In a class I taught in the early 1990s, the chasm between my culture and that of a group of students led to a major crisis. The nuances of language were one factor, but the cultural foundation for understanding was, I think, a greater factor.
During the 1990s, I taught a weeklong class in crime scene examination for a rural college in Arizona. The class always numbered around thirty students. Some years, tribal police officers from several Native American tribes outnumbered the non-Indian students. The Native American students spoke English, which is to say they understood and used words correctly. But English was their second language and the fundamental cultural foundation seemed to be a barrier to deeper understanding.
One year, one tribe sent 5 or 6 members of their tribal police to my class. They carpooled from their reservation in several vehicles every day. One morning toward the end of the week, two of the students from this tribe were late – a Captain and a young female cadet in training. Being the joker that I sometimes am, when these two students arrived late, I quipped, “Well! I guess we know where Captain X and Miss Y have been.” It was a lame and thoughtless joke, but I had blurted it out without thinking. Had I been speaking to a group of white police of my own culture, the joke would have been taken as such and laughed off and forgotten within a minute or two.
The class wrapped up a couple of days later. Everybody passed, got their certificates, and returned home. But several days later I got a call from Jim, the college dean. He needed a detailed memo from me regarding the statement. I protested that it was just a joke. He said the Indians had taken my comment as a serious allegation. One of them had reported it to the Chief of the Tribal Police, who had ordered a thorough investigation.
The upshot of it was that the Captain and the Cadet were indeed having an extramarital affair. My little joke had led to scandal in the Tribal Police and the Tribe in general.
I wrote a memo as Jim requested. I offered a sincere apology for making light of the tardiness of the two officers with an inappropriate joke and for triggering a crisis for both the tribal police and the college for which I was teaching.
From this incident, I learned that idioms, figures of speech, and jokes in one language and culture are not always understood in the way intended by students from another culture and language. Subsequently, I kept my lectures and comments on a more literal and professional level. And when I began expanding my international teaching, I likewise tried to be cognizant that my sense of humor might lose something in translation. It was a lesson I had learned the hard way.
I offer this anecdote for readers who are expanding their professional activities into teaching. Sometimes, the jokes we might find harmless in private take on a different connotation in the public arena, especially when different cultures and languages are involved.