>so the joke you frequently tell isn't a joke for me, but a reality.
Me too (well, maybe not quite as severe, but similar). But I tell the joke to introduce people to the ideas that maybe not everyone in the world is just exactly like them, and that maybe they should pay conscious attention to nonverbal stuff, without accusing them too directly.
AFAIK, most (obviously not all) Americans show their Anglo cultural heritage on this point, and have among the largest personal spheres in the world; at least that was what was in all the linguistics textbooks fifteen years ago, and my personal observations bear it out. Whether there's been a change in the overall pattern, thanks to the changing ethnic makeup of our contry, or thanks to the "heck with etiquette; show 'em how you REALLY feel" pop psychology, or whether you just live in LA, I don't know. |
