Erlangen 91052 (13)—Tschüß! and Geographical Diversity

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square Series "Erlangen 91052"
Click here for the "Erlangen 91052" Resource Center—All Posts Available
This is an "long post" (大)—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.

***  ***

One year ago on Round and Square (12 March 2013)—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 03-12
Two years ago on Round and Square (12 March 2012)—Displays of Authenticity: Game Face
Three years ago on Round and Square (12 March 2011)—Chinese Management (2)

[a] Region RF

So I was chatting with a number of colleagues at my research center the other day, and I thought it might be a good time to bring up that word again. "What do you think of Tschüß!, and when did it find its way here from the north?" My question was supposedly innocent (there is a fieldwork méthod behind it). The first colleague, in her early thirties, said that she has been saying it for most of her life, but that it has become far more prevalent in the Erlangen (91052) area in recent years. She implied quite strongly that it was just part of life, and the German language as spoken in "Bavaria" today. 

Not so with her slightly older peer, who had a very different take on the term. "I hate it, and refuse to say it. It is far too informal for serious Franconians, and it is ruining our local ways."

[b] Tschüß! RF

Whoa! What a blow was there struck.

That was a big Tschüß!-off to that particular sound of goodbye. "I don't want it here. I still say auf wiedersehen or schönen Abend, and it annoys me when people assume that I must say it because they happen to do so. I won't do it; I say auf wiedersehen, and I don't care if it sounds 'old'."

Her colleague did not disagree. She just shrugged, as if to say, "...and yet, it's here (there, and everywhere)."

Who ya gonna call? Tschüß! Busters.

For that task, I would have chosen Gabrielle (my buster-colleague, and not her real name...or gender?)... And she was not done—oh, not by a long shot. Her Murrayian and Ackroydian invective was aimed more generally at infiltrations into Franconian mores, and her deepest contempt was reserved for the (new in Erlangen 91052) habit of greeting friends with a kiss on each cheek. "What is that? It's not Franconian. It's not even German." It's French, and yet on the street I see all of these young people all kissy-kissy—one cheek, the other cheek—as though they are in Paris. This is Franconia. We are much more reserved."

[c] Kein Küß für Franconia RF

Oh, and one more thing.

"You don't have to say Tschüß!. If you choose to say it, fine, but it does not just mean goodbye in German. We have perfectly useful words for that, and saying Tschuß! is a choice."

Ah, language...and "culture," and temporality...and location.

Did we really ever think that we could speak seriously of "Western culture?" Seriously?

 ***  ***

Let's tease(-out) a few issues, and then call it a week on Erlangen 91052. It is easy to give priority to linguistic matters, and even to focus upon historical and cultural change (and continuity). We need to talk more in anthropological and historical studies about geography. We have failed to keep our eye(s) on the ball there. The more I travel and the more I learn...the more I realize that easy statements about "China" or "the United States" (or "Europe"...or "Germany"...or, for Pete's sake, "Russia") are so fraught, so problematic even at the level of abstraction that most speakers or writers intend to use them, that they are close to meaningless. 

The debate over "Bavaria" and "Franconia" is one of these. 

[d] Creepy Regionalism RF

As I have mentioned in much earlier posts (from my first trip here in 2011), people with roots in Erlangen 91052 and the greater Nürnberg area bristle when called "Bavarians." And yet, even in Germany, it is common to look at the map (as a friend in Berlin did recently) and say "I'm happy to see that you have arrived in Bavaria." And they all have a point. The map on my wall makes it clear that "Bayern" is a big block of southeastern Germany. That it is the largest territory in all of Germany makes it unsurprising that there is some contention. People in the "Bavarian" north might see things differently from people in the "Bavarian" south (for one, the latter do tend to see themselves as "Bavarians"). I have dealt with this issue in depth in Prairie Ethnography: Bavaria posts, so you can check out details there. For now, let's think about language, difference, and identification.

"We are Franconian" makes a distinction within a distinction. Bavaria is a "legal" part of Germany, but not all of "Bavaria" sees itself the same way. Think globally. Is that an issue in, say, Britain? How about the former "Sudan," or even more poignantly today's "Southern Sudan?" Is there tension? Yup. Let's take it further. Think of American states. NoCal, SoCal; Upstate, Downstate; or, as I once heard it, "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh...with Alabama in-between."

[e] Franconian Reserve RF

Geography (and lived experience) is complicated. Language "challenges" flow from there (and into there). 

That is how Tschüß! got into the mix.

Just think of where you live. Have you ever thought something along the lines of "That's not how we do things in North Dakota?" Of course you have. 

"That's not how we do things"..."at Beloit College," or "at Beijing University," or "in Wyoming," or "we Lutherans," or even "us Texans." Have you ever felt like you were part of an in-group...that resented the intrusions of outer ways? Don't read American national politics into this, at least not at the moment. Just think about it in the context of your own life. Of course you have. You have thought that football players don't understand the cross-country team, or basketball players don't understand how hard cheerleaders work, or that wrestlers are misunderstood. This goes back at least to high school for most of you...and then we all really know that it goes back to, well, very early days (my brother and sister...mom or dad...don't understand me). 

[f] Schönen Abend RF

How could we ever think that generalization could work?

And yet (releasing, temporarily, my inner Jared Diamond)...there are patterns, and they even might "hold" if we are disciplined and think about what a "pattern" really is. We are in Franconia, to be sure. It is easy enough to draw lines of demarcation, trying to keep out crudely "Bavarian" or (in the context of conversation here) "Low German" ways. 

And yet (I am reminded of Galileo pointing out that the heavens still moved, even after his recantation)...Tschüß! ist hier, and so is the double-buss of cheek-kisses (what my colleague referred to as "French kissy-kissy." 

In Germany. In Franconia.

This is a complicated, global (commodified...intersubjective) world (there, I have temporarily appeased the anthropological jargon community). And I think that we need to...think...about geography...more. And migratory patterns. They have been happening...forever.

***  ***

Tschüß! is filled with cultural and historical (if not linguistic) depth, and will probably require a return post now and then in our Erlangen 91052 series. For now (and until next Wednesday's Erlangen 91052 post)...auf wiedersehen!

[g] Regional Distinction RF

Erlangen 91052 (12)—Everyday Words: Tchüß!

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square Series "Erlangen 91052"
Click here for the "Erlangen 91052" Resource Center—All Posts Available 
One year ago on Round and  Square (9 April 2013)—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 04-09
Two years ago on Round and Square (9 April 2012)—La Pensée Chinoise: Primitive Classification
Three years ago on Round and Square (9 April 2011)—Exilic Response: Introduction

[a] The end (for now) RF

I had to make a little trip yesterday to the customs center in the little village of Tennenlohe, positioned between Erlangen (91052) and Nuremberg. A package was waiting for me, and it contained a bunch of old books that I purchased in the 1980s and 1990s. I was told that in the "old days," just a few years ago, I could have sent approval for them to open the box; they would then send it on to me at my office. No more. Now I have to take the Stadtbus 295 to Tennenlohe Frauenweiherstraße...thirty minutes through woodlands and outskirts before finally arriving in the middle of what looks like a parking lot. Could this be right?

Yup.

[b] See ya! RF

I walked into a nondescript building that made no mention of Deutsche Post, and just had a small four letters—Zoll (in this instance, "customs." I knew this was right, but the place did not seem particularly welcoming. I walked through the doors, went to the wrong window, was pointed to the correct office, and arrived to find a big, young, burly, Germanic guy with one of the warmest smiles I can remember. I handed him the letter that "he" had sent me. He set that one aside and picked up the next page—the customs slip that my wife had filled out when she sent me the books. That was what he needed. All seemed to be going well as he retrieved the box and set it in front of me.

"Invoice?"

"Huh? I bought the books twenty years ago. I don't have the receipts anymore."

"Invoice?"

"As I said, these are old books. They are from my office." This went on for some time before I blurted the following: "My wife put them into the box and mailed them to me from Virginia." "Oh!"...and everything was o.k. It turned out that she wasn't a used books seller, and all was well. "Open the box and show me the contents." Done; done. "Tape it back up; you are finished."

[c] Partin' Machine RF

I taped the box, nodded kindly to the now-stern-now-warm big-guy, and prepared to leave the office with my haul of academic platinum. As I neared the portal and prepared to disappear into the hallway, I heard one of the most familiar words in Germany today (it has been so for several decades). 

Tschüß!

I turned around and repeated tschuß!, and we parted as happy customs-companions.

***  ***

So, if you thought that this post would be about packaging, shipping, and customs-customs, you would be mistaken (like a Simpsons episode, we start with a twist). It is rather about the big, burly, bubba-guy who seemingly changed personality when it was time to bid adieu.

That's the story of my life here in Erlangen 91052. 

"Goodbyes" matter, and for serious social-theoretical reasons that will help us conclude this essay. For now, just know that if you gained your linguistic knowledge of goodbye! from The Lawrence Welk Show's channeling of the von Trapp family singers, you will have big problems here in Erlangen 91052 in 2014. 

Lawrence Welk Goodbye! 2:34

[d] Tschuß! RF

I will not speak (now) to the other languages, but let's just get this clear. The auf wiedersehen that you hear from the cherubic singers on the Lawrence Welk Show...never gets said here. Oh, I exaggerate you say? Come spend a week with me. I dare you to "hear it." But isn't that what Blickpunkt Deutschland "said" I should "say" in high school German? I'm pretty sure that's what "they said."

Nope, now it's tschüß!, and this didn't happen just yesterday. I first encountered the phrase in a cassette tape series I checked out of the Madison Public Library in 1998, so I am not claiming that it is "new." On the other hand, I do know that my high school and college German in the late-1970s and early-1980s never had tschuß! in them. You don't believe me? I am looking right now at my soiled copy of German in Review right now—one of the books that was in the precious package I received just yesterday. Nope, nein, nichts.

Tschüß! doesn't appear in there once. Not even once.

So what happened?

Well, that will require a follow up post, and a little bit of fieldwork (look for it in late-March). For now, however, I want to emphasize the ubiquity of the term. I use it in parting at Kaufland, at my local tobacco store (where I buy my weekly copy of Die Zeit, not tobacco), after a brief conversation on the bus, when I leave my favorite zaiten sushi restaurant, and almost every day when I lock my office door at what we call the IKGF (Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung), and speak my parting words to colleagues before walking the two pastoral blocks back to my apartment on Carl Thiersch Straße in Erlangen 91052.

[e] Headin' Out RF

Tschüß!

And that is why I find this little "bye-bye" so interesting. It is fascinating in a(n) historical sense, of course, and our follow-up post will investigate what people have to say about the "development" of the term in the last thirty years. This is not your...Lawrence Welk's...Germany anymore. That is for a later day, though.

For now, let's consider what I think is really most interesting about this little parting ejaculation. It's one of the most florid words in all of social theory (not to mention country music). Goodbye isn't just "language." It certainly isn't a tiny little final aside in the back-and-forth of purchasing, question-asking, or conversing in a dynamic social dyad. It is the very moment when the teeming vivacity of dialogue (or more) makes the cut-off toward parting—toward severing the social dynamic. 

The sound of goodbye.

And "parting" is such an indispensable part of social interaction that we need to focus our gaze keenly in that direction. Do we do this often enough? No, we don't. We tend to see the "meat" (or "meet") of the interaction in terms of what is happening in it. Unless we spend a lot of time listening to Patty Loveless or Hank Williams, we are most likely to think about the middle of the interaction. I am saying that we need to focus on the end—on how we say (in words and actions and gestures) "goodbye."

[f] Ending RF

The "sense of an ending" has everything to do with how people associate. You can't spell "meeting" without "time"...ing, and (aside from introductions, which we will consider later), nothing packs a mnemonic, historical, and emotional punch like the sound of goodbye. And let's not even kid ourselves. Auf wiedersehen (see you again!) does not compress phonemes and letters into as evocative an utterance as tschüß!

Think about it, and we'll return to this topic next week (I can't let it go, and because it is probably in a punch-match with genau for the most common word in German social life. People have opinions about it, and (as we will see on Tuesday), there is a varied world between danke...tschüß! and schöne abend...tschüß!...and auf widersehen.

Are they subtle? No, not really. They're all about goodbye.

Pierre Bourdieu will help us as we expand our parting struggles next week. 

We will consider history, culture, fieldwork, archives...and everyday experiences in Erlangen 91052.

NEXT
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Erlangen 91052 (13)—Everyday Words: Tschüß! (b)
The word has a history, and it will take historical (and ethnographic) inquiry to begin to understand it. 

[g] Auf Wiedersehen! RF