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Chinese Spring Festival: Year of the Horse
5377 New Peachtree Rd.
11 AM - late afternoon
$5 admission
across from Chinese Cultural Center
Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: book on American and hybrid culture
?Weekend drama update here? No time to read the reams of weekend entries just yet. Apparently everbody else was busy writing while ...
quizzes (sp?) returned (urgh), weeping increases
Accents:
- Social penalties for having accents?
- video
- food names:
- Southern woman ordering, New York Deli
- cabinet = milkshake (RI)
- gumband = rubber band
- children sound different than parents
- Brooklyn : identified slum
- technical and professional language
- "Boston brahmin" : Oliver Wendell Holmes
- North End (Boston): Phillip's "Italian" accent
- food names:
- Discrimination in telephone apartment "quals" based on stereotypes of culture
- Southern?:
- slower, drawn out
- different phrase
- poss. nasal twang (TX, TN) (Willie Nelson)
- flat "a" sound
- multisyllable pronouncing of single syllable word
- Brooklyn:
- stand-up comics from burlesque theater
- characterized as a comic act
- Boston ("Brahmin"):
- upper class
- lived on Breed's, Knox Hill
- long hard "a"
- precise, clear ennunciation
- stereotype: educated, white, English?, well groomed, rich
- Boston (North End):
- words not well pronounced, run together
- speak quickly
- thick, virtually unintelligible in places
- stereotype: poor, uneducated Italian immigrants
Same Words, Different Meanings:
- RI: "cabinet" as milkshake
- Pittsburgh: gumband as rubber band
Cross-Cultural:
"Shakespeare in the Bush"
- Hamlet
- Tiv? Culture that conflicts with Hamlet:
- men are obligated to wed their brother's widow
- no fear of ghosts, little belief in ghosts
- elders should dispense justice
Time concepts as cultural conflict:
- Americans greatly value time:
- lateness unacceptable
- "Time is money."
- hourly wages
- rigid scheduling
- proliferation of watches and clocks
- other cultures do not value time so much as relationships
- American businessman in Rio on strict schedule:
- Latin American cultures develop individual relationships with business partners
- Argentinians (eg) will entertain guests and show off their country before business is discussed
- Americans compartmentalize business from life, family
- Listener intuition:
- Japanese: do not wish to explain things completely
- Nigerians: "cut your grass" or snakes will come
- "saving face": avoid embarassment,discomfort,injury to another person
- utilize indirect communication to avoid offense
- listener can infer details
- long pauses, interjections used to avoid directly disagreeing
Verbal vs. Non-verbal:
|
|
- list: verbal to non-verbal
- Swiss Germans: 80% of message in words used
- Japanese: 20% of message is in words used
Posture:
- soles of feet not be shown
- remove shoes on entering home,temple, mosque
- feet tucked under when seated
- crossing arms: closure, sometimes aggression
- hands: not in pockets, keep visible, insulting, arrogant
- eye contact: Americans: honesty, respect
- direct eye contact: aggressive in Singapore
- intense eye contact between men is expected in Arabia
- no eye contact tolerated between men and women
- American: travellers: eye contact until enter personal space, until past
- acculturation: behavior absorbed, not taught
- staring is acceptable in many cultures (eg Greece)
- eye contact cosidered aggressive in many cultures
Space:
| Germans | Finns | Swiss |
| North Americans | ||
| Eastern Europeans | ||
| Latin Americans | Asians | |
| Indians | Arabs |
- greatest amount of space to least
- Arabs (men) averages 4 feet or less
- stepping back (reflexive) is insulting
- tangent on Lebanese Christian conversions
- Egypt: empty theater: sit next to you
Saturday 16 Feb 2002: 15 Extra Credit points for going and writing up
Chinese Spring Festival: Year of the Horse
5377 New Peachtree Rd.
11 AM - late afternoon
$5 admission
across from Chinese Cultural Center
Current Mood: wasted
Current Music: travel plans
