Recently I had a conversation about something related to Southern culture, and a friend originally from another state asked me to define Southern hospitality. Having lived in the South my whole life, I was disappointed I couldn’t say more than I did. I have actually read a bit about manners and what it means to be Southern. I still know a thing or two about the history of the English language in the South, but I couldn’t define this hospitality thing.
It would be easy, if you took a superficial route. You could say Southern hospitality is fried chicken, corn bread, and iced tea, but that isn’t essentially different than, say, krauts and beer or hot dish and dinner rolls. (What do Midwesterners drink with a casserole? I always drink water, but I know I’m supposed to be drinking tea.)
Southern Living lists six qualities of Southern hospitality in this article from earlier this year: politeness, good home cooking, kindness, helpfulness, charm, and charity. I’m going to call this a puff piece (and maybe the whole magazine is too). This is the kind of thing we say about ourselves no matter who we are. Dang! If we ain’t the best, you know it? But if these are true as Southern characteristics, not Christian characteristics, then it demonstrates that Christ still haunts the South.
That’s part of what I said to my friend. I have a hard time distinguishing Christian hospitality from Southern or Yankee or any other kind of hospitality you might define. The differences seem only superficial b/c the virtue is found in Christ.
And maybe Southern hospitality is what it is because we’ve had the best branding.
In other news, Artificial Intelligence already works on video captioning and language translation. Now, a Japanese student of the Korean language has won translation award by editing an AI translation of a webtoon. She doesn’t know Korean enough to translate the work herself, but using AI and research tools, she got through it well enough to win Rookie of the Year from LTI Korea.
Kim Wook-dong, emeritus professor of English Literature and Linguistics at Sogang University, told The Korea Herald that AI can translate technical writing “almost perfectly,” but is has “limits in capturing the subtle emotions, connotations and nuances in literary translations. It can help and serve as an assistant to translators but AI cannot replace humans in literary translation. I doubt it ever will.” [via The Literary Saloon]
Normal Living, Extraordinary Prose: “Clean-shaved and conservatively dressed, with no oddities of posture or gait, he should have merged imperceptibly into a street crowd. But he didn’t. He stuck out, for reasons almost impossible to capture and fix in words. The best one can say is that he stood and walked and talked like other men, only more so. He was conspicuously normal.”
This description from H.L. Mencken reminds me of H. Matisse in Ray Bradbury’s story about “a terrifyingly ordinary man.”
Poetry: The great Dana Gioia has a new collection of poems called Meet Me at the Lighthouse.
Photo by Sunira Moses on Unsplash
I don’t think I ever had the impression that Southern hospitality had particular peculiar attributes. I always assumed it meant that excellent hospitality was found to be common in the south.
I’m facing the prospect of losing work in translation from AI these days, though my boss tells me we’re not obsolete yet.
Both of these statements make sense. I’m sorry.
In the most recent Happy Rant podcast, Ted Kluck asked why they have to use new tech on another thing that makes life harder for writers.
Phil,
I was a big city northerner in my formative years, a stereotypical, annoying, cynical Chicagoan who spoke with that fast paced, harsh Chicago accent.
Circumstances (the economic destruction of the Midwestern “rust belt” cities) spurred me to move to Texas in the mid-80s. Southern hospitality was a big shock to me. And I seemed to be as big a shock to the Texans I met. In time I came to understand that they were truly doing many things much better than we were in the north, especially in the big cities (a lot of smaller, northern towns have a similar hospitable nature).
In my experience Southern hospitality is very much Christian infused, especially Evangelical Baptist. It isn’t dependent on the Southerner being a Christian, or a regular attendee of any church, synagogue, temple of mosque; it’s part of the culture. But it’s foundation is the Baptist church*. Despite my natural lack of trust and cynicism I could not ignore the fact that their kindness was sincere. And unselfish. Maybe it’s empathy? Yankees tend to be more inward focused and southerners look outward?
*Yankee Protestants; Dutch, German, Norwegian are kind but too introverted. Yankee Roman Catholics are extroverted but lack kindness. Southern Protestants are extroverted and kind.
That’s interesting. Thank you. I don’t have the contrast to look to on this.