Talk about English - Who on Earth are we? Part 6 | Текст песни

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• Who on Earth are we? Part 6

Callum: Hello. In recent programmes in this series, Who on Earth are we? Marc Beeby’s
looked at some of the more obvious ways that cultures can be different from one
another - the different ways we use language, or non-verbal communication, for
example. Now here’s Marc to tell us about some other differences.
Marc: Today, we’re going to be hearing about two less obvious, but still very important
ways that cultures can vary: our different attitudes to time and to space. We begin
in Brazil, with Ana Baltazar.
Ana Baltazar
In the case of the Brazilian Indians I believe that the question of time and space is completely
related. They build their houses in a very particular way, completely related to time, the
position of the sun and things like that. This thing of time is not like our time today - like
every minute really matters, but for them it's like longer time but they are completely aware of
it - and they are kind of really using time but in a more patient way, I believe.
Marc: As Ana Baltazar says, for Brazilian Indians, time and space are closely related.
In fact, although we may not be aware of it, time and space are closely related
concepts for all of us. We’ll be looking at this idea in more detail later in the
programme.
But, first things first. Here’s Rebecca Fong - a teacher of intercultural
communication at the University of the West of England, Dr Rajni Badlani
from India, and Eilidh Hamilton, who spent several years in the Middle East,
talking about time and how we like to organise it.
Rebecca Fong
The way we package the notion of time is important. In order to describe it and manage it we
divide it up into manageable periods - so there are days and years and seasons and weeks and
so on - but we also divide it up into periods of time that are cultural so we can have periods
between festivals or the periods of festivals such as Ramadan or Easter or Hanukkah . We
also divide it into individual time so we have the periods between birthdays or when our first
children or our second children are born. Time also has depth - by which I mean history - so
that countries like America or Australia are modern or young in terms of history whereas
cultures such as China and Arab cultures have histories that last for thousands of years. So
time has meaning to us as individuals but it also has meaning to us as cultures.
Rajni Badlani
We have this phrase called Indian Standard Time, which is a joke. Which is like always being
half an hour late, one hour late. But increasingly now with globalisation, and with having to
deal with people from outside India, lots of people are becoming aware they need to keep
appointments, and seeing the value of time.
Eilidh Hamilton
I think people do have an image of Arabs as being very late which is not necessarily fair -
what people do do there is they tend to allow a much greater period of time for each social
engagement. So perhaps if you were invited for lunch at two you would expect to remain with
your hosts until the evening. Whereas perhaps in Europe you might go at 2.00 and have left
by 4.30. Because of that, perhaps, people aren't necessarily as punctual as we would expect
them to be because there's much greater leeway in terms of the time.
Marc: Eilidh Hamilton. The first person to identify time and space as important
elements in the study of culture was the North American anthropologist,
Edward T. Hall. In looking at cultural attitudes to time, Hall made an important
distinction between cultures where people like to do “one thing at a time” -
‘monochronic’ cultures - and ‘polychronic’ cultures, where people have no
problem doing several things at once. Now, of course, it’s not quite as simple
as that.
...
Группа Learning English. Продолжение текста:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/scripts/whoonearth/tae_whoonearth_06_080605.pdf

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