The young woman (~25) teaching a younger woman (~18) beside me in a Starbucks yesterday were both interesting and annoying, though they should not have been annoying, for they were just facts of life, like weather or mosquitoes.
What I noticed was how the teacher spoke with a perfectly predictable pronunciation, with a tone of voice, and with an intonation of what she was saying, that was one "standard pattern" I have come to note living here. (How many such patterns are there here? 15-20 patterns of speech? From those of teen girls of varied social circles to those retired women who dye their hair the same unconvincing colors?).
There was nothing in a single word she said, not a single emotion in her voice or words, nor in the intonation pattern (which is under recognized in language I think) of her explaining math, that I have not heard precisely the same way many times in Moscow.
When her young student, apparently at successfully responding to some test correctly, gesticulated with her arms and hands in a way that one could observe in a thousand thousand cases, like a cliche of gestures (probably from TV), I had additional confirmation of their standardized, group-personalities.
And when they got up to leave -- after sitting for 1/2 hour having bought nothing -- their clothing and faces conformed to these other facts.
After they had gone I reviewed in my mind a conclusion I had reached long ago: Though they were of course individual persons, they were carried by their social patterns, rather than carrying themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment