On Tuesday, September 03, 2013 17:07:02 Melinda Shore wrote: > On 9/3/13 6:50 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote: > > I think that is a given without having pre-emptive blame assignment in the > > text. > *Blame*? > > I know that I've inadvertently used regional idioms that were hard > for non-native speakers to understand and I've been grateful when > it's been pointed out. Trying to figure out where things get confusing > and correcting that is a net positive for the organization. > Characterizing that process as "blame" is not. > > We're supposed to be engineers. Let's fix stuff.
I agree, but we're people too. It's been my experience that if a code of conduct assigns primary responsibility for something to one party (in this case the native English speaker), it will later get used as a hammer whether it was intended as such or not. I agree that trying to figure things out is a net positive. What I want to avoid is someone making excuses claiming that since they aren't a native speaker it's somebody else's problem to understand them. The responsibility to attempt to communicate clearly is equal. Someone more fluent in English may have more tools at their disposal and may be able to contribute to the resolution of the problem more extensively, but that doesn't given them any more or less inherent burden. Scott K
