"That's too bad"?! The challenges of culturally appropriate condolences

It is always hard to know what to say to someone grieving the loss of a loved one. And how much more difficult it is in a foreign language. Communicative missteps can cause more pain, just when we hope to provide solace. The Pragmeme of Accommodation: The Case of Interaction around the Event of Death, edited by Vahid Parvaresh and Alessandro Capone (Springer, 2017) has many thought-provoking chapters related to research on how sympathy and sorrow is expressed when someone has passed away in a variety of cultures and settings. 

For me, the chapter written by the applied linguists John Wakefield and Hiroko Itakura, “English vs. Japanese Condolences: What People Say and Why”, was of particular interest, not just because of my personal and academic engagement with Japanese culture, but also because I researched Japanese and English expressions of condolence 20 years ago, and Wakefield and Itakura in part build on the taxonomy I created, with some slight modification.

In my study, I asked American and Japanese students to report what they would say to a fellow student upon learning that the student had been absent recently due to their grandmother passing away. While the Americans wrote in English, one group of Japanese students wrote in Japanese, and another wrote in English because I was interested in what is known as the “interlanguage” of Japanese students: how their English approximates the target language and how it retains features of their native tongue. The data revealed a lot of clear differences.

My main findings were:

Roughly two-thirds of both the Americans and Japanese writing in Japanese made an expression acknowledging the death, although half of the American expressions were emotional reactions, like “Oh no”, while all of the Japanese writing in Japanese used comparatively neutral acknowledgements like “Oh, I see” (Sо̄dattanda). 40% of the Japanese writing in English made an expression of acknowledgement, all of them using “Oh.”

The majority of respondents in all three cultural groups made an expression of sympathy. All of the Americans said something sympathetic, with 96% using the word “sorry”. 88% Japanese writing in Japanese used this semantic formula, with roughly two-thirds saying, Taihen (That’s hard) or Kinodoku (I feel sorry for you”). 92% of the Japanese writing in English also made an expression of sympathy, but a fifth of these sounded unsuitably light, using, for example, “That’s too bad.” The Japanese translation of “That’s too bad” (zannen) would be appropriate, yet another piece of cautionary evidence against assuming semantic equivalencies.

Americans were more than three times as likely to make an offer of assistance (general offer, lending class notes, etc.) than the Japanese writing in Japanese (52% vs. 16%). The Japanese writing in English were in the middle, with about twice as many offers of assistance as those writing in Japanese. Half the Americans made more than one offer of assistance.

44% of the Japanese writing in Japanese made a future-oriented remark, encouraging the bereaved student to feel better soon in the imperative form, for example Genki dashite kudasai, which translates as “Cheer up!” None of the Americans used a future-oriented comment. The Japanese writing in English used even more (60%), but they tended to tone it down in a more culturally appropriate way with “I hope” etc.

Almost five times as many Americans used expressions of concern like “Are you doing OK?” than the Japanese writing in Japanese (56% vs. 12%). No Japanese writing in English made an expression of concern.

Wakefield and Itakura similarly asked American and Japanese students to report what they would say when hearing about a death, this time specifying the interlocutor was a good friend and that the person who had passed away was the good friend’s mother in one case and his/her uncle in the other. The Japanese students only wrote in Japanese.

Wakefield and Itakura’s main findings were:

Both the Americans and Japanese were more likely to make an expression of acknowledgement/interjection of negative emotion when the deceased was the uncle: roughly twice as often for the Americans and nearly four times as often for the Japanese.

For both the mother and uncle scenarios, the Americans were roughly twice as likely as the Japanese to make an expression of sympathy.

In the case of the mother dying, the Americans were likely to make an offer of assistance (82%), but this fell to 32% in the case of the uncle. The uncle’s death also garnered fewer offers in the Japanese data as well, but in both scenarios, the Japanese made far fewer offers of assistance than their American counterparts (32% for the mother and a paltry 7% for the uncle).

As with my data, the Americans made no future-oriented remarks. Regarding the Japanese respondents, when the good friend’s mother had passed away, 32% made a future-oriented remark, but for the uncle only 3% did.

Both the Americans and Japanese were more likely to make an expression of concern in the case of the mother but regarding both the mother and the uncle, the Americans were around twice as likely as the Japanese to express concern.

Wakefield and Itakura then addressed the “why”. They asked the Japanese informants to add any comments they might have about things they would take into account when expressing condolences. Many emphasized the importance of remaining silent until they ascertained how the bereaved felt. One commenter wrote, “If I don’t understand what my friend is going through, I’ll say nothing as I am worried that sympathy without understanding what my friend is going through will offend her.” This probably results in the initially more neutral acknowledgements of the death and other divergences with the American data.

In cross-cultural situations there’s often no easy answer to, “So what do I say when…?” Perhaps the best advice is to flip the question to “So what do I hear when…?” When a person from another culture’s words seem off the mark or even callous, try to hear them for what they most likely are: someone doing their best with a flawed mastery of the cultural script.