In the short story “Jesus Shaves,” David Sedaris, using witty irony and deep philosophical analysis, shows the difficulties of intercultural communication in a foreign language. The composition of the French language group was diverse: American David (aka the author), as well as “Italian nanny, two chatty Poles, and a pouty, plump Moroccan woman who had grown up speaking French and had enrolled in the class to improve her spelling. ” Already in this description of the group, sharp, witty characterizations of the class participants appear. To the extent that the author reveals here the personality traits of these people, he offers the reader deeper characteristics of different cultures and backgrounds of these people.
Each culture is created and formed in natural and historical conditions, creates its own image of a person, his language of communication, and, of course, as a whole, forms its own picture of the world. Every culture has its own language system. With the help of this system, native speakers can communicate with each other and learn a particular culture. However, this is not the only purpose and significance of language in culture. Outside of language and the boundaries of its distribution, culture is simply impossible since language forms its foundation and internal basis (Hansen-Thomas & Chennapragada). It is this premise that forms the conflict in the work: understanding the basic cultural symbols, the characters in the story do not know the language. Added to this is the Moroccan, who does not own cultural symbols either: not seriously understanding what Easter is, she introduces all the participants in the discussion into a problematic situation.
Knowledge of grammar rules, words is entirely insufficient to be fluent in the language and know it. One also needs to learn, study the very culture of the target language. One needs to know what to say, how to say, express one’s thoughts correctly, how a given word can be used in a specific context (Porto et al.). For this reason, maximum attention during the study of foreign languages is paid to the study of the culture and world of the language, the life and culture of people living in the countries of the target language. The plot of the story is constructed precisely by describing the paradox in which the participants in the discussion found themselves: while studying the language and culture of France, they faced the need to explain their own culture to a person while doing it meaningfully. This is where the paradox of the situation is triggered: with her question, the Moroccan problematized what the other participants perceived as given and unproblematic.
An important place in history is occupied by the difficulty of transition from basic words denoting food, animals, and objects to high ambiguous words referring to a whole centuries-old cultural tradition. The central stumbling block was the word faith, which subsequently leads the author to an interesting non-obvious analogy. In the last paragraph, David Sedaris writes: “In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. […] So why stop there? If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? “.
The atmosphere of the setting reveals the conflict on two levels. Apart from being not able to explain one of the most profound belief systems, the participants of the discussion are not able to shape an appropriate, adequate picture of their culture. In a situation of contact between representatives of different cultures, overcoming the language barrier is not enough to ensure communication effectiveness: for this it is necessary to overcome the cultural barrier. However, in a situation of insufficient knowledge of the language to explain the culture to a person from another cultural system, the participants themselves are lost in the foundations of their beliefs. Indeed, those cultural symbols that were unshakably taken for granted by the participants in the discussion lose their meaning and are problematized. The author himself comes to an argument about the discrepancy of symbols within Christianity: American and European. As he writes, “the Easter Bunny has character; he’s someone you’d like to meet and shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet. It’s like saying that come Christmas, a magic dustpan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder blocks. Who wants to stay up all night so they can see a bell? And why fly one in from Rome when they’ve got more bells than they know what to do with right here in Paris? That’s the most implausible aspect of the whole story, as there’s no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker to fly in and take their jobs “. However, even though it is in this passage that the author decides in favor of the Rabbit as a plausible symbol of Christian faith, all symbols begin to be questioned in the course of the lesson. Ultimately, the author ends the short story with “A bell, though, that’s fucked up.” It seems that this phrase is designed, due to its vulgarity and spontaneity, to reduce the degree of philosophical tension, which was never resolved in the course of the narrative.
Works Cited
Hansen-Thomas, Holly, and SriPadmini Chennapragada. “Culture Clash in the Multicultural Classroom: A Case Study from A Newcomer School.” English Language Teaching 11.4 (2018): 82-90.
Porto, Melina, Stephanie Ann Houghton, and Michael Byram. “Intercultural citizenship in the (foreign) language classroom.” (2018): 484-498.
Sedaris, David. “Jesus Shaves.” Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris, Little, Brown & Co., 2000.