Do you say what you mean or mean what you say?

Saying, “I hate you” to your mom when you’re angry but you know you don't really mean it.

Saying, “I’m fine” when you’re not really fine.

Saying, you’re “okay” when someone changed your plan just because (s)he’s your boss and you can’t talk back.

You’re lying to yourself if these never happened to you. Its not something you should be shameful off just because you said something you don't really mean or you simply don't say the things you really meant to say. It’s human.

There’s a phrase that goes like this, "People often don't say what they mean and they often don't mean what they say". Yeah it’s confusing but it makes sense because it’s relatable. The fact that it makes sense to you means that you have at least encountered a situation like that once in your lifetime.

Now lets break the phrase down shall we?

PART 1

"People often don't say what they mean”

This is what we understood from this first half of the phrase; “People don't say what they wanna say”. Really, that's it. Now, you could think that it has something to do with the whole introvert/extrovert stuff or simply they just want to avoid conflict/arguments by not saying the things they really meant to say. But since this a blog dedicated to culture, lets dig deeper into that. Take a look at this map,

Credit picture to google images

This is the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural map. Now, Malays are somewhere high in “Traditional” and low in “Self-Expression”. This is because in our culture, we were taught from a young age to never talk back to our parents. It was considered extremely disrespectful.

This is a combination of religion values and also cultural values as well. The value “never talk back to the elderly” is related to this phrase if you think about it. Age and Hierarchy status are major factors to this. However, this does not mean that we lack freedom of speech; it just means that in our culture it was just considered rude. Thus we don't often say what we mean. The more “Self-Expressive” countries are rather the opposite. Countries such as the US for example, are not afraid to say what they mean.

Sometimes, it's a good idea for us to take a chapter from the Spice Girls book and “tell what you want, what you really really want”.

And to just “let it go”

PART 2

“...they often don't mean what they say"

So here’s the thing with this one. This could either be caused hugely by our lack of control in our emotions. OR our cultural background is what caused it.

Yes, sometimes we lose control over our emotions and tend to spit out words we don't mean to those we love most. But those sometimes are what make us human. Our emotions are not something we can control all the time no matter how hard we try. All we can do is say,

In a more cultural perspective, this is similar to what we explained before, the “Self-Expression” value. Here’s a common example in a Malay family. Whenever our mother/father scolds us, we (the children) stay quiet. They could go on and on about our mistake, but we say nothing. Here’s the plot twist; it wasn’t even our fault. It could be one our sisters or brothers or even cousins who broke the vase or stained mother’s favourite carpet. But all we end up saying is “Okay, I’m sorry.” The sad truth is, we’re not okay and we’re not sorry because we didn't do it. But we are well rooted in our own value to “never talk back” and to us, it is more important to respect our parents.

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But sometimes, it’s just polite to say what we don’t mean. I mean, how many times have you said, “it was nice to meet you” to someone that you weren’t so nice to have met? Or saying, “that's funny” to your friend who made an awful joke.

See? That's politeness…. or sarcasm. Up to you which one you’d prefer honestly. Until we post again, have a nice day! (no sarcasm included)

*The Inglehart-Welzel culture map was created by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, both political scientists. It shows the linked cultural values that differs between societies in two dimensions. The y-axis shows the "Traditional values" and "Secular-rational values". While the x-axis shows the "Survival values" and "Self-Expression values".