The Tagline Part 1
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In most cultures, when we wrap up a conversation, we have what's known as a "TAGLINE".
A TAGLINE is basically something that's a funny "wrap-up" to the conversation. But more importantly, it seems to be used to show if you are understand the underlying culture and thus are a member of the group.
Getting the tagline right is an important way of making friends and getting acceptance in a social situation.
Conversely, getting a tagline wrong causes immediate awkardness.
In addition, to make things even more complicated, each culture seem to have type own type of humor with regards to taglines.
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In the US, for example ... it's very acceptable to mock members of your own family in a slightly sarcastic, albeit in a humorous fashion.
In Taiwan, sarcasm against relatives is pretty much unacceptable. However it's quite common to trash the "System" ... i.e. "Big Brother", "The Corporation" etc.
In Europe, where there's more of a tendency to be politically correct, there's generally not so much trashing of people or groups. Instead the humor tends to be on wordplays or Seinfeld-ish "did you ever notice" type things.
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Example. Let's say a conversation is wrapping up, and someone says to you the following:
"Have a good vacation!"
A typical tagline response to this sentence in US, Taiwan, and Norwegian Cultures would be the following (BTW, all three of the below responses were actually spoken by someone to me)
(US)
"Thanks, but it ain't much of a vacation. I'm just gonna be yelled at by the wife to clean out the garage. With any luck, it'll rain all week and I'll have an excuse to say I won't be able to do it. Hahaha!"
(Taiwan)
"哎呀，我沒錢去好好的放假。如果我運氣的話，我會在門口滑倒摔一跤的然後可以用假期去告他們！ 哈哈哈 [Jeeze, I don't have money for a vacation. With any luck I'll slip and fall in front of the office and I'll be able to use the vacation time sue them!] Hahaha!"
(Norway)
"Takk! På ferie skal jeg tenker om trening. Jeg skal IKKE trene, men skal tenke om det. Hahaha! [Thanks! I'll be thinking about exercising. I won't ACTUALLY exercise, but I'll be thinking about!] Hahaha.
OK so let's get started....
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So last week, I was in Japan to attend a meeting with a US company. Though the meeting was in Japan pretty much everyone there were midwest Americans...
"All right everyone, let's get the meeting started so we can all get the hell out of here ... " yells Ken the Sys Admin Slob ...
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