It varies a lot from culture to culture. That’s part of what a culture is, what is thought of as default or background knowledge, or something people will know. So...who is your audience? What cultures or sub-cultures are they from? It’s not going to be the same from country to country, or different regions within a country, or rural vs. urban, or age group or educational background.
I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer for a “general audience” that would apply to all people around the world. It might be helpful to be more specific about what you think a general audience means. People of a certain educational background within a particular region of a particular country who speak a specific language? There are few events aimed at a world audience—the Olympics, some United Nations events, so you could study some of those and see what they assume of people.
For specific words, a rough approach might be to google that word and look at the number of results, and see the relative popularity of them. For example “onion” has 148 million results, “carrot” has 90 million results, “artichoke” has 20 million results, so that might be an indication of how popular those vegetables are, relative to each other.
I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer for a “general audience” that would apply to all people around the world.
This is why I specified by education level (and I thought I’d specified Americans or Europeans, but apparently not), though I’ll admit that I’d been thinking primarily in terms of English-speaking people (though this is an English forum, and I’m not likely to be writing for a non-English-speaking audience). I also didn’t specify that I’m not really talking about cultural common knowledge; I’m not expecting a typical Londoner to have the same culinary knowledge as a typical person from Nashville.
However, the kinds of things that I think are generally regarded as common knowledge are also relatively culturally insensitive, and I do expect that the typical college graduate from London and the typical college graduate from Nashville have quite a lot of overlap in their secondary education curricula. When I say ‘quite a lot’, I just mean that, if you have a good understanding of one group’s common common knowledge, you’ll be able to use that with the other group, at least for things that are generally made for a “general audience”. The main reason I think this is true is that watching British TV and watching American TV isn’t any different, in terms of what I’m expected to know, apart from cultural references. Similarly, as an American, I’ve never really run into problems related to assumed knowledge while talking to non-Americans. (The main exception here might be history education.) Then again, a majority of the non-Americans that I talk to I meet either through either the rationalist community or academia, so there may be some selection bias. Also, it’s possible that the wide proliferation of American media gives non-Americans a good sense of what they can assume Americans know. Am I wrong? Are American and European audiences sufficiently different that they usually require different accommodations?
There are few events aimed at a world audience—the Olympics, some United Nations events, so you could study some of those and see what they assume of people.
I like this idea, though I’m unsure how to find media that isn’t written mainly for a particular nationality, and that assumes anything apart from English literacy. (That said, I do find the problem of making signage for an event like the Olympics to be interesting.)
It varies a lot from culture to culture. That’s part of what a culture is, what is thought of as default or background knowledge, or something people will know. So...who is your audience? What cultures or sub-cultures are they from? It’s not going to be the same from country to country, or different regions within a country, or rural vs. urban, or age group or educational background.
When authors write books about a culture they are unfamiliar with, sometimes they hire someone from that culture to read over the book, and give feedback about what they could do better. For example Mary Robinette Kowal did this for her novel Of Noble Family. http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/im-spending-today-swapping-dialect-novel/
I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer for a “general audience” that would apply to all people around the world. It might be helpful to be more specific about what you think a general audience means. People of a certain educational background within a particular region of a particular country who speak a specific language? There are few events aimed at a world audience—the Olympics, some United Nations events, so you could study some of those and see what they assume of people.
For specific words, a rough approach might be to google that word and look at the number of results, and see the relative popularity of them. For example “onion” has 148 million results, “carrot” has 90 million results, “artichoke” has 20 million results, so that might be an indication of how popular those vegetables are, relative to each other.
This is why I specified by education level (and I thought I’d specified Americans or Europeans, but apparently not), though I’ll admit that I’d been thinking primarily in terms of English-speaking people (though this is an English forum, and I’m not likely to be writing for a non-English-speaking audience). I also didn’t specify that I’m not really talking about cultural common knowledge; I’m not expecting a typical Londoner to have the same culinary knowledge as a typical person from Nashville.
However, the kinds of things that I think are generally regarded as common knowledge are also relatively culturally insensitive, and I do expect that the typical college graduate from London and the typical college graduate from Nashville have quite a lot of overlap in their secondary education curricula. When I say ‘quite a lot’, I just mean that, if you have a good understanding of one group’s common common knowledge, you’ll be able to use that with the other group, at least for things that are generally made for a “general audience”. The main reason I think this is true is that watching British TV and watching American TV isn’t any different, in terms of what I’m expected to know, apart from cultural references. Similarly, as an American, I’ve never really run into problems related to assumed knowledge while talking to non-Americans. (The main exception here might be history education.) Then again, a majority of the non-Americans that I talk to I meet either through either the rationalist community or academia, so there may be some selection bias. Also, it’s possible that the wide proliferation of American media gives non-Americans a good sense of what they can assume Americans know. Am I wrong? Are American and European audiences sufficiently different that they usually require different accommodations?
I like this idea, though I’m unsure how to find media that isn’t written mainly for a particular nationality, and that assumes anything apart from English literacy. (That said, I do find the problem of making signage for an event like the Olympics to be interesting.)