3. Appreciating cultural differences in time sense becomes increasingly important as modern communications put more and more people in daily contact. If we are to avoid misreading issues that involve time perceptions, we need to understand better our own cultural biases and those of others.
The Brazilian students believed that a person who is consistently late is probably more successful than one who is consistently on time. They seemed to accept the idea that someone of status is expected to arrive late. Lack of punctuality is a badge of success.
Warm Up
➢ What is your sense of time? Go to answer the questions on Group Work (p235-236).
People who choose very different answers to these questions may find it difficult to communicate and get along with one another, for they are very likely to differ in sense of time and how time should be used. Sometimes we may make unfair judgments on other people and their characters simply because their understanding and use of time are different from ours.
Reading I
Read the article “The Heartbeat of Culture” (p229232).
1. What does the author want to tell us from his experience in Brazil and the questionnaire between students in Niteroi and those in Fresno?
Reading I
Read the article “The Heartbeat of Culture” (p229232).
2. There aren’t unanimous perceptions of time among culturally different people. Even within one country, ideas of time and punctuality vary considerably from place to place. Different regions and even cities have their own distinct rhythms and rules.
2) In M-time system, social and business life is commonly schedule-dominated. By scheduling, we compartmentalize; this makes it possible to concentrate on one thing at a time, but it also reduces the context. M-time is also tangible. M-time scheduling is used as a classification system that orders life.
Intercultural Communication
Unit 7 Time and Space Across
Cultures
Warm Up
➢Please read the story on page 228. What can we learn from the story?
The American and his son have discovered that Latin American use of time and space is very different from theirs back in the United States. They felt astounded at first because they had not expected that there would be such great differences in these aspects of life between Latin Americans and North Americans. What they have learned there is not just the Spanish language, but also how time and space is to be used when you interact with people in the new cultural environment.
Review of Unit 6
1. What is nonverbal communication?
2. Why is nonverbal behavior significant in intercultural communication?
3. Illustrate some cultural differences in nonverbal communication.
Chronemics
➢ Chronemics is the study of how people perceive and use time.
➢ The sense of time:
1) Time is linear. Western cultures think time is linear — a flow from the past to the present to thБайду номын сангаас future.
1. What does the author want to tell us from his experience in Brazil and the questionnaire between students in Niteroi and those in Fresno?
In Brazil, people seem to be very flexible in their concepts of time and punctuality. Brazilians are likely to attribute lateness for appointments to unforeseen circumstances that the person couldn’t control. They seem less inclined to feel personally responsible for being late. So they express less regret for their own lateness and blame others less when others are late.
Weakness: Matters in a polychromic culture seem in a constant state of flux. Appointments are frequently broken.
Chronemics
2. What is the philosophy underlying each of the time system?
2) Time is cyclical. Life on earth evolved in response to the cycles of day and night and the ebb and flow of the tides.
Chronemics
➢ Monochronic and Polychronic Time (p256-257) 1. What is M-Time and P-Time? Which do you think is
➢ However, people in the United States emphasize schedules, the segmentation of time, and promptness. They prefer to do only one thing at a time and believe that time is money.
Weakness: Life in general is at times unpredictable. Mtime reduces the context and alienate people from themselves and from others.
Reading I
Read the article “The Heartbeat of Culture” (p229232).
the dominating time system in our culture? 1) Monochronic time means paying attention to and