(E)merging Differences by Ute Clement

Author:Ute Clement [Clement, Ute]
Language: deu
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783849780067
Publisher: Carl-Auer-Verlag
Published: 2013-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 5: Models of relating and communicating in the US and Germany (based on Lewin)

The coconut model applies to the Germans. People’s public side is very limited. Public space is non-specific and is not divided into roles, functions or contexts. There is a clear, thick line drawn between the public and the private sphere. Strangers are given only minimal access to “deeper” or more private levels. Once a person is given access to this private space, usually a very close relationship develops. Access to this private space is reserved exclusively for “true” friends. Once they are in, these friends share nearly every aspect of the other person’s life. Conversations take place about family, children, money matters, worries and hardships.

In traditional firms and conservative circles in Germany, this line has been marked out by switching from the formal word for “you” (“Sie”) to the informal word (“Du”). Even if this demarcation has now become somewhat more flexible, initial contacts between German employees and American bosses in the German automobile industry were extremely difficult.

One employee put it like this: “I’ve never used the ‘Du’ form towards anybody in my entire 20 years at work – and now I’m supposed to call my boss ‘Bob’?”

The A model – the peach, the American model of relating – shows that the central core of privacy in the US is very small. Sometimes it is so small that the person themselves has no access to it. The public space is broad and wide but specific. A department manager in Germany is a department manager and nothing else, whether at work, playing sport or at a community meeting. In America the public aspects of a person are context-specific. There are different public personas, as it were – such as at the gym, at the kindergarten where the person is a parents’ representative, and in various other contexts. The roles in the different contexts don’t overlap with one another. At work, the department manager is a department manager. At the sports club the same department manager is an ordinary sporting pal.

The disappointment experienced by many Germans when dealing with Americans as well as the Americans’ confusion arise when these circles of interaction overlap. Issues reserved for close friendships in Germany are part of Americans’ public persona. Thus when conversations take place about money, family or similar topics, this indicates to Germans that the relationship has become a close one, possibly even a friendship.

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