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As a native speaker of English, when someone asks me that I do try to express how I am, but I know my response is being interpreted relative to a baseline of how people answer this question. If I'm having a rough day I will answer differently from how I would on a good day. But while doing this I'm balancing all sorts of other considerations: how much time I can spend away from other topics, whether I want a closer or more formal relationship with the other person, what they want, etc. I modulate my response relative to the communicative baseline, so my interlocutor, if they're fluent, can infer that I'm doing well or poorly, I'm in haste or willing to take some time, that I put great stock in the my relationship to them or little. I think this implicit communicative baseline is a huge, invisible barrier to communication among people who are apparently fluent in a common language. You can still understand the question as serious and answer it honestly conveying how you are to the speaker, and have it come off as fake or formulaic to people not aware of the baseline. I'm sure this is true for all languages. The problem, of course, is acquiring a knowledge of these baselines and the context in which they apply is extremely difficult, often even for native speakers. The native speakers find it difficult to introspect about this and explain why they interpret things as they do. Because it is invisible to them, it is difficult for them to teach this to someone else. And it is difficult for them to realize someone else is not doing this and therefore not be offended by non-natives, or people with ASD or whatever, not communicating relative to this baseline. A Dutch person saying something bluntly isn't "just being honest". They are just comporting themselves relative to the Dutch baseline. A Japanese person using non-confrontational polite formulations isn't being dishonest. They assume you are familiar with the Japanese baseline (while not necessarily even being aware this is their assumption). I think it is common for people to believe people from their native culture come in all sorts but people from other cultures all have personalities in a tight range. They're all lazy or wily or emotionless or angry or cold. I think what they're perceiving is the way one communicative baseline deviates from another. They take this difference as a deliberate, communicative modulation away from their baseline, the honest, neutral one. To them, the other person's neutral state is not neutral. They always speak as they they're angry, say, or in a hurry, or trying to deceive. It is analogous to the way people perceive themselves as having a neutral, invisible accent and all other people speak in some quirky way. |