Why do non-Israelis speak loudly in Israeli buses? What happens? What dynamics are at play here?
The answer seems to be rather strange. Those who speak in English on a bus often feel as if they are in a kind of bubble. They close off the rest of the world. They don't notice the rest of the world. That removes all of the usual societal constraints and restraints about an acceptable volume of speech. They can speak as loud as they want because nobody else exists. They are in a bubble.
They will realize that they are in a bubble when one of the conversation partners has to leave. Suddenly they realize that they are surrounded by real live people. They will not necessarily realize that those people heard them speaking out loud, just as those speaking on cell phones loudly don't realize that others hear them. Their personality will dictate whether they feel embarrassed or whether they will be suddenly hit by their inappropriate volume. Don't expect them to look around sheepishly to determine whether others in the bus noticed that they were speaking loudly. Their bubble popped, but it didn't help.
Other blobs in the bus are unlikely to react in any way, either while the conversation partners are speaking or afterwards.
However, everybody did notice. And the situation will repeat itself over and over again. The loud speakers in the bus may never realize that their English world is not necessarily the real world.
A similar situation occurs with people who have cell phones. Some of those people spoke loudly. They may not have realized that they were describing their private life to a larger audience. Perhaps they didn't care. Some of them may wrongly felt that they were in a little bubble, and that nobody could hear them beyond that bubble.
More about the Real World
A list of forums about Israel
A list of forums about Jewish and Hebrew issues
Are you required to read this webpage for a course? Do NOT print out the article. It is copyrighted.
Your exercise for this article is as follows:
Copyright © David Grossman. World rights reserved. This article may not be printed, forwarded, reproduced, or copied in any way or in any medium without written permission from David Grossman.
Keywords: Communicate, Manners, Privacy, Telephone, Transportation/Bus
/GrossmanIsrael/Articles/RealWorld/Bubble