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Carol Volk

Raymonde Carroll

Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience Kindle Edition

by Raymonde Carroll (Author), Carol Volk (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

101 ratings

3.6 on Goodreads

290 ratings

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"Full of colorful anecdotes…tells us a lot about the French but even more about ourselves."—Los Angeles Times

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This is an intriguing and thoughtful analysis of the many ways French and Americans—and indeed any members of different cultures—can misinterpret each other, even when ostensibly speaking the same language.

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Cultural misunderstandings, Raymonde Carroll points out, can arise even where we least expect them: in our closest relationships. With revealing vignettes and perceptive observations, she brings to light some fundamental differences in French and American presuppositions about love, friendship, and raising children, as well as such everyday activities as using the telephone or asking for information.

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"An entertaining, informative book…often witty…a vital source for learning how to establish amity not only between the U.S. and France but among all the world's nations."—Publishers Weekly

ISBN-10

9780226111896
ISBN-13

978-0226111896
Publisher

The University of Chicago Press
Accessibility

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Publication date

July 31 2012
Language

English
File size

3.2 MB

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Product description

From Publishers Weekly

Volk's translation evokes the flavor of Carroll's French in an entertaining, informative book. The author is a U.S. citizen of French origin, an anthropologist and teacher at Oberlin College, who lived on a Micronesian island and wrote Nokoru Stories , about social customs there. Her inter-cultural experiences form the text of this illustrative, often witty book about why the French and the Americanseven when fluent in both languagescan confound each other with what seems uncivil behavior. Carroll explains cultural misunderstandings on such diverse areas as party manners, child-rearing, privacy, using the telephone and, most important, friendship. The examples are eye-opening and all-encompassing, a vital source for learning how to establish amity not only between the U.S. and France but among all the world's nations.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

Raymonde Carroll presents an intriguing and thoughtful analysis of the many ways French and Americans--and indeed any members of different cultures--can misinterpret each other, even when ostensibly speaking the same language. Cultural misunderstandings, Carroll points out, can arise even where we least expect them--in our closest relationships. The revealing vignettes that Carroll relates, and her perceptive comments, bring to light some fundamental differences in French and American presuppositions about love, friendship, and raising children, as well as such everyday activities as using the telephone or asking for information.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00E6MLYEE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of Chicago Press
Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 31 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3.2 MB
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 164 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780226111896
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226111896
Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
�鶹�� Rank: #537,002 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #51 in Translating (Kindle Store)
- #291 in French Language Instruction (Kindle Store)
- #350 in Translating (Books)
Customer Reviews:
101 ratings

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Carol Volk
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Sylvain Charbonneau
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on July 23, 2017
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Tout a été parfait. Je recommande ce vendeur.

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Srindar
Very insightful book
Reviewed in Canada on July 18, 2001
While somewhat tedious and redundant in areas, this book was extremely insightful into some of the cultural differences between the French and Americans. Addressing many subtlties that wouldn't immediately come to mind otherwise, this book highlights the differences in communication styles and typical conduct in the context of friendship, and it also contains a particularly detailed examination of how American vs. French couples interact with each other. If you're planning an extended stay in France, or possibly re-locating, this book could definitely spare you a great deal of confusion and embarrassment.

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Eve B
Perceptive Commentary on French-American Personal Relations
Reviewed in Canada on August 21, 1997
This book is a perceptive commentary on personal French-American relations. If you are American and have French friends, want to live in France, or learn more about the country, it is an excellent source. Having lived in France two years when I read it, I learned a lot about specific issues that had been an enigma to me. This book is a positive exploration of intercultural relations rather than like many other books of this nature that seem to emphasize negative aspects of international (personal) relations. Very worthwhile reading if you are at all interested in how Americans and French interact on a personal level. Written by a French sociologist with an interest in American culture. Interesting to get the French perspective, rather than the American one - which seems more prevalent in books published in the United States

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Marie C Noel Martien
A good start for understanding cultural misunderstandings
Reviewed in Canada on February 18, 2000
As a French citizen living in the States for now 10 years and dealing on a daily basis with intercultural communication, I found this book quite interesting.It is a good starting book for the one who studies intercultural communication as part of one's job. Even though some of the chapters are quite general and limited to some social environment, it will help the reader in going further in the subject. For me, it confirmed my decision to attend an intercultural management seminar. One of the most interesting remark from the author was how cultural analysis is probably more painful than psychoanalysis. I am in total agreement with this remark. Besides reading this book with lots of attention, I must say I enjoyed myself in reading about my own behavioral patterns as well as the ones from my American friends.
A book to read.

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Client d'�鶹��
un must pour vivre là-bas...
Reviewed in France on August 1, 2018
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Un must pour ceux qui veulent découvrir en toute humilité une culture extraordinairement différente de la nôtre. Exit, le franchouillard imbu de sa "culture". Il m'a été d'une grande aide pour vivre dans une culture dont je ne soupçonnais pas qu'elle différait autant de la nôtre. Je pense que ce livre extraordinaire a fortement contribué à mon plaisir d'avoir vécu là-bas, d'y avoir tissé des liens pour la vie et d'aimer y revenir même si je suis loin de tout apprécier....

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IrKhou
Enriching and entertaining cultural analyses
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2013
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The book is written by a French anthropologist, who has been living in the USA. Thus, the chapters abound with wonderful examples illustrating various kinds of misunderstanding between the French and the Americans: the differences in constructing conversations, in how one understands friendship, family life, how people interpret the process of getting information, etc. are discussed.
Cultural analysis is a tool with which the author scrutinizes the meaning of these situations, which, of course, happened either in France or in the USA. The author analyzes these stories from the perspectives of both a French and an American and masterfully shows where misinterpretation of cultural behavior can occur (the author proves that the meaning of the same actions does not coincide in these cultures). The book never gets too theoretical. On the contrary, it is an entertaining reading, providing us all with food for thought (and sometimes a chuckle).
The book might be interesting for “all interculturals”, for those who like to read about how things are done in other cultures: the author provides her readers with patterns for understanding someone from a different culture and affords us, as she points out, interesting discoveries both about ourselves and “the other.”

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Rob-o
An anthropologist's analysis of divergent French and American cultural presuppositions
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2021
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I found Carroll's cultural insight resonated with and explained many of my own emotional reactions hitherto shoved into a chest of unpleasant intercultural memories subconsciously labelled "Proof that the French are ________ (supply own pejorative)". The somewhat dense sentences may be due to the challenge of translating from French. Here we don't have merely humorous musings on the classic Franco-American incomprehensions; the author is going layers deeper than other culture clash articles and books I've read, asking the questions behind the questions. Reading this was enjoyable and a challenge to aforementioned judgments I've developed as an American living about ten years now in France. I recommend this to people who have experience with the French already. There are other good "pre-exposure" works that could serve as better introductions to French culture from an American experience. Thank you to the author for her hard work!
(Note that the Kindle edition's typos were frequent enough to be distracting, but not frequent enough to request a refund. I'd have preferred the paper edition had I known.)

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Roxanne Spar
There are better books on the same topic
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2014
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This book is like the author intended it to be (per her introduction and conclusion) but I liked better the other books I read on the same topic. It's many stories put together followed by some analysis. Instead of making up names, she uses W X Y Z (up to 4 letters in the same paragraph) or F and S so it can be hard to follow who's who and who's French or American, it would have been easier to give them fictive names like Francois and Sue. I liked that she pointed out The Telephone because there's a culture difference there but I don't think it's well explained. The chapter about Getting Information is good. There is 1 very good chapter: the one about Friendship, I found the starfish and pyramid metaphores excellent to explain American friendships, I'm giving the book 3 stars for that, otherwise I would have given just 2. (I posted a review for another book with 5 stars on the same topic).

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AtoZ
Easy to read and makes a nice gift to anyone ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2015
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An intricate subject matter, well presented. Easy to read and makes a nice gift to anyone who has a deeper connection with other cultures that may have been influenced by the French colonial expansion, such as Albania, Austria, Greece, Italy, Canada, Lebanon, Syria, Haiti, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Ivory Coast, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Niger, Poland, Portugal, Spain...

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