In presenting their research last week, a UWI graduate student in linguistics raised the idea of cultural "rich points." In anthropology, rich points are cultural moments, or in some cases, certain words and phrases, that tap deeply into the context and psyche of a group of people. In particular, rich points are often where the insiders and outsiders of different cultures meet.
The student used the example of a Caribbean-American person using the word "bacchanal" and an African-American not understanding the term as it was intended by the speaker.Other examples include how, for many of the world's cultures, a "lime" is a garnish rather than a gathering; how the word "sex" is used by men on a Trinbagonian small-goal football field; or further afield, why in some villages of south Asia, your packed lunch–but no other meal of the day–will often have a small lump of coal on it.
These basic examples of incomprehension are evidence of different cultures meeting. In anthropology such rich points are described as carrying a "heavy cultural load."They are often the moment when a cultural outsider does not have enough insider knowledge to explain or understand the term, action, or expression happening in front of them, and meaning breaks down.
For the most part, people take for granted the many different cultures they are members of–national, ethnic, religious, geographical, class, gender, age, and many more. Yet when a rich point occurs, some of our invisible cultural jackets become apparent to others and ourselves.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members