Uncouth Nation Quotes

“And European intellectuals continued to rave about this for months on end. Two years after September 11, 2001, Geoffrey Wheatcroft made the effort to take a second look at and comment on what had been written (above all) in the British press. He was struck by three things: the way the crime had been trivialized and relativized, the condemnation of the United States as the real guilty party, and the immense number of important British intellectuals, writers, poets, journalists, and composers who weighed in on this subject.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“The fact that obesity in both Europe and America is chiefly a class-specific phenomenon—obese people disproportionately inhabit the lower rungs of the social scale on both sides of the Atlantic—appears hardly a matter for reflection and pales in comparison to the ubiquitous mention of the sole culprit: the “Americanization” of European life.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“And my friend and colleague Hans Weiler, an outstanding expert on comparative university and educational policy, long-time professor at Stanford, and the founding rector of the innovative Viadrina University in Frankfurt an der Oder, repeatedly told me how careful he had to be about expressing his reform proposals so that they would not be seen as American, which would have led to their being stigmatized a priori and not taken seriously. It was not so much that the proposals themselves elicited resistance, but rather the fact—or even the mere suspicion—that this might be an instance of something “American.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“When, in an article about the American higher education system I wrote for the magazine Spiegel Spezial, I praised the seriousness with which teaching is viewed in America and also (in contrast to the situation in Germany) evaluated by students, I received numerous letters of protest from my German colleagues.63 “We are not, thank God, in America, where universities are just upgraded [secondary] schools,” one furious colleague wrote me. That students might be allowed to evaluate their professors’ teaching was rejected by almost all my German colleagues as a bad American habit that commercialized the university and damaged professorial and scholarly autonomy.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“It is not my intention to diminish genuine grievances, but rather to make it clear that the concept of “Americanization” (or even “American conditions”) is used as a label, a stigma, and adds little in terms of explanation or analysis. How and why is the increase in stress in Europe “American”? What exactly is “American” about this? Have American firms introduced these trends into Europe? Is it really more stressful to have a job with Ford in Cologne than it is with Volkswagen in Wolfsburg? There are many problems that cry out for discussion here, and many issues that need to be illuminated. But blaming everything on “Americanization” is, of course, easier and (above all) much more popular. “Americanization” becomes a complacent shorthand expression that, while doing nothing to explain complex processes, goes a long way toward offering everyone concerned a welcome bogeyman.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Sooner or later, almost every problem in the European working world is either branded with the label “Americanization” or blamed on the culprit of Americanization—or both.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“The oxymoron “working vacation” has entered the European vernacular, which again testifies to an “Americanization” of Europe’s work life. European managers are taking ever fewer vacations, and when they do take them, their vacation time is basically useless since the managers just keep thinking about work all the time and are even working on their holidays. Yet, rarely, if ever, have I read anything about a purported “Japanization” or—of increasing relevance—“Chinazation” of European work life in the context of decreasing vacations and leisure time and growing pressure on managers. And yet, being on the job with little time off is practiced and extolled far more prominently in those two countries than it is in America.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Thus, for example, an article in the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel proclaims that this women’s soccer has nothing to do with sports—a standard European reaction to women’s soccer in America.47 “Typically American” were the first two words in the introduction to the article, so that the reader would know right away what to expect.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“has long been known that the Verein Deutsche Sprache e.V. (German Language Association) published “linguistic policy guidelines” in order to shield the German language from the influence of “Anglo-American linguistic and cultural assets” leading to a “loss of identity on the part of the peoples and popular groups concerned.”30 The association has made it its mission to eliminate the GermanEnglish hybrid “Denglisch” inside Germany. It has gained in followers and is beginning to make some inroads beyond the right-radical and conservative circles that one would assume to be its most proximate purview.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“A colleague of mine who has now been a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, for more than two decades told me that she grew up in Kaiserslautern and learned English from American GIs. Instead of being rewarded for her knowledge of the language, her secondary school teacher, who knew far less English than this little girl, gave her nothing but bad grades because she “didn’t speak proper English, just American dialect.” As stated in the preface, I had virtually the identical experience at the prestigious secondary school, the Theresianische Akademie, that I attended in Vienna in the 1960s, even though I was fortunate enough—unlike my colleague from Kaiserslautern and Trinity—to get straight A’s in English in spite of my inferior “American dialect,” my “faulty” American spelling, and after being reminded virtually on a daily basis that “in a prestigious institution such as ours, where we educate Austria’s elites, we do not talk American, do not walk American, do not look American because we are not in the Wild West but in a civilized place.” Italian elites also regularly refer to American English as a dialect that they view as inferior to British English.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“cannot recall a single one of my numerous stays in German-speaking Europe in which I was not at some time confronted with the lovely statement, “The Americans don’t even speak proper English.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“The label “from the American” has, of course, very little to do with being precise about accent, vocabulary, writing style, orthography, geography, or citizenship. It simply has to do with the ascription of a cultural inferiority.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Because they write ‘harbor’ instead of ‘harbour’? Then one would have to attribute a language of their own to the Austrians for saying ‘Sessel’ when they mean ‘Stuhl’ [for chair] or turn ‘Januar’ [January] into ‘Janner.’ Because American slang is spoken differently from British slang? That’s true, but in both countries the standard languages are about as identical as ‘Austrian’ and German.”27 What is “American” supposed to communicate to German readers? An accent? But then writings by an author from Glasgow would have to be titled “from the Glaswegian” or those by a writer living in Manchester as “from the Mancunian.” John Lennon’s books would have to be graced with the formulation “from the Liverpudlian” and those by Woody Allen with “from New Yorkish” or, to be more precise, “from the Brooklynese.” If it’s not about accent, is the criterion perhaps geography? Then Germans would have to use “from the Canadian” or “from the New Zealander”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Let us begin with the German expression aus dem Amerikanischen, which graces virtually every book or article translated from texts penned by authors that are perceived as “American.”24 What exactly is going on here? “Is ‘American’”—according to Josef Joffe, the American-educated editor of the German weekly Die Zeit—“pronounced differently from ‘English’? That also applies to ‘Austrian’ and ‘Swiss.’”25 But it would never occur to anybody in America, Canada, or Britain to label “a Gottfried Keller translation ‘Translated from the Swiss’ or Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as having been ‘translated from the Austrian.’”26 “Why do the Germans want to force a language on Americans that they don’t even speak?”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“we are to believe major press outlets in France, the Americanization of French society has been far-reaching, relentless, and totally to the detriment of whatever the case may be. We encounter the Americanisation of French and European accounting practices, the constitutional system, electoral campaigns, the growth of single family clusters outside metropolitan areas, the use of credit cards, urban and suburban planning, sports, films, music, language, habits. Even the world of Parisian haute couture seems to have been bastardized by “a violent Americanization of taste.” And of course antonymy in this all-around evil of Americanisation prevails.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Moreover, using America and Americanization as a convenient bogeyman to garner points in an internal conflict that has nothing to do with America certainly is not confined to Germany.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“This pattern—portraying unwanted changes as American or a consequence of Americanization—has been a prerogative of not only the German Left. Indeed, threats of alleged “Americanization” are voiced among conservatives just as readily to discredit their Social Democratic opponents.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Erbring’s research demonstrates that the German media liberally and regularly resort to negative stereotypes about America and Americans that they would not use in the case of reporting on any other country, certainly never on anything pertaining to Germany.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“In current German usage, the concepts “Americanization” (Ameri-kanisierung) and “American conditions” (amerikanische Verhaltnisse; amerikanische Bedingungen) almost invariably stand for something negative, bad, and above all threatening, something that absolutely has to be avoided or—if the European patient has already contracted this ailment—somehow needs to be alleviated or diminished.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“An apposition like this either would not have occurred to the editors in the case of any other country or, if it had passed through their minds, they would have guarded against relating it to those readers interested in what the left-liberal Frankfurter Rundschau has to say.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Two thoughts went through my head as I read this: First, that Perlentaucher would never have added a remark like this about any other country on Earth: not North Korea, nor Saudi Arabia, Germany, nor even Israel,”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“amthus following the methodological claim asserted by Melvin L. DeFleur and Margaret H. DeFleur, who in their study Learning to Hate Americans aim to establish what they call a “dual pattern” that differentiates clearly between “attitude objects” pertaining to the United States government and its policies, on the one hand, and the American people, on the other.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“bonus.” The subject is anti-Americanism for its own sake, where resorting to general assumptions about the United States contributes nothing, either descriptively or analytically, to understanding the topic at hand, but instead chiefly serves the purpose of confirming and mobilizing preexisting prejudices.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“underline the cultural wealth of Europe as compared with America’s supposed cultural wasteland, Simone de Beauvoir compared the French ball game pétanque with bowling. Boules or petanque is played in the shadows of majestic trees on a village square, where the unevenness of the ground is part of the game. Bowling is played in lifeless, sterile halls, where perfect spheres race at rapid speed across millimeter-perfect lanes toward completely identical plastic figures, in order to be sent back to the players by machines.82”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“Of course in Germany, too, there have been occasional efforts to keep the German language clear of foreign (meaning, as a rule, English and French) influences. 77 And, of course, there are still organizations in Germany, like the Verein Deutsche Sprache e.V. (German Language Association), that have made a mission out of protecting the German language from contamination by American English.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“There are also specific cultural fetishes and phobias unique to France. No European country pursues so rigid a linguistic policy as France, a nation that has always viewed its language as both an antiAmerican and an anti-English bulwark.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“One element of French anti-Americanism thus results from an undifferentiated aversion to everything Anglo-Saxon and English in general. With the French it is not so much the kind of skepticism about modernity (money, capitalism, trade, markets) that dominates German resentment of America.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“a sense, the history of anti-Americanism in France is perhaps the most interesting in Europe. In contrast to all the other major European countries—Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, even the Austro-Hungarian monarchy75 —France and the United States have never fought a war against each other.76 What is more, the United States was allied with France, officially or otherwise, more often than with any other European country.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“a sense, the history of anti-Americanism in France is perhaps the most interesting in Europe. In contrast to all the other major European countries—Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, even the Austro-Hungarian monarchy75 —France and the United States have never fought a war against each other.”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

“the one hand, Kipling did not shy away from writing about the African American population in racist tones; on the other hand, he was amused by the aristocratic affectations and pretensions of southern plantation owners who did not think twice about practicing lynch justice. As the height of his contempt, Kipling compares the barbarism of this supposedly civilized America with that of India, about which he had published so many writings brimming with racist clichés, the very clichés that made him one of Victorian Britain’s most successful authors and most typical representatives. Anti”
― Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America