Should PARSNIP Really Be Avoided?

By Farnaz Memari

Introduction

Most teacher training courses consider cultural awareness or sensitivity and what that means in the classroom. I remember references to the “forbidden triangle” – sex, politics, and religion. Later, this expanded into the acronym PARSNIP, standing for politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, -isms, and pork. The guidance is generally to tread lightly if any of these topics raise their heads.

Every country and region has its culture and its cultural expectations. Language teachers working outside of their home country are often advised by the school they work for – by the administrative team, by their Academic Manager, or during induction sessions, for instance – which topics are considered the most taboo for their students. Some schools go so far as to have a policy document describing which topics must not be mentioned – and they might also state the consequences for teachers who transgress those commandments. The stereotypical view is that the Middle East is the focus of much of this guidance, and while it is true that more topics there appear to be taboo than elsewhere, I think it’s more useful to consider that every single country and region has its expectations, and as teachers we owe it to ourselves and our students to be aware of what these are.

Reasons and Motivations

Recently, I attended a webinar by Dr. Lucas Peltonen on his PhD research, “Conducting a Teaching Experiment Targeting BELF Linguacultural Competence” (BELF, if you haven’t heard of it, is English as a business lingua franca). One topic discussed was learners’ reluctance to participate in speaking activities when sensitive cultural topics or taboos are involved. For instance, a Muslim learner might feel uncomfortable talking about alcohol in class. To avoid such difficult situations, teachers often choose to skip these topics or tasks and activities that, surprisingly, do sometimes appear in coursebooks. The idea, surely, is to expose learners to different cultures and traditions – it would be slightly odd to study the culture of Germany without mentioning Oktoberfest, to give one example.

My motivation to write this article was triggered by a slightly different thought: to what extent can we be sure that learners avoid engaging in class only because they want to respect their local cultural values, sensitivities, or beliefs? Perhaps they lack prior general knowledge to confidently participate in the activities. Perhaps, like an American teacher left perplexed by the conversation of a group of Australian teachers about their childhood games and hobbies, it is not a matter of wanting to avoid the topic, and more to do with not having the language to discuss it? Isn’t one of the goals of learning English to step out of our comfort zones and understand other people and cultures beyond our own?

Almost all coursebooks provide learners with different New Year traditions, religious traditions, special national days, to name just three topics, which help language learners gain some basic knowledge about other cultures that may well facilitate their business affairs or make travel easier.

Many adults, both in general and business contexts, join classes after watching or listening to news from around the world. Based on their personal or professional needs, they wish to express their thoughts about current affairs. Therefore these topics are not truly forbidden; on the contrary, they can be leveraged to increase engagement.

Furthermore, topics like “-isms” are already being taught in schools to raise awareness, and some learners, particularly in business English contexts, ask their teachers to provide information to help them understand client cultures and enable more effective communication. For instance, a Muslim businessperson traveling to the West may ask for guidance on politely declining the offer of an alcoholic drink. They may want safe alternatives – a lesson that discusses the difference between a margarita and a virgin margarita would provide that student with important knowledge in the same way that tourists to another country need to learn the words for the food they detest so that they don’t accidentally order a plate of tripe at the restaurant.

Political issues and crises might also affect the financial situation for the students’ company, and their English class might prove a suitably democratic forum in which to discuss what can be done. The power structure of the language classroom does not always mirror the power structure of the company where the lessons are held, and this can mean that lower ranking employees might feel more free to voice their ideas. A lesson on conditionals could suddenly turn into something that helps see the company through their crisis – which is a better outcome than in the majority of lessons on conditionals!

Suggestions and Recommendations

Here are some of the ideas that have worked well in my own classes for when I decided to transgress the PARSNIP boundary.

• Be a facilitator, not a debate member
  Help your students with the vocabulary, pronunciation, or grammatical needs they have to help them convey their message. Include breaks in the discussion for delayed feedback or to offer fresh input – which will serve to remind your students that they are learning English, not simply talking about taboo topics. You want your students to feel the security that comes with being part of a lesson with clear objectives.
• Anonymous Q&A
  Ask your students to write a question they would like to ask and know others’ opinions about, but give everyone the same size piece of paper with the same colour pen to ensure that anonymity. Or create an online survey that doesn’t track personal data, so that your students can be sure that not even their handwriting will show. I like this technological approach as I can then reveal the students’ questions on the whiteboard directly. This can make the questions seem less personal – when something is written in 12pt Times New Roman it seems a touch less human than when it is written by hand, and this can serve to lessen the emotional impact of the question.
  You can take this further and prepare a means of collecting anonymous answers to these questions – which themselves can form the basis for a discussion on the topic.
• Be a neutral but active listener while remembering to scaffold
  You can join each group or pair to listen to and take notes of their language mistakes and help them with the language – but maintain your role of teacher and do not add your own comments to the group’s discussion. Signpost your position as facilitator; you do not want your students to drop out of their lessons through shame or guilt because their own opinions seemed discredited by what the teacher said themselves.
• Make a Pros & Cons Debate
  PARSNIP topics can be divisive, but there is often a good rationale behind the original taboo. For instance, in many parts of the world, it was less safe to eat the meat of the pig than to choose another source of protein. This may have been the reason for pork becoming haram in Muslim societies; after all, the commandment to wash before every call to prayer, and then having five calls a day, meant that personal hygiene was much better in Muslim societies during the middle ages than almost anywhere else in the world. Sometimes the best way to broach a difficult topic is from the side and not head on. It’s possible that by allowing your students to look at PARSNIPs in this way, they lose some of their power to shock, and a closer discussion can then be held in a later lesson.
• Bring a devil’s advocate
  BBC World Service has an amazing programme called The Global Story, which looks mainly at health issues or information-awareness policies and talks about many controversial topics. Using a third party like this to deliver content can make the classroom a safer place for PARSNIPs, as you are outsourcing the most sensitive ideas or opinions. If the students don’t like this approach, you can abandon the podcast without necessarily damaging the atmosphere in the classroom.
• Use PARSNIPs to teach functional language
  Use PARSNIP topics in order to teach functions: language for agreement and disagreement and provide them with chunks like, “I personally don’t think…”, “I believe we should…”, “I respect your point of view but…”, “I’m afraid I can’t agree with you on that…” Be aware that this approach might make it harder to control or temper the feelings that the PARSNIP can elicit, but in a BELF context this can be a productive way to give your students some chunks of language that could prove indispensable in the future.

Conclusion

There are topics that we talk freely about in the real world, and there are topics that we only discuss in the privacy and security of smaller social groups. The same logic should feed our use of PARSNIPs in the classroom – if we decide to include taboo topics in our lessons, the rationale should be clear, and our students should always feel that they serve the purpose of learning the language. If there is clear, incontrovertible guidance from our employer, we must abide by that – but we can still prepare ourselves to talk about difficult topics. Hopefully, I have offered some ways in which to do that in this article!

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