The Bonjour Effect Book by Barlow and Nadeau Report

This discussion will pertain to my overview of “The Bonjour Effect”, a book by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau. One thing that bothered me in this reading was how the writers categorized their experiences and attributed them to the whole of the French society because the kinds of lives they saw in their overview did not seem representative of the multi-faceted nature of any given culture. In their discussion, Barlow and Nadeau note that the majority of their conclusions are drawn from personal experience, particularly the parent circles of the friends the family had. The friends and their families mainly represented the French upper and middle classes. Taken simply from their observations, the writers attribute the observed traits of children they meet to the entire young French population. These few children’s manners, behaviors, and attitudes are considered average, despite the relatively limited sample size of one family’s friend group. I think this approach fails to account for the possible differences income levels, education, and even the physical location can make on a person’s cultural background. Children brought up in particular environments will absorb the behaviors they see daily and learn the manners and mannerisms that have become a staple of their area. By strictly defining a few speech patterns and actions of the children the family has met as indicative of a more significant trend, the authors, in my opinion, might have neglected to engage in the discussion or consider its intricacies fully. The main complaint I have about this part of the text concerns the possible lack of information applicable to France’s overall culture, not the upper and middle class of an area specifically.