Why Self-Censorship?

When I write, I write about things that interest's me and what is on my mind at the moment.
Lately I have had my mind full of work and some pretty awesome development that is going on there. The problem is that when I signed my contract of employment it stated, in short, that I am not allowed to reveal company secrets.

What are and what are not company secrets can be discussed but the main issue here is that there is now another filter that I subconsciously think about when I write. And this brought up another subject that interests me - self-censorship.

Self-censorship on Facebook

A few weeks ago while I was browsing, I stumbled across a research paper concerning self-censorship on Facebook. The focus in this paper was on last-minute self-censorship. That is to say when you start writing in the status bar on Facebook, but then decide not to post it. It was published by Facebook themselves (a list of their publications can be found here) and is, as they mention themselves, an exploratory work where the focus is mainly demographic and evaluating basic assumptions. But there is one of the results that I found was especially interesting:

Snapshot from the results section in "Self-Censorship on Facebook"

This correlation between diverse friends and self-censorship was not fully in-line with the original hypothesis that the researchers had. It is not clear which ones causes the other - Do people who self-censor less have a higher tendency of befriending diverse friends or do people who have a diverse friend-base, self-censor less? Either way it is an interesting correlation that I hope more research will be done on.

Personal self-censorship

I am a person that uses social media avidly, maybe because of sheer relief. It is not that I do not know the dangers of gossip and social media. I grew up in an environment where the police would circle our apartment block weekly to check up on the area. It was always assumed that whatever we said to our neighbours it would always find it's way to the police. Once while I was out walking our dog I was brought in to the police station by a friendly policeman and questioned by two-three policemen about my family and life and my parent's work. I was twelve.
My parents were always clear to both my sister and I that it was important to think through what we said. We were always asked to think about how it would be perceived by people who don't go to church, haven't lived in another country or gone to school.

Artwork by Askin Ayrancioglu, faced a lawsuit because the art was objectionable.

This type of lifestyle bred self-censorship like nothing else ever could. Once I got my fingers on blogging and social media it was a  relief to me. I could write down my thoughts first and be able to view them afterwards and censor at will before it was visible to everyone. I could take time thinking about what I wanted to share instead of not being able to share anything due to the time-constraint.

Self-censorship at the workplace

In my own experience self-censorship is most prominent in the work environment. I hadn't realised how much I subconsciously self-censor until I had a longer period where my main social interaction had been with my colleagues. The relief of being "myself" when I was with my friends surprised me because I had not been aware that I had been doing anything differently. It made me think back to the different work places I have been at and the level of work-related self-censorship that is noticeable.

Why do we self-censor at work? Apart from the usual reasons to self-censoring it seems we have more to lose making it more important to be careful.

George Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language" written in 1946 touches on one of the reasons to self-censorships at the workplace when he writes:

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."

Each individual at a workplace have their own incentives and goals. These do not always align 100% with the goals of a company, even though good company management will do their best to build a company structure that aligns them as much as possible. It is therefore important for the individual to be careful of what they say as saying the wrong thing may disrupt the individual's goal.

The second reason I think has to do with communication. When it comes to language and culture, the workplace is a very static place, compared to "the real world" of friends and social media. It is harder for companies to adapt to new cultural and language innuendos usually because change is expensive for a company.

 Due to this static state there will arise differences to how people communicate with each other at work compared with how they communicate outside. 

A simple example of this difference is just the way communication has moved from email to other systems. Using email is a rare occurrence with my friends as I will use tools such as chat, Dropbox and document sharing programs which I would find more efficient. This switch means that my communication would be more about updates. 

I will write a short chat update saying "Filled in the document" and as everyone has access to the same document and are able to see what changes I have done, writing anything else in the chat would be in excess and seen as a nuisance as people get the chat message straight away and just want an update so they know what's happening.

Compare this to an email where it would be important to introduce the reason to writing, to whom it concerns, state the changes that have been made and specify on how to proceed and where the latest document has been saved. It is more important here to get a summary of everything than when receiving a chat message.

This difference in communication ways make you unsure of what will be understood in the correct way. The uncertainty of whether everyone has watched the latest funny video on Youtube makes you careful with making a reference to it. Not being sure if the boss understands the latest modern word, you will go with wording it in a more traditional fashion.

Lost in Translation

In a work place with 11 different nationalities we are all very aware of the misunderstandings and invisible barriers that crop up due to not having a common first tongue. But it is not at my work place where I have experienced most of my language issues.

From my new favourite comic series, Wasted Talent

Recently, I was down in Småland visiting my parents. My sister and her boyfriend was also there and while we were all (but one) gathered, we decided to drop by Farmor, my grandmother. My dad gives her a call to warn her of our coming and says something in the style of "Ts fästman är också med".
This, which was overheard by the rest of us, created an uproar as the translation means "T's fiancé is also with us" My dad was attacked by all of us of how he could say something that wasn't true to Farmor and why he had to go and do that for.
He tried his best to defend himself,
"It doesn't mean fiancé! It means boyfriend!"
This to no avail as we could quickly prove that it did in fact mean fiancé, Wikipedia, says so. Dad remained quiet the rest of the journey. Once at Farmor's place and comfortably settled, it was felt that we had to explain the misinformation that had been given to Farmor. As the explanation that T had her boyfriend with her and not fiancé was accounted to Farmor, Farmor looked baffled. Dad proceeded to ask her what does "fästman" mean?
"Well, it means a steady boyfriend, of course!"

When growing up, I learned most of my Turkish "on the street" so to speak. This meant that I adopted words and meanings in accordance to where I heard them used. This is usually a good way of learning a language as you get the feel of the language directly. I did experience some slight problems though. How words are used do not always reflect their meaning, especially when it is kids speaking. For most kids this will be corrected, if not at school, then at home. Both these correcting institutes did not come to my aid because a) I spoke Swedish or English with my parents, not Turkish, and b) I was only in Turkish school part time for 5 years.

This interesting way of learning Turkish gave me some problems later on. I remember being shown something really impressive and exclaiming "Oha!", having naturally learnt that this is what to exclaim when something surprises me. The shock on the person's face when I said this! The person lost no time in explaining that this is absolutely not something that should be said by a civilised person. I later looked it up in a dictionary and the translation that came up was "Woah!" or "Stop". This did not seem so bad, so I disregarded the person's warning, assuming that the person was just being a prude. It was not until much later that the true meaning of the word was understood by me.
The word is used for herding animals, usually cows. As with most words that have to do with animals in the Turkish language, the daily use becomes vulgar and a more accurate translation of the word would be "Oh S***!"


Moral of both these stories, don't trust the dictionary.

Comic by Gruhn

Back, but not really

Hi Everyone
Well I'm back from our awesome trip to Turkey but as we are now caught up with packing and moving the next couple of days, I'm not really back. I've got so many things to write about such as:

• Meeting many new and interesting people including a Swiss/Turkish/English couple who we spent a lot of time together
• Taking part in a Turkish/English wedding and finally meeting my new uncle-in-law
• Having heavy topics discussed, including guilt and shame cultures, child upbringing and backgammon strategies
• Hearing views about the protests going on in Istanbul and following the development

But this will have to be subjects for later on in the week as the only things we've packed so far is the suitcases we brought back with us from Turkey! See ya!

Week-end fun

From my speakers I'm listening to "Sailing" by Rod Stewart which I found on my "Old favourites" playlist:

I love going back to old songs and re-listening to them. One should always have time for short periods of nostalgia.

Now, for something completely different.

My mum stayed Friday night and it was great to be able to talk. It's been a while and it's always good to get a mum's point of view on matters. We are both excited about going to Turkey on Thursday and also the wedding on Saturday. It's been 5 years (Really?!) since I was there last and I need to see what's changed including how much Turkish I've forgotten.

At Hammarby Sjöstad with mum

Saturday evening Matte and I went and had dinner with A and N. The food was delicious and the company was excellent :-) Being the camera man that I am, there are no pictures of the event. So instead I will leave it to your imagination. We decided to start playing "Drakar och Demoner" (Not to be confused with "Dungeons and Dragons") in July once we've settled in our new apartment.

D and I are going to Gothenburg for a spa weekend in August so we have now booked the place we are going to stay at, the train-tickets to Gothenburg (1st class!) and planned the other activities we're going to do. I'm really looking forward to that! Here's a picture of hotel:

I rounded off my weekend watching Day[9]'s Day Off - Antichamber with Matte.

A really interesting game, I loved the minimalistic design and the mind-puzzles it had, reminded me of Portal 2 but less stressful. I'm in the balance of deciding whether I want to play it myself, or enjoy watching other people play it more...

Guest Bloggers

So I have an idea of having a guest write a blog post on this blog once a week. The idea is that the guest should have lived in Turkey a while and is preferably an MK (Missionary Kid). The guest will have the opportunity to blog about whatever that takes their fancy as long as they follow the normal rules when it comes to writing blogs (no spamming, inappropriate material etc)

I am still in the process of looking over the details, but be prepared for some changes :-) If you're interested in contributing, don't hesitate to contact me!

Farmor - an outstanding woman

My Farmor (mother of my father) is an outstanding woman. A couple of years ago, a documentary was made about the role of the mother in the family and in society and Farmor was interviewed as a part of this documentary. The attached film clip is in Turkish and the interview with Farmor starts around 4 min and 30 sec in to video.

My Farmor is from a poor background and started working when she was 15 years old. The interview gives a lovely insight in what it was like when she was little and also how she had her hands full with all her 13 children.

Even now when she has recently turned 90, she spends a lot of her time working with Erikshjälpen, a  relief organisations with it's roots in Småland, Sweden. She regularly bakes buns and bread and donates it to their cause.

For those of you who would want a translation of the interview, contact me and I do my best :)

Fun with statistics

At the Turkish wedding that I was at last Saturday, I met a lot of women my age. It was nice to talk some Turkish again although I did notice one thing that I wasn't expecting. For each person that I met, as soon as they found out I was married, they asked me where my children were.This insight in what expectations there are on a young woman made me want to look up some comparison between Sweden and Turkey when it comes to average age for a woman's first child.

This turned out to be harder than I expected. Swedes have a bit of a fetish when it comes to statistics which means when it comes to data concerning Swedes there is LOADS! Statistiska Centralbyrån (meaning the Central Bureaucracy for Statistics) have an absolutely wonderful website for all those gory details that everyone wants to know about. I easily found out that the average age for the women having their first child in Stockholm as of 2011 is 31,24 years and it has risen from 28,42 since 1990.

Finding this information for the Turkish population was not easy. After a few rounds googling, clicking around different reports and reading references, I found the Turkish Journal of Population Studies located at Hacettepe University. It distinctly specifies that it was founded to meet the deficit in the field of population science. It has interesting reports and studies but no database where you can extract the information that you want. In the end, all I could find was median numbers which specified that across the ages of population 25-49, the average age of women for their first child was about 21,3 in 1998, 21.8 in year 2003 and 22,3 in 2008 (Linear growth!) I cannot compare median numbers with average numbers so instead I'll just include the nice excel graph I created using the data from the Statistiska Centralbyrån.


If anyone knows where I can get average numbers for the Turkish population, especially divided by district please contact me, would love to know :-)

Fear

Fear is such a powerful emotion. It can spur or cripple depending in what way it arises.

 I will be going to a Turkish wedding/henna party this evening. I am quite nervous as I have never been to one before, I hardly know the person who invited me, and I do not know what to expect.So I am naturally thinking up all kinds of excuses so I don't have to go.

And this is the stupid part. Since I moved to Stockholm I've been looking for situations to where I can do new things. Meet people outside the usual group of people that I hang out with. Get to experience another side of Stockholm then the one I see bustling around me on the subway. And my fear is crippling me because this should be a time to feel excitement.

Thankfully I'm not going alone. And my fear of letting down the other person who is going is bigger than my fear of going.

Personal Motivation

Today I will be going to an evening seminar with two work colleagues. The title of the seminar is "Unleash the Power within" and even though is not a seminar I would have gone to by myself it will be interesting to see what it is. This seminar concerns what I believe is one of the most important aspects in Swedish culture; how to motivate the individual. This being said I want to reflect in what way motivation is represented in my own experience..

I moved to Sweden when I was 14 after having spent my 7 years of schooling divided between local Turkish school with 30 students in each class, individual homeschooling and international schooling in a mixed classroom with an age range of 6 years. The motivation I had was not "complete fourth grade, or you'll be held back a year" or "if I do this extra work I will end up on the honours list". For me there were no such things. Held back a year? what did that mean? I could complete all my maths for a year in 2 months and still have french assignments left from last year. End up on the honours list? What would I compare? How could I compare with people around me when they could be working on Turkish grammar and I had English literature?

My motivation, I believe most probably came from my parents. All their life they had spent working on something they believed in and their constant motivation of making a difference in the area they  found themselves. I saw my dad work constantly with the pioneer projects that were going on where we lived. I saw my mum motivate and See (with a capital S) the children and families in the area where we lived through her music, art and lessons. I saw both my parents make a difference to the people they met.

One of my mum's pictures from Turkey, Clicking on the picture will direct to her gallery

I entered the Swedish schooling system with an attitude that anything was possible. My childhood had just proven to me that there is more than one way to developing yourself so why worry? I changed schools 3 times in 3 years, every time because I and my parents did not feel the school did the job of what we believed a school should do, fulfill the needs of the student. Finally entering a school that satisfied our requirements I completed my high school and started university studying the subject that I enjoyed most of all; mathematics.

My motivation developed throughout this time. I studied economics and realised that the best way that I could make a difference is to specialize in the area I was good at and make use of my ability. And I focused on doing what I was good at. And because I was good at it I enjoyed doing it.

What lesson have I learnt from my own experience? I guess not to be afraid to do things differently. The "normal" way does not always have to be the best way.

This does not mean that the "unnormal" way is easy...

Eavesdropping

On the subway after a day at work. I've got the typical glazed look of someone who does not want to be disturbed. The usual chatter of who's done what with whose girl is being discussed eagerly over the phone in the corner while the rest of the subway pretends not to listen.

I hear a an exclamation of "Yok ya!" behind me and I sharpen my ears to try and distinguish the words from the noise. A girl and a boy are talking to each other.

My Turkish was never fully fluent and the years of neglect of the language leaves me poorly qualified to be able to hold a proper conversation. I listen hungrily as the words flow over me, understanding only partly what they are saying but enjoying it all the same.

They get off at the same station as I do. I "accidentally" end up behind them. The girls gives me a glance and then continues her conversation. And my internal battle begins. My internal battle against my cowardice. My internal battle against the natural instinct of not speaking to strangers. My internal battle against acting normal.  And I lose.

I turn away and walk a different path. I choose not to speak. And it is my choice. I can choose to hide that part of me that doesn't fit in. I can choose to act normal.