You know, people in North America sometimes assert that the customs of the natives in various places are terribly odd.
This is not, by and large, a country of people comfortable with differences. At least not outside of a limited number of urban areas, and even sometimes not within them.
in spite of being reasonably fluent in English I find there's still a "language" barrier that's more cultural than linguistic.
I'm not really surprised, especially in specific reference to the fundie xtian subculture, because they use and mis-use language in distinct and purposeful ways. Are you familiar with "dogwhistle" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics) as a political metaphor? It refers to coded language understood by an in-group but no one else. In the U.S., it tends to have racial connotations, but it can also have religious ones (see the 2nd paragraph under "United States" in the Wikipedia article).
In case you ever have the time and curiosity, I would recommend browsing the blog of Fred Clark (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/), a liberal Christian who keeps tabs on the fundies. He's best-known for his deconstructions of the odious Left Behind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind) books, but his posts on other religious matters are also informative.
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Date: 2010-01-16 02:29 am (UTC)This is not, by and large, a country of people comfortable with differences. At least not outside of a limited number of urban areas, and even sometimes not within them.
in spite of being reasonably fluent in English I find there's still a "language" barrier that's more cultural than linguistic.
I'm not really surprised, especially in specific reference to the fundie xtian subculture, because they use and mis-use language in distinct and purposeful ways. Are you familiar with "dogwhistle" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics) as a political metaphor? It refers to coded language understood by an in-group but no one else. In the U.S., it tends to have racial connotations, but it can also have religious ones (see the 2nd paragraph under "United States" in the Wikipedia article).
In case you ever have the time and curiosity, I would recommend browsing the blog of Fred Clark (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/), a liberal Christian who keeps tabs on the fundies. He's best-known for his deconstructions of the odious Left Behind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind) books, but his posts on other religious matters are also informative.