Remember when Avengers: Endgame came out, Thanos Demanded Our Silence, and yet people wanted to share about the movie without spoiling it for others? Thus was born the “No Context Spoilers” hashtag about Endgame. People shared pictures that were funny for those who had seen the movie, but which spoiled nothing for those who hadn’t seen it because, without having seen the movie, it was just a meaningless picture.
That’s what today’s article is about. Because life as an expat often feels like everyone around you is posting pictures to a movie they’ve all seen, but which you haven’t, and so you’re left out. We’ll talk today about why that’s the case and how to overcome it so that you can survive, fit in, and thrive as an expat. Let’s get started.
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You really haven’t seen the movie
The metaphor I shared above—that everyone is sharing “no context spoilers” about a movie which you haven’t seen—is actually more true than you might think. To illustrate this in another way, look at this picture that my 9-year-old son drew:
Now, tell me: What’s depicted in the picture? What’s it about? What’s the story of the picture? Even deeper, what is the meaning of the picture, if I can use that word?
You’re probably quite clueless. You probably can identify people in the photo, and maybe a couple arrows that suggest movement, but, on the whole, it’s likely meaningless to you.
Why? Because, like a “no context spoiler,” you’re missing the context of the picture, without which the symbols in the picture are meaningless.1
Without context, symbols are meaningless.
Expat life is exactly like this. There are a thousand and one little references people make to historical events, cultural events, religious beliefs, cultural norms, and more. As an expat, you probably haven’t learned most of those things. You truly haven’t seen the movie.
I remember one time I was meeting a friend and he was late. When he came into the restaurant, he apologized that he was late and said “I couldn’t find parking. It’s the end of the year, what can you do?” And I most obviously didn’t know what you could do, nor why the end of the calendar year would relate to his ability to find a parking space.
So I asked. And, as it turns out, the traffic police have yearly quotas of fines they have to give out, so the end of the year is the time of year that you’re more likely to get a ticket. People can park illegally much of the year without consequences, but during the last month, you have to be extra careful or you’ll get a parking ticket.
I had no idea. I hadn’t seen that movie. Yet everyone local would have known exactly what he meant when he said “I couldn’t find parking. It’s the end of the year, what can you do?”
Why this happens
If people have a shared experience, they don’t need to explain the entire experience every time, they can just reference it and everyone who had that shared experience “gets it” while those who didn’t are lacking context in order to understand.
For example, my family will often reference “Christmas 2001.” As in, “Well, it wasn’t the greatest Christmas, but it wasn’t Christmas 2001” or “It was a Christmas 2001 experience.” If you weren’t there, you have no idea what I’m talking about even if you understand every single one of my words. It’s a cultural referent problem, not a language fluency problem.2
This is normal for families, communities, states,3 and countries. Relationship time is too valuable to spend rehashing every detail of an event, so people use this kind of verbal shorthand. What happens, though, is that the shorthand becomes a symbol for the event.
Knowing a symbol without knowing the reference is meaningless.
Why this matters
You’re all smart people, so this section probably doesn’t even matter—but think of the first time you visited your loved one’s family. You felt like an outsider, even if you came from the same language and culture, because you didn’t know the symbols, you didn’t understand the referents, and thus you couldn’t fully engage in the conversation and relationships.
Even if you’re quite fluent in the language, you’ll still find that meaningful relationships are difficult when you don’t know what everyone else knows. Relationships are built from shared experience and, so long as you lack knowledge of that shared experience, you’ll always feel and be treated as an outsider.
Learning cultural references matters because relationships matter.
How to learn symbols
More than just understanding the words that someone uses, you have to understand what they refer to. This is not just a language problem of learning the real-world animal referenced by the symbol “cow,” for example. You also have to learn the cultural events, historical events, cultural beliefs, philosophy, morals, fables, etc. that get caught up in the language as symbols.
In short, you have to learn language and culture together. You can’t separate them, even if you tried. And, if you did and only learned language, you’d find yourself woefully unable to meaningfully interact with others. Another way to put this is that you have to learn the world of your host people and not just their language, the same way that babies learn the world of their parents. This is one reason why I like to speak of learning, not a language, but the “languacultural world” of your host people.
You must enter the languacultural world of your host people.
The Endgame “No Context Spoilers” won’t make sense until you enter the world of the movie and watch it. My son’s picture won’t make sense unless you enter into his world and hear him explain it. You won’t understand me saying “Christmas 2001” unless you read the footnotes and get a glance into the world of my family.
Unfortunately, most of host culture doesn’t have footnotes.4 So how do you enter the languacultural world of your host people?
You need two things: (1) an explanation of the reference that is (2) a local explanation.
Explaining the reference
If you’re tracking with this article so far, this should be a no-brainer. Since a symbol without its reference is meaningless, you need an explanation of the reference in order to make sense of the symbol. So far, so good.
What makes it a bit more complicated is that often the explanation of one symbol will, in turn, reference other symbols. So even my footnoted reference of “Christmas 2001” won’t make sense if you understand what Christmas is, generally how US Americans celebrate the holiday, what I mean by “all my family,” how Western bathrooms function, and what “sick at both ends” means.
Those explanations, in turn, require other explanations and you can feel a bit like you’re doing down the rabbit hole,5 except that you’re gradually building up a base of knowledge that, slowly over time will enable you to make these connections yourselves.
Learning a local explanation
Many expats learn these kinds of references from other expats, and that’s not bad. Especially when you first arrive, you may need to quickly get up to speed on taboos and such, and another foreigner can be quite helpful in doing so. Likewise, cultural taxonomies, history books, and anthropological studies can help you go deeper into the culture than you may be able to go with limited language ability at start.
However, you need to know that, so long as a foreigner is explaining things to you or so long as a local is explaining things to you in a language other than the host language, you’re not getting a true “inside” picture of the explanation. You’re getting an explanation that is colored by the foreigner’s passport culture and the language that you’re speaking.
When you learn a language well, you’ll find that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of words that just don’t translate well across cultures. Sure, you can translate a term and it’s accurate in the other language—it’s not a wrong translation—but the term just doesn’t translate. This is one reason why, as I’ve written about before, you need to learn language through local context and not translation.
So when you learn cultural references through another culture or through another language, you’ll never be able to truly grasp the local meaning of the reference.
Tips for learning a languacultural world
Having understood why you’re often missing references, why this matters, and what you need to do to enter a languacultural world, let me end by sharing some tips for you as you learn language and culture as an expat.
1. Learn from a local
A non-native teacher can help you learn language, but it will be quite difficult for them to help birth you into this new languacultural world because they’re not fully part of the world themselves. If you’re just learning a language to get another notch on your belt, then fine. But if you’re learning a language in order to live in a host culture or relate to people in that world in a deep or meaningful way, you need to learn from locals. There’s just no other way to enter into the world in a true fashion.
With a local friend or a paid tutor, go to weddings, religious festivals, dances, traditions, ceremonies, etc. Scrupulously remember (or record, if appropriate) what you observe and ask your helper to explain it. It’s amazing how much your eyes will be opened by this experience. If you’re a high-level learner, you can also do this same exercise with local media (radio, TV, newspapers, books, movies, etc.)
For more depth on learning how to do this well without imposing your own categories of understanding on the local, I can’t recommend highly enough James Spradley’s book The Ethnographic Interview.6
2. Learn a languacultural world, not a language
Too many people think that all they need to do is learn a language, defined mostly by learning how to take what they want to say in their native language and translate it into the host language. And you can, to a degree, learn language this way. But you’ll never learn the culture or world behind the language, so you’ll never fully enter into it.
Intentionally learn the world of the language. Often teachers don’t do this, so you’ll have to intentionally pursue it with your teacher or supplement your learning outside of the classroom.
3. Learn what everyone else knows
As you learn, intentionally seek out to learn what everyone else in your host culture knows. I wrote an entire article on this, including a bunch of suggestions on what to ask, so I won’t belabor the point here. Just go ahead and read: Culture Connection: Learning What Everyone Knows.
Also, make sure to learn the history of your host people and/or country. I’ve written an entire article about that too: Discovering the Past: How History Shapes Cultural Understanding.
4. Learn directly and not through translation
Most people assume that the way you learn is via translation flashcards, but this uses your native language’s schema and understanding to understand the host language, which is never exactly the same. It’s better, instead, to learn through immersive context. As fortune has it, I’ve written about this too: Context is King: Discovering Language Through Life.
Conclusion
Life as an expat often feels like trying to interpret a “no context spoiler” from Avengers: Endgame. Without context, you can’t understand the meaning and you may feel confused, frustrated, or left out. Yet if you enter into the world of the movie, those symbols cease being something that excludes you and becomes something that includes you in the world of those who have also seen the movie. The exact same thing can occur in your expat life if only you’ll learn the languacultural world of your host people.
Learning the world isn’t just about language. It’s about relationships, community, and belonging to the people among whom you live. When you learn the “movie” of the culture—shared history, values, beliefs, etc.—you enter more fully into the story and measurably enrich your life.
So the next time you find yourself bewildered by a phrase, a reference, or a custom, remember: the context might not be clear now, but with curiosity, effort, and guidance from locals, you’ll gradually learn the meaning behind the symbols. And when you do, you’ll discover that you’re no longer just surviving as an expat—you’re thriving in a world that has become your own.
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Footnotes
- If you care to know, my son’s picture is of PUBG. The blue isn’t water (as I initially thought), but the blue zone; the red isn’t blood (as I thought) but the red zone; the dots aren’t the path someone traveled (as I thought) but the bullets being shot by the people in the picture. The precise story, you’d have to ask my son, but it progresses across the page as he lands, finds weapons, and shoots enemies. And what’s the meaning, you ask? He was bored at a camp and wanted to play PUBG but he couldn’t, so he imagined a battle and drew out what was happening as he did. ↩︎
- If you must know, Christmas 2001 was the year that every single member of my family got violently sick. Thankfully, we got sick sequentially, 3-4 of us at a time, over the course of 36 hours. Unfortunately, we got sick at both ends and there wasn’t enough bathroom space for everyone who needed it. It was not a pleasant holiday. ↩︎
- O-H…anyone?!? Where are my Buckeyes at?!?! ↩︎
- Ok, so sometimes book about your host culture have footnotes, but that’s not the same thing. ↩︎
- Another great example of a common English idiom that makes no sense unless you know its referent. ↩︎
- A great story from that book demonstrates the point of today’s article. He was once interviewing incarcerated people, to understand the culture from their perspective. One inmate offered to help, but talked about the inmates in terms that were sociological terms—the inmates’ socioeconomic status, race, education level, etc.—yet this is not at all how the inmates talked about each other or divided people into the groups in the jail. This is a great example of using non-local categories—in this case, sociological terms—to understand a local culture. It was an accurate description, from an outside perspective, but an utterly inaccurate one from the inmate’s experience. ↩︎