Good point about non-English (or, to be fair, simply "not in my language") meta. Sometimes it's a matter of limitation; my fluency has dropped so much that I simply could not participate, with any coherency, in any Mandarin or French conversations. For the rest... unless someone is willing to act as translator, there are massive chunks of meta that I may be able to access (online) but certainly wouldn't comprehend.
But that's assuming I have awareness of the conversations -- which, because I participate in mostly non-English fandoms, it's hard to get away from that awareness. If my fandoms were entirely English-based, and/or American-produced, it'd be a lot easier to forget that other chunks of the world may be watching, reading, and meta'ing American products. From an academic standpoint, I don't think one can justifiably ignore the non-English participation, but I also get that (in academic ventures) it's also a matter of limiting the scope: is the discussion how the intended (in-country) audience interprets meta, or is the discussion about how anyone (in- or out-country) interprets meta?
Beyond that, though... when we get into fails specifically, the language limitations really hamper that cross-cultural understanding. (As to be expected.) It's possibly one of the worst things about online fail-dialogues, that a lack of English means being discounted from the debate. More than that, though, the assumption that one must know a certain language (almost always English) to participate acts as a definite barrier... such that I can see the possibility of one assuming there must be little other (non-English) conversation, since all the 'important' debates are taking place in English. That kind of blindspot just engenders that barrier, making it worse and worse.
Then again, one obvious solution is also the hardest: to increase multi-lingual fluency. But failing that, we can at least increase multi-lingual awareness.
And more to the point of your comment, it's also a matter of multicultural awareness, which may go hand-in-hand with multilingual awareness. Global economy and all that; one can no longer assume that the only one reading is another native-English speaker in a similar socio-economic and ethnic position.
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Date: 25 Jan 2011 07:53 pm (UTC)But that's assuming I have awareness of the conversations -- which, because I participate in mostly non-English fandoms, it's hard to get away from that awareness. If my fandoms were entirely English-based, and/or American-produced, it'd be a lot easier to forget that other chunks of the world may be watching, reading, and meta'ing American products. From an academic standpoint, I don't think one can justifiably ignore the non-English participation, but I also get that (in academic ventures) it's also a matter of limiting the scope: is the discussion how the intended (in-country) audience interprets meta, or is the discussion about how anyone (in- or out-country) interprets meta?
Beyond that, though... when we get into fails specifically, the language limitations really hamper that cross-cultural understanding. (As to be expected.) It's possibly one of the worst things about online fail-dialogues, that a lack of English means being discounted from the debate. More than that, though, the assumption that one must know a certain language (almost always English) to participate acts as a definite barrier... such that I can see the possibility of one assuming there must be little other (non-English) conversation, since all the 'important' debates are taking place in English. That kind of blindspot just engenders that barrier, making it worse and worse.
Then again, one obvious solution is also the hardest: to increase multi-lingual fluency. But failing that, we can at least increase multi-lingual awareness.
And more to the point of your comment, it's also a matter of multicultural awareness, which may go hand-in-hand with multilingual awareness. Global economy and all that; one can no longer assume that the only one reading is another native-English speaker in a similar socio-economic and ethnic position.