eekim.com: EEK Speaks

Tue, Dec 16, 2003

Culture Clash, Shared Language, and Story Telling #

Speaking of names, a recent Newsday article on Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn in the Lord of the Ring trilogy, notes that Danish people find his name: (KK)

"Corny?" he says. "Yeah, I know. It would be like being called Oscar. Or Otto. It's an old name. A really, really old name. And a little bit corny. Like Oswald or something ..." (KL)

Elmer? (KM)

"Yeah! Elmer. Yeah," Mortensen says. "I think there's a comic strip in Denmark, a Dennis the Menace character, and his name is Viggo. He's all over the place." (KN)

Names are a great example of how our different cultural backgrounds can make SharedLanguage challenging. There are many great examples of brand names gone wrong because they mean something obscene in other languages. (KO)

When we first started discussing patterns of collaboration at BlueOxenAssociates, I identified casual social interaction as an important pattern, and I called it WaterCooler?. ShinyaYamada?, a collaboratory member based in Japan, had no idea why I chose that name. Shinya had worked in the U.S. before, so he understood my explanation. He also noted that he had never seen a water cooler in a Japanese office before, and that -- unlike in the States -- casual social interaction with strangers in the office was unusual. (KP)

Another great example of the challenges of SharedLanguage cropped up at the GivingSpace workshop in SanFrancisco last Thursday. Six of us were discussing small, concrete steps that lead to transformation, and HeatherNewbold described how MattGonzalez? for Mayor campaign buttons had galvanized the progressive community in SanFrancisco. Four of us knew exactly what Heather was describing, because we lived in the Bay Area and followed local politics. All she had to do was mention the buttons, and we understood what she meant. The other two people at our table, however, had no idea what we were talking about. One was from SanDiego, and the other simply didn't follow politics. (KQ)

Language itself is not enough. Telling stories is what makes language shared. (KR)

/collaboration | Posted at 11:20am

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EEK Speaks

A blog about collaboration, community-building, and the various goings-on at Blue Oxen Associates, with occasional digressions on food and other vital matters.