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mrcurrygoestospain · 3 years

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Camino De Santiago - Round 5

Spain travel log, 2021…

Day One:

September 20 - Depart Seattle for Madrid, by way of London. There were plenty of issues just getting to this point. In addition to the ongoing concerns over COVID-19, or perhaps because of them, I had some serious concerns about whether I could and whether I should do this trip at all. In the end, I think I simply realized that it was totally appropriate for me to go on this trip: I’ve been “responsible” and taken the full round of vaccinations, generally avoided social contacts with people and been diligent about the masks. So I made my reservations and thought everything was fine. About 2 weeks before takeoff, I got an email from Iberia that one of my flights had been changed. When I looked into it, I found that it was the connecting flight from London to Madrid and the schedule had been bumped up by about 6 hours taking me from having a 2 hour layover in Heathrow to needing to be on a plane for Madrid 4 hours before I actually landed in London and would be able to board it… It took attempts at phone calls over several days to get this corrected. Finally, I tried while I was at top work one morning around 5:00 am. I finally got through and a nice lady helped rebook my connecting flight. She found the only available flight on that day that would work; now I have a seven hour layover.

I prepped for my trip, checklists and routes planned. I arrived at the airport 3 hours early, just in case. Although I booked with Iberia, it was a British flight. So standing in line at the BA counter in SeaTac, I saw the sign: “All passengers must show proof of a negative COVID test.” What? I’d already checked multiple times; I only need proof of vaccination to get into Spain. I check the internet. Sure enough, if you’re on a layover in England, you need a negative test…A quick Google search helped me find a testing center at SeaTac airport, so I rushed down to baggage claim number nine to see if I could get a test in time. In all honesty, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it and I’d have to try to contact the airline again to find a way to reschedule my flight. I stood in the line for what seemed like forever, but finally had the privilege of paying $250 for a rapid COVID test. T- minus 2 hours 30 minutes to departure and they promised results in 1-1.5 hours. The test itself was relatively painless. After all of the horror stories I’d heard about the nasal swabs, I was a bit worried. But it didn’t hurt, it just tickled a little bit. I waited, and waited…it seemed like they would never have my results. While I waited, I heard stories from other travelers who had missed flights or rebooking because of these ridiculous COVID-related requirements. One young Canadian lady I spoke to shared that she’d spent over $1000 on COVID tests in the last month due to traveling. I guess my $250 wasn’t so much.

I finally got my negative test results and rushed back to the check in counter, filled out the required government forms and headed through security. The flight was delayed.

After a nine hour flight to London, I had seven or eight hours to kill in Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5, before boarding my flight to Madrid. I shopped, I ate, I listened to podcasts. I took a few naps and generally cursed British Airways for changing my original flight. Some Italian guy made quite a scene at the boarding gate for the flight to Madrid. The gate agent handled it quite well and passive-aggressively punished him for his demeanor.

I arrived in Madrid after an easy flight on Iberia, made my way to the metro and on to my Hostel. It was a nice enough place. After 28 hours of travel, I was ready for a shower and bed.

Day 2:

On my one day in Madrid, I walked from my hostel/hotel to the Museo Nacional del Prado. It’s Spain’s greatest art museum. This was my second time there and I spent a lot more of it. There are so many amazing pieces and, for someone who used to truly despise art, it was amazing. I highly recommend it. I haven’t been to a whole lot of art museums, but it is, by far, my favorite. I followed that with a walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m sure they’re great when all of the flowers are blooming, but in early fall, it’s just a lot of green. Either way, it was still peaceful. I visited another nearby park, walked around and viewed the statues, and then made my way back towards the hotel and passed it to go to the Cathedral opposite the royal palace. It’s a much more modern cathedral than the ones I’ll see on the Camino, but still impressive.

Day 3:

On the morning of the third day, I got up early and got packed. Took the metro to the train station and purchased a ticket to Leon. After two hours on the train, I took a 20 minute walk to the hotel and dropped off my bag, and then spent the next few hours wandering the city. I found a barber and got a haircut for 9 Euro, quite a bargain. Stopped at the “Taste of America” shop to get a bottle of hot sauce (Cholula, of course), and just meandered around the city until I could get checked in at the hotel. It was a pretty uneventful day, which is just what I needed. I was still very tired from all of the traveling and trying to swap schedules.

Day 4:

I got up late, around 8:00 AM and started walking the city. I stopped for a cafe con leche and met a Scottish couple who had been walking the Camino for the last few weeks. While we waited out the rain under cover, the shared with me some of their other walking adventures, including tales of walking through the Swiss Alps on the Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route to Rome. I may have to look into that for a future trip. I also shared with them my plans/considerations of taking a walk on the “Great Glen Way” in Scotland. The wife had already done this and highly recommended it, along with the West Highland Way. Both are approximately 5-day walks through some of the wild country of Scotland. When the rain let up, we parted ways and I went to tour the Cathedral, toured the Basilica of Saint Isidore and wandered around town, shopping and eating. Inside the Saint Isidore museum and basilica, i had the opportunity to see what is referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art” as well as a gold and silver cup that some historians claim is the “holy grail.”

Day 5:

Didn’t sleep much…I forgot how much they like to party in Spain. It was LOUD all night long. Anyway, started my walk. Today was about 27 km and it rained through about 50% of the day. It was a mix of roads and dirt tracks. I only saw one other pilgrim, a Spaniard who doesn’t speak any English. I got ahead of him and had stopped for a rest at a picnics table on top of a mountain. He showed up a few minutes behind me and I tried to chat for a minute, but the language barrier…. I offered him half of my tangerine and then he took off again. I passed him up later. I had been slightly worried about where to stay for the night as the municipal albergue in this province/state are currently closed due to the ‘Rona, but when I got to town I found a pension with rooms available. The lovely lady named Susana showed me to a room and also worked tirelessly to make me a reservation for the following night. I hadn’t eaten much for the day, so I ordered big: hot dog and patatas oil bravas. Patatas bravas is a traditional dish in Spain which is made of fried potatoe cubes that are covered in a (typically) spicy tomato sauce. Potatoes Ali Oli are the same fried potatoes but with a garlic cream sauce instead of the spicy sauce. This one combined both sauces. It was nice. The inside of the restaurant/bar/cafe was very loud with a bunch of men playing a card game I’m not familiar with, so I went outside to have a beer. An older Spaniard, named Hilario, came out and started trying to talk to me. I explained that I am American and I don’t speak much Spanish, but he disagreed. So he went inside and got another man, a Hungarian who had been in Spain for the last 25 years, named Fernanco(?) who was extremely drunk, to come out and talk to me. He was so drunk, he introduced himself as “muy borracho” or “very drunk” and the proceeded to tell me that he used to be a muy Thai fighter and a coal miner and now he was just a fat drunk who collected money from the government because he got hit in the head too many times. At least I THINK that’s what they were saying…. I went to bed early to get a good rest and let my aching feet and hips recover before a long day tomorrow….from La Robla to Poladura, should be about 25km or so with some very intense climbs. We’ll see.

I’m currently on the Camino San Salvador, which is a route from Leon to Oviedo. They say “whoever goes to Santiago without visiting Oviedo, goes to the servant but not to the Lord.” This is because Oviedo is famous for having a specific relic. While most people are aware of the Shroud of Turin, which is the burial cloth of Jesus, many don’t know (including me, until recently) that traditional Jewish burial included placing a cloth over the face of the deceased immediately after death and until the body was prepared for burial. This cloth would then be removed and the full-body cloth would be applied. So anyway, this Cathedral boasts possession of the face covering that was placed over Jesus’ head, likely immediately after the spear pearled his side and before he was brought down off of the cross. Once I complete the Camino San Salvador (about 5 days, I hope), I will continue on to the Camino Primitivo, one of the many Camino’s de Santiago. So the Camino San Salvador goes to the relics of Christ and the Camino Santiago (Santiago = Saint James) goes to the resting place and remains of Saint James (the major), also known as “Santiago Matamoros” or “Saint James the Moor Slayer”, the patron saint of Spain.

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xmasqoo-haineke · 4 years

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Abstract

SAGE Open October-December 2013: 1–11 © The Author(s) 2013 DOI: 10.1177/2158244013506446 sgo.sagepub.com

One consequence of the advent of cyber communication is that increasing numbers of people go online to ask for, obtain, and presumably act upon advice dispensed by unknown peers. Just as advice seekers may not have access to information about the identities, ideologies, and other personal characteristics of advice givers, advice givers are equally ignorant about their interlocutors except for the bits of demographic information that the latter may offer freely. In the present study, that information concerns sex. As the sex of the advice seeker may be the only, or the predominant, contextual variable at hand, it is expected that that identifier will guide advice givers in formulating their advice. The aim of this project is to investigate whether and how the sex of advice givers and receivers affects the type of advice, through the empirical analysis of a corpus of web-based Spanish language forums on personal relationship difficulties. The data revealed that, in the absence of individuating information beyond that implicit in the advice request, internalized gender expectations along the lines of agency and communality are the sources from which advice givers draw to guide their counsel. This is despite the trend in discursive practices used in formulating advice, suggesting greater language convergence across sexes.

Keywords

gender role expectations, gender stereotypes, online advice, Spanish language

Introduction

In his book L’existentialisme est un humanisme, Sartre (1946) tells the following anecdote: During World War II (WWII), a former student asked his advice on whether he should join the Résistance and leave behind his widowed mother, or stay with her and neglect his patriotic duties. Sartre’s advice was, “You are free. Choose.” For Sartre, the moral of the story is that, when someone solicits advice, they have already chosen the answer they want, as the advice they wish to receive guides the selection of advice giver. If Sartre’s observation was ever right, in cyber communication it no longer holds. Increasing numbers of people go online to ask for, obtain, and presumably act upon advice dispensed by unknown peers, mindful or not of the potential risks involved in this practice (e.g., erroneous information, abusive lan- guage or content, dangerous emotional manipulation from the advice giver, or receiver, or both).

Just as online advice seekers may have to or may choose to ignore the identities, ideologies, worldviews, and other personal characteristics of advice givers, advice givers are similarly positioned with information about the interlocutors asking for advice, except for the bits of demographic infor- mation that are sometimes freely offered or given away in posts (e.g., age, gender, and some personal circumstances revealed in the questioning). The advice they offer is thus not guided by what they think the advice seeker wants to hear (as

in Sartre’s interpretation of his experience above) but on what they think will be relevant or appropriate to an unknown interlocutor. Thus, advice is formulated on the basis of very limited contextual information and the few demographic fac- tors their interlocutors reveal.

A number of researchers have shown that insufficient information about individuals or situations tends to trigger from others stereotypical inferences and responses. Thus, Kunda and Sherman-Williams (1993) propose that, “in the absence of other information, expectations about an individ- ual will be guided by stereotypical beliefs about categories such as his or her profession, ethnicity, or gender” (p. 90). When it comes to online advice, given that the only piece of demographic information advice seekers provide is their sex, sex becomes a salient feature in the interaction. We can spec- ulate that the salience of gender norms is likely to influence the nature of advice offered, and thus advice givers will for- mulate responses based on their internalized gender role expectations and stereotypes, which may be triggered uncon- sciously or automatically.

1Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Susana A. Eisenchlas, School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, Nathan, Queensland 4111, Australia. Email: [email protected]

SAGE Open

Gender Stereotypes

“Gender roles” have been described as society’s shared beliefs that apply to individuals on the basis of their socially identified sex (Eagly, 2009) and are thus closely related to gender stereotypes. Stereotypes can be conceptualized as the descriptive aspects of gender roles, as they depict the attri- butes that an individual ascribes to a group of people (Eagly & Mladinic, 1989). Stereotyping is often seen as necessary, as it is a way of simplifying the overwhelming amount of stimuli one constantly receives from the world (Ladegaard, 1998), constraining potentially infinite numbers of interpre- tations (Dunning & Sherman, 1997). Another line of inquiry extends the function of stereotypes from the interpretation to the rationalization and justification of social practices (Allport, 1954; Hoffman & Hurst, 1990; Tajfel, 1981). Common to these interpretations is the view that the result- ing representation is usually selective, distorted, and often oversimplified.

Stereotypes of men and women commonly reflect Bakan’s (1966) distinction between two dimensions, often labeled agency, or self-assertion, and communion, or connection with others (Eagly, 2009; Jost & Kay, 2005; Rudman & Glick, 2001). Men are generally thought to be agentic—that is, competent, assertive, independent, masterful, and achieve- ment oriented, while women are perceived as inferior to men in agentic qualities. Conversely, women are generally thought to be communal—that is, friendly, warm, unselfish, sociable, interdependent, emotionally expressive and rela- tionship oriented—while men are perceived as inferior in communal qualities (Eagly & Mladinic, 1989). Empirical studies investigating the extent to which gender stereotypes apply have consistently found that their content is heavily saturated with communion and agency (Eagly & Mladinic, 1989; Eagly & Steffen, 1984; Langford & MacKinnon, 2000; Rudman & Glick, 2001; Spence & Buckner, 2000). Masculine and feminine stereotypes can be seen as complementary in the sense that each gender is seen as possessing a set of strengths that balances out its own weaknesses and supple- ments the assumed strengths of the other group (Cameron, 2003; Jost & Kay, 2005). The alleged complementarity of attributes serves to reinforce male superiority and female subordination as it naturalizes these beliefs, thus making them acceptable to men and women (Jost & Kay, 2005; Rudman & Glick, 2001). W. Wood & Eagly (2010) further suggest that these distinctions appear to be pancultural, a strong claim that requires empirical investigation.

Gender roles are descriptive and prescriptive (Eagly, 2009). The descriptive aspect, or stereotype, tells men and women what is typical for their sex in particular contexts and situations. The prescriptive aspect tells them what is expected or desirable (Rudman & Glick, 2001). Prentice and Carranza (2002) illustrate this claim:

The stereotypic belief that women are warm and caring is matched by a societal prescription that they should be warm and

caring. Similarly, the stereotypic belief that men are strong and agentic is matched by a societal prescription that they should be strong and agentic. (p. 269)

Violations of gender role expectations are met with criti- cism and penalized (Prentice & Carranza, 2002; Rudman & Glick, 2001). Furthermore, societal gender prescriptions tend to be internalized and thus self-imposed to a certain extent (Postmes & Speares, 2002). Thus, W. Wood and Eagly (2010) suggest that the power of gender roles is their embed- dedness “both in others ‘expectations thereby acting as social norms and in individuals’ internalized gender identities, thereby acting as personal dispositions” (p. 645). This explains, at least partly, the potency and stability of gender expectations that seem to endure despite changes in tradi- tional gender relations we have experienced in recent decades, and the finding that gender stereotyping appears to be equally strong among women and men (Blair & Banaji, 1996; Rudman & Glick, 2001).

Kunda and Sherman-Williams (1993) claim that stereo- types affect impressions even in the presence of individuat- ing information, by affecting the construal of that information. Similarly, Dunning and Sherman (1997) argue, on the basis of a series of experiments they conducted, that specific infor- mation about individuals does not reduce the impact of ste- reotypes, as stereotypes often lead people to make tacit inferences about that information. They found that these inferences alter the meaning of the information to affirm the implicit stereotypes people possess. Moreover, experimental research on stereotypical beliefs about social categories has shown the strong impact they have, even in the absence of conscious endorsement (Jost & Kay, 2005; W. Wood & Eagly, 2010). Dunning and Sherman poignantly refer to this phenomenon as an “inferential prison” and wonder whether stereotypes are “maximum security prisons, with people’s inferences and impressions of the person never escaping far from the confines of the stereotype” (p. 459), or whether

people can escape these prisons as knowledge increases. Language is one area where gender roles and expectations can be constructed and reproduced. The notions that through language women exhibit same-sex solidarity and “support” whereas men harass and “control” (Fishman, 1978) or that women talk to foment or enhance relationships, while men talk to solve problems, are among the most entrenched gen- eralizations found in popular culture and are widely exploited by the advertising industry, among other media (Talbot, 2000). These views, however, have been challenged in recent language and gender literature. For instance, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992) argue that these gendered portray- als derive from research on the American White middle class and are far from being universal. Verbal practices that contra- dict the stereotypical generalizations have been documented by Ochs (1992) in her study of Western Samoan households, by Bierback (1997) in her study of a Barcelona neighbor- hood association, by Morgan (1991) in a study of African American discursive practices, and by Macaulay (2001) in

Eisenchlas

her study of political radio and television interviews, among others. Research on gendered practices in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has also yielded conflict- ing results; while some studies report correlations between gender and language used online (e.g., Herring, 1993, 2000, 2004), others do not (e.g., Huffaker & Calvert, 2005).

These contradictory findings suggest that gendered lin- guistic practices are highly context-specific, and that the context of the interaction may be more important than gender per se in determining linguistic behavior (Cameron, 1992; Rodino, 1997). Thus, rather than looking for binary categori- zations of gendered behaviors, current scholarship focuses on localized instances, and on how gender is socially per- formed, co-constructed, and negotiated in interactions (Butler, 1990; del-Teso-Craviotto, 2006, 2008; Macaulay, 2001). The concept of Communities of Practice (CofP) has been particularly fruitful in examining the construction of gender through language. CofP has been defined as “an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavour. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short, practices emerge in this course of mutual endeavour” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992, p. 464). Participants in the present study do not constitute a community in the strict sense of the term as their interactions are usually limited to a single exchange, which is insufficient to develop common practices. It is likely then that in giving advice, participants are drawing on preexisting norms of how this speech act should be expressed, rather than on their knowledge of coparticipants in the interaction or the norms of the particular group.

Gender and Prosocial Behaviors

“Prosocial behaviours” are “behaviors consensually regarded as beneficial to others,” and include actions such as helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending (Eagly, 2009, p. 644). Advice giving, the topic of this article, can be considered as one type of prosocial behavior.

Although experimental studies on prosocial behaviors have shown that men and women readily help others in need, beliefs about gender roles lead to the expectation that differ- ences in helping behavior would obtain across genders: Women will approach help in ways that are primarily com- munal, whereas men will have primarily an agentic focus. Outside of academia, these notions have been popularized by books such as You Just Don’t Understand (Tannen, 1990), which claim that men “report talk,” that is, they talk to solve problems, while women “rapport talk,” that is, they talk to foment or enhance relationships. Grey (1992), in the book that became probably the biggest seller in its category, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, endorses these dis- tinctions and claims that these differences in communication

big an effect on the type of advice offered as the sex of the advice giver, in particular, in situations where extragender variables are unknown and the only salient variable is sex.

One area where these expectations can be explored is in computer-mediated interactions among strangers. Following its wide expansion across all demographics, the Internet was initially hailed as an inherently democratizing medium that would enable access to all those with literacy skills and tech- nological savvy, making social differences irrelevant or invisible online. Contrary to early expectations, however, claims of widespread gender equality have not been sup- ported by most research on online interaction (Harp & Tremayne, 2006; Herring, 2000). Indeed, a growing body of research examining chats, forums, and listservs has found that certain phenomena associated with stereotypical charac- terizations of gendered linguistic behavior were not dimin-

3 ished but actually reinforced online. Thus, if the type of

advice is guided by implicit gender stereotypes, there is little reason to believe that the medium of interaction will impose dramatic departures from societal norms. Rather, it is expected that off-line gender dynamics will likely be repro- duced online and that gender expectations found off-line will creep into online interactions.

The Present Study

To test whether the distinction between expectations of agency and communality obtains outside the English speak- ing environment, this study extends the discussion into Spanish language, by investigating whether there is a rela- tionship between gender and the type of advice people give and receive online from unknown interlocutors. Its particular concern is advice on difficulties in intimate relationships. Previous studies on advice giving (online and off-line) have examined expert–nonexpert interactions (e.g., DeCapua & Findlay Dunham, 1993; Hudson, 1990; Locher, 2006), where issues of power, hierarchy, or expertise can play a significant role in advice givers’ linguistic expressions (Vine, 2009). Peer-to-peer advice among strangers has received signifi- cantly less attention.

The present study is part of a larger investigation explor- ing gendered linguistic practices in peer-to-peer online advice giving, focusing on the discursive formulation of advice tokens in the Spanish language (Author, 2012). It was expected that, if stereotypical characterizations of gendered behavior hold (e.g., Tannen, 1990), considerable differences between men and women would be found in the formulation of advice on relationships difficulties, with men being con- cise and direct and women being more emotionally expres- sive, exhibiting higher displays of emotional language and higher levels of indirectness to protect others’ feelings. These expectations were not supported, as no significant differ- ences were found in the discursive formulation4 of advice dispensed by males and females. Instead, the data showed that males and females were very direct in their advice,

2 ized expectations, the sex of the advice seeker should have as

across genders are universal.

Moreover, if these are internal-

SAGE Open

favoring bald directives over all other possible linguistic expressions. Furthermore, it was expected that the sex of the addressee would trigger different responses in terms of directness and politeness, with men receiving advice expressed in blunter, more direct formulations. Contrary to expectations, the sex of the addressee did not make a signifi- cant difference, as males and females were equally forward and direct when dispensing advice to either sex. Thus, the expectation that there would be marked differences in the language used online by males and females, as suggested by previous research (Herring, 1993 and subsequent work; Selfe & Meyer, 1991), was not met.

The lack of attested differences in the discursive formula- tion of advice in online interactions, however, need not cor- relate with lack of gender differences in the type of advice. As shown in the literature, implicit gender role stereotypes can be activated when identifying information is minimal (Kunda & Sherman-Williams, 1993). In the data analyzed in this article, the only demographic information that partici- pants explicitly provided about themselves was their sex, and thus it is expected that the sex of the discussants will be a salient factor in the interaction. Thus, the present study seeks to contribute epistemically to this area through an examina- tion of the effect of the sex of online interlocutors on the type of advice given to them, that is, what type of advice is given to males and females—not just what type of advice they pro- duce—and to identify whether implicit stereotypes play a role.

Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses were formulated and tested in the present study:

Hypothesis 1: There will be a difference between the advice given by men and by women. Hypothesis 2: Men will be more likely to be advised to act and women to communicate.

Hypothesis 3: There will be a difference in the type of talking advice given to men and to women. Hypothesis 4: As advice givers and as interlocutors, women will exhibit more emotional disclosure and dis- play than men.

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