(not from bad will but from good will, hurt other person‘s feeling without wanting to do it and knowing that) 5. What had made the Japanese young man change his view about Americans? (Americans are very very cold and distant after the cordial reception) 6. How many types of individualism are mentioned in this article? What are they? (African, French, Mexico, American) 7. American and English people share a common language, but differences can also be found between them. How do they differ in their ideas of ―an ideal guest‖? (―help yourself at home‖ vs ―be my guest‖) 8. What suggestions has the author offered us to deal with problems of communication across cultures? (openness to alternatives to our own conventional behavior) Exploration How can we avoid misunderstanding when we communicate with people of other cultures? It is sometimes said that the key to effective intercultural communication is knowledge. What do you think of it? What knowledge do we have to acquire? What else should we acquire if we hope to communicate successfully across cultures?
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Pair work The danger of misinterpretation is greatest among people who speak different native tongues or come from different cultural backgrounds. First read the following. Cultures often differ in what is considered as polite behavior. Once a white office worker who appeared with a bandaged arm felt rejected because her black fellow worker didn‘t mention it. The (doubly) wounded worker assumed that her silent colleague didn‘t notice or didn‘t care. But the co-worker was purposely not calling attention to something her colleague might not want to talk about. She let her decide whether or not to mention it: being considerate by not imposing. These differences reflect recognizable black and white styles. An American man who had lived for years in Japan explained a similar politeness ethic. He lived, as many Japanese do, in frightfully close quarters — a tiny room separated from neighboring rooms by paper-thin walls. In this case the walls were literally made of paper. In order to preserve privacy in this most unprivate situation, his Japanese neighbors simply acted as if no one else lived there. They never showed signs ofhaving overheard conversations and if while walking down the hail, they caught a neighbor with the door open, they steadfastly glued their gaze ahead as if they were alone in a desert. The American confessed to feeling what I believe most Amencans would feel if a next-door neighbor passed within a few feet without acknowledging their presence — snubbed. But he realized that the intention was not rudeness by omitting to show involvement, but politeness by not imposing. 黑人妇女出于礼貌没有询问白人妇女同事的伤情，白人妇女却误以为黑人妇女同事不关心她的伤情。 一个日本人为了显得很有礼貌，假装他并不了解紧邻的美国人的隐私，表现得旁若无人。他的美国邻居则觉得，紧邻而不互相打招呼，显得很无礼。 湖南涉外经济学院备课纸
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年 月 日 The fate of the world depends on intercultural communication. Nations must reach agreements, and agreements are made by individual representatives of nations sitting down and talking to each other — public analogues of private conversations. The processes are the same, and so are the pitfalls. Only the possible consequences are more extreme. Work with your partner to find out what other pitfalls may exist in ,intercultural communication. 湖南涉外经济学院备课纸
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Lesson 4 Cultural Diversity 年 月 日 Text A Where Fat Is a Mark of Beauty It‘s a Thursday afternoon at the Seville Beach Hotel in Miami Beach, and tourists have gathered to watch the Most Beautiful Women in the World emerge from the ladies‘ room. Here comes Miss Estonia! She‘s tall and blond and thin! Here comes Miss Venezuela! She‘s tall and blond and thin, too! Here comes Miss Croatia, and ... my gosh, she‘s tall and blond and thin! Here comes Miss Australia! Of course, she‘s also tall and blond and thin! It turns out that a great many of the Most Beautiful Women in the World are tall and blond, and all of them are thin, thin, thin. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere in Africa, people seem to have a very different idea of what is beautiful. 西方社会普遍以苗条为美 非洲尼日利In Akpabuyo, Nigeria, Margaret Bassey Ene currently has one mission in 亚少女马格利特life: gaining weight. The Nigerian teenager has spent every day since early June in a ―fattening room‖ specially set aside in her father‘s mud-and-thatch house. Most of her waking hours are spent eating bowl after bowl of rice, yams, plantains, beans and gari, a porridge-like mixture of dried cassava and water. After three more months of starchy diet and forced inactivity, Margaret 的增肥任务 马格利特的will be ready to reenter society bearing the traditional mark of female beauty “增肥屋”生活 among her Efik people: fat. 湖南涉外经济学院备课纸
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年 月 日 In contrast to many Western cultures where thin is in, many culture- conscious people in the Efik and other communities in Nigeria‘s southeastern 埃菲克人对Cross River state hail a woman‘s rotundity as a sign of good health, prosperity 肥胖之美的独特and allure. The fattening room is at the center of a centuries-old rite of passage from maidenhood to womanhood. The months spent in pursuit of poundage are supplemented by daily visits from elderly matrons who impart tips on how to be a successful wife and mother. Nowadays, though, girls who are not yet marriage-bound do a tour in the rooms purely as a coming-of-age ceremony. And sometimes, nursing mothers return to the rooms to put on more weight. “The fattening room is like a kind of school where the girl is taught about motherhood,‖ said Sylvester Odey, director of the Cultural Center Board 理解 “增肥屋”in Calabar, capital of Cross River state. ―Your daily routine is to sleep, eat and 里的教育 grow fat. Like many traditional African customs, the fattening room is facing relentless pressure from Western influences. Health campaigns linking excess fat to heart disease and other illnesses are changing the eating habits of many Nigerians, and urban dwellers are opting out of the time-consuming process. Effiong Okon Etim, an Efik village chief in the district of Akpabuyo, said some families cannot afford to constantly feed a daughter for more than a few months. That compares with a stay of up to two years, as was common earlier this century, he said. But the practice continues, partly because ―people might laugh at you 西方观念的影响 湖南涉外经济学院备课纸
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