When I was very young, my grandfather's cousin Sue relayed a story about an American woman friend who was living in London as an ex-patriate for a time. An issue that came up for this woman was her worry that she instinctively used an American approach to apologies when riding the London "Tube" instead of the British approach. So whenever she accidentally stepped on someone's foot or bumped into someone on the Tube, she automatically said, "Oh, excuse me!" The British, she observed, always seemed to say simply "Sorry!" in the same situation. Months passed, and then one day when she happened to step on a stranger's foot, she suddenly said, "Sorry!" and the other woman turned to her and said, "Oh, excuse me!"

I remembered this story while reading an article by Xiaowen Guan, Hee Sun Park, and Hye Eun Lee, called "Cross-cultural difference in apology" in the January 2009 edition of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, or IJIR. Like Cousin Sue's friend, these three researchers asked people in the USA, China, and Korea to think about the situation of stepping on someone's foot in a train or bus, and their expectations about apologies. Though it can be amusing to read a very academic analysis of an everyday behavior, it is interesting to think about why we apologize and the role culture plays in this. After categorizing apologies according to the intent, desire, obligation and norms of the one apologizing, Guan and colleagues put forth some hypotheses about how culture influences apologies, and learned from their research that they were wrong!

The researchers had supposed that apologies would be more common in collectivist societies than in individualistic ones, but in fact, the Americans in the study showed a greater tendency to apologize than either the Chinese or Korean study participants. Though someone might accidentally step on another person's foot on the train or bus in any of these cultures, the variations in response don't seem to relate to how individualistic or collectivist are the people involved.

Of the three possible other explanations they provide:

(1) that Americans don't ride public transportation much so don't step on others' feet so often;
(2) that the American sense of personal space makes such an accident more offensive to the other person; or
(3) that the lower context US culture demands more of a spoken apology;

I vote for number 2. Living in New York and riding the subway daily, it certainly feels to be the norm that both the person stepping on the foot and the person stepped on will immediately apologize: the one for stepping on the foot and the other for being in the wrong place when the other person was stepping. Sometimes when this doesn't happen, you can hear a loud request for an apology, using indirect communication (a cry of pain, for instance) or direct communication ("Watch where you're going! You stepped on my foot. You could at least apologize.")

Ritual apologies

In this New York, and probably USA context, there is an enforced norm to apologize quickly for any accidental invasion of personal space. "Excuse me" or "Sorry" may now be equivalent, but whenever I realize that I have really injured someone in such an accident, I feel obliged to say more. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Are you OK?" I need to show more sincerity and not just ritually take the blame and move on.

Several months ago I wrote about genres of communication having different cultural norms. The apology is one such genre that can look very different across cultures. For instance a German AFS student in Hong Kong noted, "Here it's acceptable to belch out loud, but if you sneeze, you must apologize. Back home just the opposite is true."

When we cross cultures, we may feel strongly the obligation to apologize (or not to apologize!) in particular situations, and even if we speak the language perfectly, we may still want to express our own cultural selves by showing respect in the way we most expect. In Claire Kramsch's excellent book, Context and Culture in Language Teaching, she gives an example of an American student in Germany who is asked by her host father to close the door after she entered the room. She wants to say, "Oh, I'm sorry" as she does this, but no apology is expected by her host father. She considers several options for a German term and chooses "Entschuldigung" because it just felt disrespectful and impolite to say nothing.

I thought of this recently when reading a message from a Japanese speaker who was completely fluent in English, but chose to use a more Japanese style, apologizing for being the one to take the post of a beloved colleague who was retiring. I believe he understood well that an American speaker would never think to apologize for replacing someone who was retiring, but it must have felt disrespectful and simply wrong not to communicate in this Japanese way. It was a strong message, coming from one cultural context to many others, asking for good will and cooperation, honoring a colleague, and communicating respect.

If we are to communicate meaningfully across cultures, we will necessarily be communicating from the perspective of our own culture, and that will often include using some of our own cultural modes of communication, translated and/or explained.

In my own inadequate way I hope to do this as well.

I began my intercultural journey as a 17-year-old exchange student to Strasbourg France. This led me to study geography and, eventually, to my PhD from Syracuse University in 1985. I found my professional home at AFS in 1980, where I worked for nearly 30 years, most recently as the Director of Intercultural Education and Research in the international office.

In 1991-92, I had the honor of receiving an Indo-American Fellowship from the U.S. and Indian governments for advanced study in India where I stayed for three months, learning about the re-entry experience of Indians who studied in the USA. In 2002 I had another chance for an exchange experience, living for two months in Lima, Peru while working with our AFS office there.

Currently I am a writer and consultant in international education and student exchange, and the journey continues. Please visit my website at: http://www.bettinahansel.com