Fascicule_E52MCC.pdf - Atelier des Sciences du Langage

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« ‘Smile ! Look cheerful when you go out in public !’ says the American mother to her
toddler. So we grow up into automatic smilers. Our politicians have to be able to grin. Our
Presidents usually have the crowning grin of all – except Nixon. And look what happened to
him. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Certer, Reagan, Bush and Clinton – great
grinners all.
Not French politicians. François Mitterand won two presidential elections looking remote and
grim. Talk about a mine d’enterrement ! When I came across a news photo of him grining – in
Texas, sitting next to President Bush at the theatre – I showed it to a seminar of French
managers going to the U.S and, for a gag, asked them who it was. They didn’t recognize
him. »
« ‘You Americans have banalized the smile’ he (a young French diplomat) says. ‘Americans
smile all the time, always the same. For us there must be a reason. There is a different smile
for a friend, for a joke, for a child, for love. For good luck – and for bad luck. And in
between, no smiles.’
He pauses a moment. ‘When I am introduced to another man, if he smiles, then I think he is
one of three things : he is making fun of me, he is hypocritical or he’s very stupid.’ Then he
adds, ‘if it’s a woman I’m meeting for the first time and she smiles at me, there’s a fourth
possibility – she wants to flirt.’ »
« I mentioned the smile factor to the group of French managers being relocated to the U.S. I
added that they really must make an effort to smile on meeting people over there. Their faces
took on expressions of utmost gloom.
‘That is impossible’ said Marc Toussaint, a handsome 45-Tear-old engineer who was going to
head a General Motors plant in Ohio. ‘I cannot do that’.
‘Why not ? I asked. You laugh at my jokes here, you have a wonderful smile.’
‘But that is different. To smile at someone I do not know, when I am introduced, that would
be…’ he hesitated. ‘That would be what ?’ I encouraged him. ‘Ah, that would be
hypocritical.’ »
« Nicolas Bussière, the young boss of Desgrandchamps, a printing plant in Paris, came back
from two years in America full of smiles for his staff and workers. He soon heard that they
were concerned for his mental health, pointing to their temples a spiraling forefinger. ‘They
thought I’d gone nuts over there’ he said. ‘So I had to stop.’ »
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