Imagine a situation in which you can’t say “No” to a person, because of the relations you’re involved in or a favor s/he’s done you before. what is this situation termed in English?
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Gratitude?
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I don’t think that we have that situation in Anglo-Saxon culture. You can say “no” to anyone, if it’s reasonable to do so.
Oh Jamie!
Why wouldn’t you have such a situation in Anglo-Saxon culture? Wouldn’t there be instances where Anglo-Saxons find saying ‘no’ to someone really hard (almost impossible)?
I think it’s got nothing to do with culture. It’s just human.
It’s not just human. We might find it hard to say no to someone sometimes, but there’s no situation where we CAN’T say no to someone because of something they’ve done for us or because of the relationship. Just the fact that we don’t have a word for the problem would show it’s not so common. I think it’s more an Eastern cultural problem, much like not being able to tell your professor when he’s made a mistake.
Some things that, from the perspective of our own culture, we think are just basically human, really can turn out to be quite tied to culture. Once a man gave me a book of short stories from his country, in his language, that he said were universal portrayals of relations between men and women. I read the first story and then recounted it to several Americans in English. The events in it were so steeped in the other culture that my American friends didn’t even really understand what was going on, and I had to explain what was obvious to people in the country where the book originated. So much for our universal humanness.