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by TJ-14 3331 days ago
Can you explain what your comment means?
1 comments

No disrespect intended

Please don't take this the wrong way.

this is so American

I felt that the commenter was expressing themselves in a way that was particularly unique to Americans.

someone should use it as an academic linguistics example of culture-specific communication!

I believe the example is of such a high quality that it would be useful in an academic context (ie. college/university courses) as an example of communications made within one culture that are unique to that culture versus other cultures speaking the very same language, ie. people born in Scotland or New Zealand would generally never communicate in this way.

The examples list arguably American cultural traits present in the paragraph.

(Edit to explain points: 'psychotherapy' = more prevalent in US culture, 'negative third party social group stereotyping' = ~all those people are <negative-something>, 'pop culture references' = vampires, 'second person framing of self-help advice as casual banter' = grammatical form where "you gotta X", or "you should Y", or "when you X you Y!", 'capitalia' = THIS BIT IS GRATING, 'reformation of compassion in an ego-linked context' = compassion for self, which is fundamentally juxtaposed to traditional not-self usage as linked to eastern meditative traditions (vipassana, etc.) and where increased egocentrism is widely considered a quintessentially American cultural trait).

Except for perhaps psychotherapy^, there's nothing there that would be out of place if someone said it, say, in Russian (I can translate, if you wish).

In particular, there's about 140,000 hits for "emotional vampirism" when you Google it in Russian (pop culture, eh?).

Same thing about writing in ALL CAPS: http://lurkmore.to/CAPSLOCK

May I ask you, which many languages, besides English, do you browse the Internet in? I am curious about your the basis for comparison.

^People are becoming more open about seeing a therapist (психолог), but it's something out of reach of most people.

You explained all the obvious parts. Now explain what everything in that list means.
Thank you, the edit provided what we were looking for beforehand.