Cultural Encounters:
From the Sand to the Snow

September 14, 2006

Are you joking?

Last week the Northern Iowan campus newspaper, published an article about International influences in America. The articles can be viewed here

http://fp.uni.edu/northia/archives3.asp?ID=4961

I became aware of the article when members of the Student Government came to International Services to know the office position (opinion) about the article. I think some students went to the newspaper to complain about it. After I carefully read the first 3 columns I thought he was just joking but when I started reading the rest I got confused because the author used strong vocabulary to describe his impression towards international people. The connotations and adjectives were kind of astonishing and I got lost with the author’s intention. It became hard to distinguish between a joke or if he was for real. It is just interesting how some Americans read the article thought he was for sure joking (satire) while some international students did not get the joke and at the end of the article did not know what to think.

Personally I thought it was a very badly written article. If his intentions were to make fun of people that really think this way, I think he should have written in a way that people could identify as a joke. He clearly did not distinguish very well in his piece the boundaries between reality and satire.