Shhhh

For years I’ve taken note of an interesting phenomenon in my adopted home—ASU’s Hayden Library. The concourse level of the Hayden Library is a common study zone, graphically represented a by a green traffic light that says it’s ok for group discussions. Even so, the concourse level is usually fairly quiet, perhaps with a generic, light hum from everyone’s hushed conversations. Somewhat frequently the stale but peaceful environment is disrupted by a group of loud people who lambently disobey basic rules of library behavior by running, laughing loudly, or calling to people who are far away.  But these are isolated incidents of ASU students trying to gain celebrity.


Probably once a week, however, something else disturbs my peace. It has two variations. Sometimes a group is studying together and they for some reason choose to speak in a normal volume, or “outside voice.” Either that or someone talks loudly on their cell phone to handle some urgent crisis. Both of these occurrences often have one thing in common: they are perpetrated by foreigners speaking in a foreign language.

Why do they not behave by the library rules? It’s like the loud American tourists that would ride public transportation in Istanbul, failing to notice that all the Turks sit quietly. Likewise, maybe in the home countries of these loud library people, libraries have different social norms—it might be commonplace to conduct regular conversations or business negotiations in the library.

But even if this were the case, shouldn’t they easily observe that everyone else is being very quiet and going outside to talk on their cell phones? Do you remember in elementary school, when the teacher would ask everyone to be quiet, and suddenly you and your friend would be the only ones still talking? I always felt such embarrassment at these moments. They should feel that way too!

My best guess is that it’s not actually the rules of being quiet that keep the rest of us—the natives, one might say—from socializing normally in the library. It might be that if we were to talk loudly, everyone would hear and understand what we had to say. We’re just not comfortable with that level of exposure.

For foreign language speakers, speaking in their native language protects them from this embarrassment. Their behavior in itself might be annoying, but at least no one knows what they’re saying. They could be guiding someone through heart surgery for all anyone else knows.

To properly test my theory, we would need to see how foreign students interact in the library in English-speaking situations. We would also of course have to observe how many “natives” also socialize loudly to make sure that I have not manufactured this theory from simple racism. Finally, we would have to place English speakers in foreign countries’ libraries and observe if their behavior changes. I find all of this sociologically interesting, but at the end of the day rules are rules.

People of Earth: Don’t make noise in the library—I’m trying to study!