this may be a dead thread but I thought I would chime in anyway,
First of all the Society is sensitive, in fact you can see in some photos of friends around the world in other cultures that they are not wearing what would be considered the appropriate suit&tie uniform of the US. many go out in service without a tie in some lands.
the rule of thumb applied (whether it is truly appropriate or not these days) is to dress corresponding to what would be considered appropriate among the "business class of the locality". (of course in an age wear Bill Gates goes tieless and where every company has casual Friday, i think even our Western stodiness can be relaxed but just my preference)
It is a good point made about language and American Standard English but I raise this in counterpoint. Every language has idiosyncracies, local dialects and other variant forms. For the most part there is no standard English, standard Spanish, or Standard whatever that would serve for all of the same language group. thus it doesn't seem completely inappropriate to settle on one "standard" in each language group and attempt to use it across the board. So American English is the standard used for English. "Educated" Spanish (usually without the Spanish of Spain differences) is used for Mexico, Spain, Latin America, South America and other spanish language countries despite the fact all of these countries have their own brand of spanish. I don't think it is wrong to stick to one "standard" spanish or one "standard" english and to do that is not insensitive to the locality it is just reality that to accommodate every potential variation would be overwhelming.
-Eduardo
