Title: Trying Not To Stand Out: One Marfs Quest for Assimilation on the Street
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Trying Not To Stand Out: One Man's Quest for Assimilation on the Street
By Glean Geiser-Getz
Someone once said you feel most American when living abroad, and this has certainly been true of my experience in St. Petersburg, My wife and I cannot walk down Nevsky Prospect without getting curious stares from people who pass; each cautious glance reminds us that we are, indeed, outsiders.
I am an American college professor working in Russia on a Fulbright Fellowship. Among other things I am researching intercultural communication, a discipline that examines cultural differences in customs, values and nonverbal behavior.
Of course, my understanding will always be limited because I am an outsider, and any investigation of this type may ultimately reveal more about the student than the topic being studied. My brief musings, therefore, may tell you more about my own culture than Russia's.
Many of my observations have been collected in a fabulously unsuccessful effort to blend in with the local population. I often wonder, in the case of my wife and myself, what gives us away — our clothes, our glasses, our facial expressions?
We wear as much dark clothing as possible. We mimic the neutral looks typical of many faces on the street. We wear our wedding rings on our right hands. We avoid speaking in public. Regardless of these and other changes, however, the panhandlers, pickpockets, tour guides and museum administrators sniff us out with apparent ease. My students here explain that Americans look quite different from Russians, hut they rarely articulate specifics. My guess is that there are at least three cultural characteristics that distinguish Americans from Russians in St. Petersburg: appearance, face, and space.
Appearance may he the most obvious of the three. Clothing styles in Russia tend toward extremes: elegant/expensive or functional/modest. Both styles feature an abundance of black, a color many Americans lack in their wardrobes. The hopelessly lost-and-overwhelmed demeanor of the average tourist is easy to spot almost anywhere, but particularly in Russia. My wife and I avoid this look like the plague and always walk with great purpose, as if we are on some critical mission of state (this performance is exceptionally difficult to maintain when one is struggling with the complicated foldings of a tourist map).
Face is the most universal of nonverbal communicators; apparently a smile is a smile anywhere. However, while the basic meaning is the same, the connotations of a given facial expression change from place to place. The tendency to smile as a greeting (even among strangers) may strike some Russians as odd. One of my students told me of her first trip to Europe, where in a shop she was startled by a salesperson who offered smiling assistance even though the student clearly had no money to spend (she rushed from the shop, worried the woman had some devious purpose). In this respect the smile can serve as an interesting metaphor of differences between East and West. The American smile is often an example of phatic communication — a ritualistic, empty gesture valuable as a social lubricant. Phatic rituals initiate the flow of communication, invite future contact and are typical in cultures with well-developed service economies ("service with a smile"). Smiling in business is also a type of public relations, something I am told some Russians do not fully appreciate.
Differences in the use of space are also notable between Americans and Russians. My wife and I are still startled by the willingness of Russians to stand terribly close 10 one another, even when not in crowded places. Building managers unlock only one door, regardless of customer traffic, so people must enter and exit through the same relatively small place (the Americans are the ones breathing huge sighs of relief after successfully crossing the threshold).
Clearly these observations are based on limited experience; it is often difficult to understand what a particular gesture or facial expression might mean, and much intercultural communication is shaped by stereotypes. When the mother of a student saw my image on the evening news last year (attending a consulate reception), she warned her daughter that I could be a spy and should not be trusted. Others ask me about America with great fascination in their eyes. A young man who assisted me at a local market showed me his paperback copy of The Wizard of Oz, explaining proudly that he was learning English and thought America was "a great country."
It is difficult to convince people on the street that America is neither as good nor as bad as popular wisdom suggests, but as time passes I feel less and less like an outsider in this great city. Perhaps the locals are staring less; perhaps I am just getting used to it. An increasing number of people here have spoken to me in Russian, which suggests my effort to adapt to Russia's cultural norms is not completely in vain. I just hope I don't have to go through the same process in reverse when I return home.
Dr. Glenn Geiser-Getz is a Futbright Scholar in Journalism and an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He submitted this article to The St. Petersburg Times. If you would like 10 write One in 4.7 million, please contact masters@sptimes.ru