【Talk about English】 我们究竟是什么 (Episode5-4/5)

英语自学网

来自不同文化的人不仅使用不同的语言，而且他们运用非语言沟通的方式也不同。当人们用与我们不同的非语言方式进行交流时，往往会出现一些问题。跟本期主播Marc Beeby一起来看看交流的特点吧。
       

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Hints:
        Rebecca Fong
        Mahmoud Jamal
        Pakista
        Elidh Hamilton
        Ana Balthazar
        Hispanic
        Scandinavian
        Netherland
        Heathrow  
         
        英式拼写
全文听写
Whether or not we use a lot of body language, make eye contact when we're talking, or shake hands depends to some extent on how we feel about space - our personal space, the space between us and the person we are talking to, and this in turn affects our attitude to touch. Rebecca Fong explains, helped here by Mahmoud Jamal from Pakistan, Elidh Hamilton, and Ana Balthazar from Brazil.
Societies and cultures establish rules about how close you can stand to people in various different situations. There are rules about how close you can stand to someone if you're very familiar with them or how far it's polite to stand away from them if you need to keep a respectful distance. And these are very, very different rules again from culture to culture. So that Middle Eastern and Hispanic cultures tend to stand the smallest distance apart when they're having conversations, whereas Scandinavians or Scottish people stand relatively far apart. Some research shows that English people usually stand or sit about six to ten inches further apart than Dutch people do and in the Netherlands English people are seen by Dutch people to be quite distant whereas the English apparently see the Dutch as pushy and aggressive.  
I do feel that in tropical climates the body and emotions are more expressive. When I used to return to Pakistan after having lived in London for a while, I used to suddenly emotionally open up I noticed that people were much closer - they'd hold your hand, they'd touch you, you'd sit very close to each other, you are not afraid to talk in an emotional way, so you are alive, you are emotionally alive. And when I used to come back to Heathrow I had to shut down all those systems and kind of put myself in that kind of straightjacket of being, you know, very calm, not being too close to somebody, standing too close to them and not talking too loudly.
The use of touch accompanies this idea of personal space. The amount to which you can
touch someone or not may seem either aggressive and dominating or friendly depending on your culture's idea of space and touch. If someone gets too close to you or if they touch you and you're not expecting it, you can feel threatened and very uncomfortable.