Culture Share: Australia - Through the Looking Glass

This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Juliette Wade discusses her discovery of Melbourne, Australia.

Before I ever went to Australia, my images of it were mostly about animals. After all, we see them on nature programs - the koala, the kangaroo, the dingo, the emu, the platypus and occasionally the echidna. When I met my husband, who hails from Melbourne, I'm embarrassed to say that was the first time I'd ever taken the time to think about the human population of Australia to any extensive degree. Obviously I've learned a lot more since then! (Phew!)

When I started visiting Australia with a view to making it my second home, I got a very different view of it. I came out of the experience of Europe, where there are lots of countries side by side, often with distinct and mutually unintelligible languages - that, and Japan, where almost everything is unintelligible at first. From that perspective, Australia seemed much like home. It's not even just that the people speak English. The place is clearly a former English colony, and all kinds of little things resemble America, even as a whole lot of other things resemble England. The result is something uniquely Australian, but to this day whenever I'm there I have the sense that I've traveled through the looking-glass.

I remember how Lewis Carroll described the world within the looking-glass: every part of it that you could see by looking in the mirror was the same as this world, but every part of it that was outside the reach of the mirror's view was entirely different.

It fits rather well, of course, with the fact that in Australia, people drive on the left-hand side of the road. On my first visit, I had come direct from Japan where they also drive on the left, so it didn't trouble me much to look right first when crossing the street. However, since I never actually drove a car in Japan, the trouble I had was in walking to the incorrect side of the car. To this day, even after all the time I've spent in Australia, I still occasionally walk to the right side of the car expecting to find the passenger's seat! When you're driving, in fact, it's less difficult to figure out which side of the road to be on, and much harder to choose the correct side of the steering wheel (windshield wipers or turn signal, which in Australia is called the "indicator"). Also, because of one's different position in the car, it's easy to drive too close to the left-hand shoulder.


There are other things too that seem literally backwards. The toilet and other drains swirl the opposite direction (I had a commenter point out that the association between this and the Coriolis effect was considered urban legend - but I have noticed the backwards swirl, and I wonder what else might cause it!). Then of course there is the fact that autumn (they don't call it fall) comes in April and spring in September.

I very clearly remember walking down the sidewalk (the "pavement") with my husband on a beautiful 80-degree-Fahrenheit day (roughly 27 degrees C to an Australian) which happened to be Christmas Eve. You could buy Christmas cards with Santa on a surfboard at the news agent's, which is like a stationery shop plus newspaper and magazine source, and all the while the public speakers were playing "Walking in a Winter Wonderland." It was extremely surreal for someone from the northern hemisphere.

One of the other interesting things I've discovered in Australia, which may or may not be common to other places in the southern hemisphere, is that the quality of sunlight is different. My gut instinct is to say that the sunlight seems brighter, though I'm pretty sure it's not literally brighter, only coming from a different angle. Certainly to anyone accustomed to gauging direction based on the sun's position, it can be a confusing place (my father and my brother noted this particularly).

As a person from California I am quite accustomed to the presence of eucalyptus trees. The San Francisco Bay Area is full of eucalyptus groves. What stood out to me about the gum trees of Australia were the sheer number and variety of them. Australia is home to vast forests which appear, at least at first glance, to be composed of about 75% eucalyptus. The other thing, of course, is that when you're in a grove of gum trees in Australia it's worth looking up to see if you can find a koala. It took me a good three years or so to break my husband of this "looking-up" habit whenever we encountered eucalyptus groves. I can see why he misses the possibility of koalas, though. While I haven't seen many, in spite of much looking, I still love the possibility of finding one myself. And of course I love the sound of kookaburras.

There are so many details that I could go on forever, but I do want to mention two things I particularly notice about Melbourne. In California we have a lot of strip malls - on a piece of land to one side of the road you'll have a large parking lot and on the inward side of it will be a long building, sometimes with end pieces like a bracket. This building will be divided into a number of smaller shops and restaurants. Melbourne doesn't have these strip malls. There is no "parking lot at the side of the road" phenomenon. Going to run errands is called "going up the shops" and the shops are right along both sides of the main road. Often enough the shop buildings share a wall, even if their heights and appearances are different. The closest thing to a strip mall is a long building along one side of the road (with the pavement directly in front of it), which gets divided into smaller establishments. You might find a news agent's, a chemist's (pharmacy), an op shop (like Goodwill), a bakery, a milk bar (like a snack bar, with ice cream bars and meat pies and candy bars, etc.), all side by side. Their doors will be kept open, but will have thick strips of clear plastic hanging down across them to prevent the entry of flies (you push them aside as you enter). The stores won't have small cloth awnings. Often what you'll find is something that appears half awning, half roof - an awning that sticks far out from the front of the building, supported by poles, which entirely shades the sidewalk. The names of the shops are labeled above this, or at the front edge.

Melbourne also has some beautiful historic homes with special ironwork which deserves mention. I see it as one of the defining characteristics of Melburnian architecture, much like the ironwork that you see in New Orleans, but in an entirely different style.

Australia is an awesome place, and I find Melbourne to be one of my favorite places in the world, even beyond the natural affection that comes with its being the home of my favorite person. I hope you'll have a chance to go through the looking glass too, one day. When you get there, remember that "G'day" is pronounced with some stress on both halves, like you're saying "good day" without the first "d."

G'day everybody!

Where we travel to

Have you ever noticed where we travel to? If you were to take a poll of people in your area, where do you think they typically go? Where would they like to go, or dream of going?

Where you want to go depends a lot on where you are.

Consider the places that your everyday routine takes you. Then think about whether there are tourist destinations nearby that you almost never go to. There are probably some. We live an hour from San Francisco and we almost never go there as tourists. We go when we're taking guests from out of town, and that's it, with very few exceptions. I used to live right by the beach (10 minute walk) and go maybe three or four times a year.

Where would you go if you had a day or two, maybe a weekend to travel? The radius will be bigger, and perhaps you can identify some weekend spots that are relatively close by.

Where would you go if you took a longer trip?

I remember meeting my husband, who is from Australia, and telling him how I had taken trips to Europe and would love to show him France one day. The first time I told him that he gaped at me. He'd never considered going to Europe. From California, Europe is exotic and faraway; from the East coast it's exotic but just a bit of a hop. From Australia, Europe is on the opposite side of everything.

You'll enjoy this one: he asked me, "Have you ever been overseas to Mexico?"

I said, "I've been to Mexico, but it didn't involve going over any seas." Of course, that was when I realized that if you live in Australia, everywhere that's not Australia is "overseas"!

People from Australia won't go to Hawaii on vacation; they'll go to Bali. It's closer, and I'd have to say it's roughly the equivalent expense in money and time as going from the continental US to Hawaii. People inside Europe travel between countries quite a bit. It's very common for people from France to visit Italy in August, for example.

What I'm trying to get at here is that for any given region, there will be travel zones (day travel, overnight travel, longer travel) and travel habits. The places we think of going have a lot to do with the place we are right now.

So what does travel mean in your world? How does faster-than-light spaceship drive change that equation? If you live in the medieval-tech world of Fandazia, what does it mean to leave your town? Where would you imagine going? The concept of travel, both of how much effort and money it takes, and of where one might go, depends a lot on the culture of the local area.

It's something to think about.

A different value: water

One really great way to make a created society (whether science fiction or fantasy) stand out is to take something very common or vital and give it a drastically different value. A society that doesn't use money might be one example. Or one in which technology is seen as a bizarre replacement for the usual solution to problems - which is the case in the wizarding world of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. A few of my recent experiences have got me thinking about water, so I thought I'd share some musings on the value of water.

California is in a drought right now, and so we're receiving messages about how important it is to conserve water. Since I lived through a portion of the '70's in which there was a serious drought, I find that I have a gut reaction to certain types of water-wasting behavior, such as when I see sprinklers running in midday and dumping drinkable water into the gutters.

As a result of this, when I first went to Japan I had a similar gut reaction to one very common water-related behavior I saw: that of dumping a bucket of water over the sidewalk in front of a place of business. This is generally done in the early morning, and I guess is intended to clean the sidewalk, or at least to give an enhanced feeling of purity to the entrance of the business in question. Sometimes it's just a bucketful, and sometimes it extends to rinsing the entire section of street in front of a famous restaurant. In Japan, where there are two separate rainy seasons, there seems to have been less worry about the quantity of water used in this kind of activity.

Australia right now is having a serious drought - a much more serious one than we are. Visiting Australia is in many ways like going through the looking glass for me: lots of things are similar, as a result of our shared English colonial heritage, yet all are slightly different. One thing I do notice is that concerns for public issues are much more dramatic there, and advertising reflects this. I noticed a poster ad in the train stations in which a very dirty-looking plumber holding tools and pipes declared, "If I can get clean in four minutes, so can you."

I took a brief trip to Mexico some years ago, and had to follow the advice, "don't drink the water." This meant drinking bottled water, or sodas, or other purified forms of beverages, to protect my sissy American immune system from some of the things that Mexican drinkers take for granted. A friend of mine, traveling with me, let down his guard without thinking and had a glass of water in the airport before we traveled back to the US - perhaps unconsciously thinking that being in the airport meant we'd already left Mexico in some sense - and he was a very sick man by that evening.

When I traveled to France, one thing I learned is that while the tap water is drinkable, you can't assume all water is drinkable when it comes out of a pipe. You have to watch for signs saying "eau non potable," or non-drinkable water. One of my friends told me that Paris has two entirely separate water delivery systems: one for drinking water, and the other for fountains. This certainly suggests a different value placed on fountains! Imagine all the work that went into building two entirely separate systems of water-delivery infrastructure. Boy, would I be curious to see a map of that.

In the science fiction arena, the most dramatically different value I've ever seen placed on water was that portrayed by Frank Herbert in his Dune novels. Every drop is so precious that a person's wealth is measured in water - and the horrible oppressive government engages in overt demonstrations of water wastage just to prove to people a. that its people are rich beyond measure and b. that they don't care at all about the natives. In this scenario, where plants are planted with their own individual dew-gathering cups, the planting of a thirsty palm tree or the splashing of water onto towels become offensive activities, tapping into that very same gut reaction I had when I saw the buckets of water being poured onto the sidewalks in Japan.

So for those of you out there working on worldbuilding, think about taking something like water - something extremely common that we see every single day - and giving it a different value. That different value can be shown in many different ways. In the examples above, the different messages about water were conveyed by: traditional daily behaviors, advertising, public signs, and common verbal expressions. There are other opportunities as well, such as laws, urban myths, gossip or wives' tales. The change in value doesn't need to be as extreme as Dune's in order to stand out. But by placing it in your story world and making it visible by one or more of these means, you can make great strides toward achieving a sense of difference through "show don't tell."

It's something to think about.

My On-and-Off Australian Accent

Sorry I've been so quiet. I've been honing my Australian accent. Of course, I've also spent a week without the internet, which explains some things.

Whenever I'm in Australia, I find myself picking up an Australian accent. But it's interesting - this time, the tendency wasn't so strong as it has been in the past. Not like the time when I was 15 and by noon I couldn't remember what I sounded like before.

The difference, I think, is my kids. This time, I was talking to them a lot, and they don't tend to pick up the accent the way I do. My son likes to learn to say things in the Australian way, but he doesn't fall into it by accident. And my daughter doesn't pick it up at all (yet), though she understands it perfectly. I'm not sure when the tendency to pick up accents begins, but it seems to me there's still a possibility that they may pick it up later. I'll just have to wait and see.

Whether you pick up an accent or not has something to do with social alignment. I remember when I first came here, a single girl dating my soon-to-be-husband - I really felt silly not talking like everyone else. I got a lot of curiosity about myself, and was constantly being asked to act as a spokesperson for the US. People would bring up all the things they disliked about the US, and ask me to defend them, whether they had anything to do with my own behaviors and belief system at all. I took advantage of my ability to pick up accents and once actually launched into Australian for a full minute so as not to make myself look like a fool when I missed a train.

Now, though, I think it's a little unfair of me to try so hard to speak like an Australian. My kids are used to me speaking the way I do, and though their dad speaks Aussie (pronounced: ozzy), I do wonder if they think I'm being silly if I fall into the accent. Also, I know that people perceive group membership through accent a great deal, and I don't want the kids to get the idea that I'm not standing with them. This wouldn't of course be something they'd be consciously aware of, but they could still be more uncomfortable as a result of it. In fact, I haven't thought much about the issue during this trip - it only occurred to me this afternoon to look at my own linguistic behavior and ask myself why I'd done what I did.

Accents and judgments of social alignment are very closely linked. It's been interesting to watch this in myself.

I'm coming back to the US on Sunday, so I'm hoping to post again tomorrow... Jetlag could slow me down considerably once I'm back, but I'll be back to my regular routine as soon as I can make it.

Cross-country differences in food (milk and bread)

Since I'm currently in Australia, I've been put in the position of noticing differences between this country and the US - and explaining them to my kids. For example, last night I had to explain to my son that the reason he didn't like the glass of milk they brought him was because every country's milk tastes slightly different, depending on how they process it post-cow. And in fact it appears that the higher the fat content of the milk, the more distinct the taste difference is.

My least favorite milk is the UHT super-pasteurized milk they carry in boxes in Europe. I can hardly stand to drink it. My favorite is the one I'm used to, US milk - but I definitely prefer either 1% or 2% milk fat rather than whole or skim. The other one I remember is having milk fresh out of a cow in England when I was fifteen. That was quite an eye-opener as well.

The day we arrived here in Australia we went to the grocery store, and I went looking for bread. In fact, I'm very proud of the bread that I found - a sort of whole-grain bread, not too thickly sliced, which has been lovely for the purposes of toast in the mornings. The final measure of its success? My kids will eat it. They're actually a bit wary of white bread, which makes me proud.

A few years ago when we were here, we decided to make French Toast for my sister-in-law's family and I asked her and my husband to buy ciabatta for the purpose. Interestingly, though my sister-in-law was skeptical about their chances of finding any, it was easily available. So Italian-style breads are available in Australia (focaccia most definitely is, too).

Bread is one of the foods that I've noticed varies most widely, both in the way it's prepared (its flavor) and the way it's perceived.

The most remarkable bread I've ever eaten I had in Germany. My mother bought it, so I couldn't tell you what kind it was. It was dark, pungently flavorful and very toothy. I wouldn't say it was the most delicious, precisely, but I will tell you I've never eaten another bread like it.

My favorite breads come from France. But a baguette in the US is not the same is a baguette from the country of its origin. My husband and I visited France in 1998, and I remember saying to my him before we left that he was going to love the bread.

"Bread is bread," he said.

"No it's not. The bread in France is different. It's just so good."

"I'm sure it's good," he said. "But bread is bread."

Then we actually got there and his eyes went wide on a first bite of baguette. He actually went so far is to apologize to me for arguing - which is quite a concession, believe me! Bread in France, well, really matches my idea of what delicious bread should be.

I say "matches my idea" because not everyone has the same idea about bread. Take Japan, for example. Not only is bread not a primary staple there in the way it is in the US, but perceptions of what bread should be like are totally unlike what I'm used to.

I saw an advertisement there for bread - generally a great way to get a basic read on what is considered ideal. In this advertisement, there was a close-up shot of a slice of bread: the bread was white and perfectly square, and the slice was about one inch thick. Then a pair of attractive female fingers appeared from the lower right-hand corner of the screen and pinched the corner of the slice. When they released it, the ad remarked on the wonderful way the bread sprung back into shape.

My own response? "Please don't buy me any of that." I've actually eaten it, mind you. If you pinch the bread hard enough, you can compress it down to about 1/4 of its original thickness, which is just appalling. It's Wonder bread taken to an extreme.

Compare that reaction to my lovely Japanese host mother's reaction when my husband and I bought a lovely round crusty loaf of rye-raisin-walnut bread in the specialty area of a department store. We brought it home to her place, but she was reluctant to try it. Finally we managed to convince her and her two kids to try some, and they actually liked it quite a bit - but some hours later my host mother told us she was very surprised that it tasted good, because the loaf "looked dirty."

That was a piquant little cultural difference that fascinated me. It's worth thinking about.

Accent changes in individuals

We had some friends over last night, and I observed something very interesting about my husband that made me think about our recent accent discussion here: his accent changes depending on context.

You may have noticed this about yourself, or others, already. Does your friend who grew up in New Jersey sound different when she talks on the phone to her relatives back home? Does your Southern buddy twang more when he gets around others from his region? This stuff happens all the time.

My husband, as I've previously noted, has a halfway-accent after his fifteen or so years here. Aussies think he sounds American, and Americans think he sounds Australian. When we go back to Australia, or when he talks to his mother, his accent starts to gravitate unconsciously back toward the Australian norm.

However, when he intentionally "puts on" an Aussie accent, it's not his natural one; it tends to come out exaggerated, and often he clicks at the end of what he says. The clicks have always surprised me - they're the kind in the side of the cheek that people make to get horses to move. Since I only noticed them recently, I'm not really sure whether they have some basis in a local Australian accent, or in someone's idea of the "ocker" Australian accent, or even in some comedy routine. If you're Australian and/or you have any clue about this, I'd be curious to hear it.

The other time that his accent gets stronger is when he's telling jokes - it's clearly not put on, but unconscious, and yet it's a significantly stronger accent than he gets when speaking to his relatives.

I think there's got to be some great application for this in a story, so I'm going to be looking for a place to use it. Maybe someone undercover who gives himself away by joking, or losing his accent in a critical situation... You can keep your eye out for it, too.

Absolute and Relative Direction

Did any of you out there have difficulty learning the difference between right and left? Have you ever gotten confused over "my left" and "your left"? What about north, south, east and west?

Both of these are senses of direction. Right and left are relative, and orient relative to the position of the speaker unless otherwise specified. North, south, etc. are absolute directions, and orient independently of the movement of the speaker. No surprise to anyone, because in English we have both of these types of orientation words.

Interestingly, though, at least one Australian aboriginal language doesn't use the relative positioning words - only the absolute ones. So that they would never say "my right foot"; they would say something like "my northward foot" or "my southward foot" etc. I think you can see that it's awfully critical to maintain an absolute sense of direction if you're going to be speaking of about parts of your own body differently depending on which direction you're facing.

I would love to see a group of aliens with only absolute direction words - or, to take the concept further, only a set of absolute words to refer to something we generally use relative expressions for, like pronouns. Imagine how confused an alien from this society would be to hear every human referring to him or herself with "I." They would probably construe it incorrectly as a proper name.

While I'm on this topic, I'd like to mention the Japanese words "kochira" "sochira" and "achira," which can be roughly translated as "this direction" "that direction" and "that direction over there." Like English "this" and "that," "left" and "right," "I" and "you" they are relative terms, which take their meaning from the identity and position of the speaker. You can probably guess from the translations, though, that they aren't defined quite the same way.

The ko- prefix indicates a direction or an object associated with the speaker (or more precisely, in the speaker's in-group). The so- prefix indicates something associated with the person that the speaker is talking to - the other guy in the conversation. The a- prefix indicates something that is associated neither with the speaker nor the other guy in the conversation, but is outside both of their circles.

I mention the Australian and Japanese examples because I think it's fascinating to consider other methods of organizing reality. Also, though, I want to bring attention to our own way of organizing reality: organizing it around ourselves. If you look around, the English language is full of expressions that are relative (I, he, this, that, here, there, today, yesterday, just to name a few).

Never forget that relative expressions are your allies in the construction of point of view. If you are trying to create a close point of view, try looking around for opportunities to use relative expressions instead of absolute ones. You may find more than you expect.

Some thoughts on stars...

Stars in the sky. They've been around a long time, and been used for many different things by different peoples. Navigation has always been one of their big functions (yay, Polaris!). I also think immediately of the Greek constellations which still remain part of our culture today. That's pretty impressive staying power, and it's clear to me that whatever society is first to assign a categorization system to something can retain great influence in the way that thing is represented by other groups (for a very long time!). I should also mention the Southern Cross, which features on my husband's native flag. I've seen it from the Southern Hemisphere - and boy, is it a kick to see Orion upside-down!

The other day, stars in the sky featured prominently in the Curious George cartoon show. George went to the country and became so fascinated by the stars that he tried to count them all. This involved him falling asleep counting multiple nights in a row, until he found a constellation he could use to keep track of which regions he was counting. (I wouldn't have had the heart to tell him it was hopeless, would you?) The interesting part for me was when he went back to the city and tried to count, he couldn't see the stars at all until a citywide blackout occurred. Something about that episode had a beautiful, personal quality for me. It's not just about whether the stars are there, or about teaching that cities have a lot of light that obscures the stars - it also had George being sad that he couldn't see the stars that were his friends. Perhaps it's a little like my own feeling of oddity when I see Betelgeuse below Orion's belt: it situates me in the world.

My Varin world is underground, but when I first wrote about it, I had people swearing by the heavens. Then I went back and said, Hey! One possibility would have been to suggest that they swear by something else. Some of the locals, I decided, do swear by the Pit of Darkness. But instead of "fixing," I decided that the heavens connection should suggest something about the history of the Varin people: that they had once known the stars, but lost them when the society moved underground. From such a simple "error" an entirely new dimension of history and worldbuilding was born, and I'm glad of it.

Here's to the stars.

Nicknames (shortening names)

Did you ever hear of a character named Ikiolaraldian Var Orkesh mis Anok'rand?

Of course not, because I made him up - but there are plenty of books out there where the character names are so complex I have difficulty pronouncing them, remembering them, etc. One of my friends typically takes any name over a certain length and remembers it by shortening it to the first syllable, just to simplify things.

My friend T.L. Morganfield works with the Aztec world, so she has to name her characters the way the Aztecs used to do it, leading to names like Acatl-tzin, etc. This is a challenge, and I've seen her take two primary approaches to it: using the names as written, when they're shorter, or translating them into their meanings, when they're so long that they become hard to parse.

Some names are not directly translatable. In English this is typically the case with first names. We've got a number of strategies for nicknaming people.

1. adding an "ee" sound to make a diminutive, which actually can make the name longer, like James (1 syllable) to Jamie (2 syllables).

2. shortening a name, like taking down Robert to Rob, or Elizabeth to Liz, Beth, Betty (two strategies there), etc.

Australia has some interesting nicknaming strategies. My favorite is the Barry->Bazza, Harry/Harold->Hazza, Larry -> Lazza pattern, which I'm less sure how to analyze, but I'm thinking it's a type of diminutive or at least an indicator of solidarity with the person in question.

Japanese also has a name-shortening strategy, which takes a name and reduces it to the first two syllables (or single long syllable), then adds a diminutive suffix. So for Mariko it would be Mari-chan, and for Michiko it's Mi'-chan (double consonant to start the chan). For males you could have Haruki becoming Haru-kun, etc.

If you're dealing with naming in a fantasy or science fiction world, you might want to ask yourself whether your population has a tendency to nickname. Depending on how your names are designed, this could be done in different ways - based on the English, Australian, Japanese
or other Earth-language pattern, or based on a pattern that fits the culture in question.

The example I'm thinking of comes from Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. The Karhidish character who befriends Genly Ai has rather a long name: Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. Fortunately, and fascinatingly, the pieces of the name have meaning, and this influences who calls him what. Therem Harth most closely matches our first and last name pattern, while rem ir Estraven is an indicator of his geographical affiliation , the land from which he comes. At first, when their relationship is entirely diplomatic, Genly Ai calls him Estraven, but after they become close, he invites Genly to call him Harth, i.e. by his last name. Difficulty arises when they attempt to communicate telepathically and discover that Genly can only refer to him as Therem in this form of communication - in part because using the first name indicates intimacy.

What is so awesome about LeGuin's approach is how each name choice means something different, and culturally specific, because of the way she's put the names together in the first place. I should also note that the names of people from Orgoreyn don't work this way, because the language and culture are different.

Naming and nicknaming don't have to be just for fun and convenience. They can also reveal a lot about the world your characters live in.

Upcoming posts at TTYU: health, worldbuilding in foreground vs. background

Manners Matter...

No, I'm not talking about Emily Post.

I'm talking about polite words.  Please and thank you, obviously, which have been drilled into many of our heads - and which I drill into the heads of my own children!  (I do try to do it gently...)  But there's also that other stuff: all the things we say to each other which seem to have no real content or meaning, but which we say anyway.  "How are you?" when we don't expect an answer.  "Fine" when we don't really feel fine.  The list goes on and on.

These things are important.  Why?  Not because they have empirical value, but because they have social value.  They express alignment, and to mark us as members of particular social groups.  They are largely unnoticed and unconscious, but that makes them all the more problematic.  

If a language learner makes a mistake in verb conjugation, we go, "Okay, that was a mistake."  And we move on.  But if a language learner makes a mistake in politeness, usually we don't say it was a mistake; we conclude that this person is abrasive or rude.  Mistakes in politeness (and pragmatics generally) tend to reflect on the person, rather than on the person's use of language.

Here's another one.  Where do we draw the line between politeness and lying?  If we don't like a friend's outfit, it would be pretty inconsiderate to tell him so - but what do we say if he asks?  If we say he looks fine, is that lying, or is it simply polite?  It's a tricky distinction, but potentially explosive, and begging to be used in a story.

Then there's mimicry, which came up recently on Kelley Eskridge's blog.  Many of us unconsciously fall into the speech patterns of the people we're talking with - it seems to feel better, to help us fit in by aligning us with those people.  But how much is too much?  How do we know when it might turn into mockery? 

I spoke Australian once.  I'd been waiting at a train station for half an hour, watching trains go by and fuming, when I suddenly realized that I'd made a mistake in reading the destination signs, and I could have caught any of about five trains that I'd seen.  This made me hopping mad (literally!  I must have been quite a sight).  But when the kind people around me asked what was wrong, some unconscious part of me decided they'd call me stupid if they knew I was American, so I launched into Australian without thinking.  Luckily I was smart enough not to try it for long, and I escaped without offending anyone.  They assumed (correctly!) that I wasn't from the neighborhood.

How many of you have been part of situations like this?

I'll come back to the topic again soon.