizing it and you're missing the one chance you get to clear it up if you don't ask for more specifics - like this guy who heard "poultry" when the question was about "poetry."

I have a Master's degree and ten years of experience doing this. I know what the hell I'm doing. And if there are people who are annoyed that they need to take an extra five seconds before I walk them to the cookbooks, then -- well, hooray, my reign of terror and rudeness is almost over.

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

What you may not realize is that the same problem you are trying to avoid will happen whenever you do not meet the patron's need, regardless of the manner in which you did so or why you thought your process was a good idea. They get annoyed and leave and/or learn not to bother asking you again because they know it doesn't work well. I'm plenty familiar with libraries, librarians, and the wide range of discussions on how to maximize service effectiveness.

I have also generally observed, throughout a wide range of contexts, that if someone asks a question and doesn't get a direct answer, that annoys them and will be counted as a negative experience. And even if you get them what they want later, psychology inclines toward remembering the negative beginning more than the positive end.

It's your library; you can do what you want. And patrons will respond according to their satisfaction level. At a time when libraries are generally struggling to survive, this concerns me.

Re: Well...

[owlectomy]

The ALA's Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers encourage the librarian to

3.1.4 Identif[y] the goals or objectives of the patron’s research, when appropriate.

3.1.7 Use open-ended questions to encourage the patron to expand on the request or present additional information. Some examples of open-ended questions include:

“Please tell me more about your topic.”
“What additional information can you give me?”
“How much information do you need?”

3.1.8 Use closed and/or clarifying questions to refine the search query. Some examples of clarifying questions are:

“What have you already found?”
“What type of source do you need?”
“Do you need a book or an article?”
“Do you need current or historical information?”

This isn't about my own personal whims, it's about how I was taught to deliver good reference service.

You don't have to agree with me, but I feel frustrated that many of your comments to my journal strike me as aggressive or nitpicky.

Re: Well...

[firecat]

I'm not a librarian, but I have worked with the public in other situations where I was seen as a source of information. I personally tend to ask direct and exact questions like ysabetwordsmith (because asking people things slightly intimidates me, so I prepare my question in advance).

But in my experience most people who are approaching an expert or authority to ask a question don't do that. So it makes sense to me that people in the role of answering questions should be taught to encourage questioners to clarify their goals.

PS: My idiolect defines "fine" the same way your idiolect does.

[j00j]

East Coast norms vs Midwest norms have been very challenging for me since I moved to Philly. I've had to reduce "please" especially at work where that sometimes is interpreted by colleagues as "this is optional" where I mean "this is mandatory but I want to be polite about telling you that." It's been tough! And now I'm probably sounding rude to midwestern family as I adapt from a "guess" culture to an "ask" culture.

[laceblade]

I'm also wondering about the regional thing - I can just imagine my mother's eyes turning to MURDER if I ordered in a restaurant without saying "please," lmao

[adrift_etc]

I've never heard of this! Though I have encountered people who take what I think is a polite, but very obvious request/demand as a suggestion that they can override, and it totally offends me.

ex/ a friend visited my house for the first time and wouldn't leave no matter how many 'I'd like to go to bed at 12', 'I have to be up early tomorrow' type phrases I dropped, thinking that because it was late and they were very tired, they could spend the night. Unconscionable!! Disrespectful! I never tell anyone to do anything, because it might be rude (it would be rude to say 'please go home now', too direct). Instead, I'll say something to which the most polite response would be for them to offer what I did not ask for, after which I will tell them it's very nice of them to offer but they don't have to, to which they will say 'no, no, I want to' and I will say 'alright then, thank you'.

Canada must be a guess culture, indeed!

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

Americans talk all the time about how the French are rude, but I had the opposite experience. When I went to France, I wasn't aware that when you enter and leave a place of business, the clerk will typically greet you. (At least this was the case 20 years ago, when I was there.) In the US, people just tend to go into a store, pick up something, pay for it, and leave. Sometimes a clerk will say, "May I help you?" but it's not common for the shopkeeper to say "Hello" when you come in and "Good-bye" when you leave.

So there I was in Paris, standing in a ticket line, and thinking how odd it was that everyone in front of me was having a conversation with the cashier. Was the cashier really friends with every person in line, I wondered? And I must have seemed horribly rude in the souvenir shop I entered where the shopkeeper called out "Hello" and "Good-bye and good day" when my immediate reaction was: "What? Are you talking to me? Am I supposed to answer?" It took me a while to pick up that the norm was to greet a businessperson with an exchange of pleasantries, or at least a "Bonjour, madame," before getting into the business at hand.