I recently received an email that made me laugh out loud. Entitled 5 Tips to make your house appear cleaner than it is, it was based on the premise that your house is a complete rubbish tip and you have just been warned of the impending arrival of unexpected visitors. How can you quickly tidy up so the visitors won’t guess how negligible your housekeeping skills are?
Suggestions included collecting everything in a basket or shoving it in a cupboard, hiding the washing up in the oven and lighting scented candle to disguise any bad smells. The best tip came from a reader: put the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the room just as your visitors arrive and say “Oh you caught me in the middle of cleaning up!” They will hopefully assume the chaos is part of the cleaning process and your face is saved.
In many cultures saving face is a more serious matter than this flippant tale would suggest, where it is about preserving one’s dignity, social status or honour. Many societies devise strategies to maintain smooth social functioning and prevent humiliation.
Here in the Philippines, for example, there is an ever-present respect for age and authority. Po, Sir or Ma’am are terms I hear in daily use in Manila, while children may also accompany this with a ‘mana po’ by taking your hand and touching it to their foreheads as a visual sign of respect to accompany the verbal. Professionals are referred to by their titles: Doctor; Professor, Engineer.
These days, in Australia, the theory of democracy and equality has overtaken the practice of social hierarchies and has led us to largely discard such small courtesies in recent years. Australians may see Filipinos as unduly interested in social status, overly sensitive to insult, and overly cautious in the avoidance of even constructive criticism. For better or for worse, our priorities have changed and most Australians place directness, honesty and speaking one’s mind above saving face. To Filipinos this can show a rather selfish or hurtful disregard for the feelings of others, something that sociologists describe as ‘social bankruptcy’.
Unfortunately this means cross-cultural communication is rife with opportunities for misunderstanding.
In the Philippines, surprisingly, when dealing with cultural or language barriers, speaking louder does not actually improve communications. Here, harsh or even firm words spoken in public are not an option. One does not embarrass oneself or others with public displays of anger or irritation. Such public humiliation means loss of face for everyone involved. This is not always something the frustrated Australian expatriate understands.
During my years overseas, I have assiduously tried to rise above my own cultural ignorance. Sadly, I am hampered by a personality flaw or genetic dysfunction common to red heads. I have a very short fuse. While I am equally quick to recover my humour, the damage is done. Confronted by my all too visible frustration, Filipinos respond with either a laugh or a wall of silence. What I see as passive resistance or rudeness, they are using as a means to diffuse an awkward situation.
I had one recent encounter with a stall holder who had sold me a faulty mobile phone several weeks earlier. We had endless problems with the battery, which would go flat after only 6 hours. I had tried to replace the battery and had even taken it to Australia when it was suggested that the battery had been affected by humidity. But I had no joy there either. So we re-visited the stallholder who finally offered to exchange it. However, it seems that in the meantime my phone had dropped about 40% in value and replacing now meant upgrading and paying the difference. I later realized that the girl’s bowed head and seeming distraction, the nervous giggling, her sudden refusal to speak to me in English but only in Tagalog to our driver was her way of attempting to diffuse the steam now pouring from my nostrils.
I am ashamed to admit that I lost my cool. I felt totally ripped off. To to me, the girl’s behaviour seemed rude and dismissive. My anger got me nowhere. I hissed and spluttered and left the store with the same damaged goods with which I had entered. Half way back to the car I was already regretting my embarrassing outburst. In the heat of the moment, despite my best intentions to control my temper and respect the local culture, I forgot everything I had learned about managing these situations effectively.
Later I ‘fessed up to my husband who just laughed and said ‘well, you did the best you could’.
No! I cried. I didn’t! I behaved really badly, & I’ll never be able to go back there again!’
‘Yes,’ he reassured me, ‘but that was your best.’
Well that is Aussie honesty for you, and doubtless exactly what I deserved. But sometimes I wish we Aussies were less honest and more in touch with the notion of saving face!