跨文化交际论文--语境与时间(英语)

The Effect of Both High-Context Culture and Low-Context Culture on the Progress of Time Conception of Chinese Abstract: Human events occurring in daily life are closely related to time.Time is fundamental bases on cultures and human activities. In academic fields, different cultures shape different time conception, and time conception is an important mirror to reflect culture. Edward Hall regarded time orientation is evidently distinct between high-context cultures and low-context cultures. Time conception consists of time orientation and the view of time. Time orientation and the view of time of Chinese have changed a lot under the influence of high and low context culture, especially low-context culture from some western countries. The paper aims to find the progress which we have achieved about the conception of time in our country.Key Words high-context culture; low-context culture; conception of time; Chinese高语境文化和低语境文化对中国人时间观念进步的影响摘要时间和人们的生活息息相关。

任何文化和人类的活动都可以体现在人们对时间的理解和观念上。

不同的文化塑造了不同的时间观念，而且时间观念是反应文化的一面重要镜子。

爱德华.霍尔认为高语境文化和低语境文化中的时间观念明显不同。

在传统儒家文化影响下的中国逐渐形成了高语境文化，由此衍生出了延续五千多年的根深蒂固的传统时间观念。

近年来中国和在低语境文化影响下的国家的接触逐渐增多，时间观念的不同引发了很多矛盾。

但是受低语境文化的影响中国人的时间取向和时间观也有了很大的改变，更有利于跨文化交际的顺利进行。

本文重点探索高语境文化和低语境文化对中国人时间观念的积极影响和改观。

[关键词] 高语境；低语境；时间观念；中国人1. IntroductionTwo thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Sophocles stated: ‘Time is a kingly God’In China ‘ Time is money ’(一寸光阴一寸金) is an evergreen guideline from one generation to another. Therefore, time is the most precious treasure for every nation. However, if we take a deep observation into the conception of time in different countries, we can find that cultures vary widely in this aspect. Where they differ is in the view of time, usage of time and time orientation. Hall described that time is one of the fundamental bases on which all culture rest and round all activities revolves and he also regarded time orientation is evidently distinct from high-context cultures (HC) and low-context cultures (LC). In high-context culture, time is viewed as more open, less structured, more responsive to the immediate needs of people, and less subject to external goals and constrains. In low-context cultures, time is highly organized, in part because of the additional energy required to understand the message of others (Myron W.Lustig, Jolene Koester Intercultural Competence114). Low-context cultures are forced to pay more attention to time in order to make their work and lives orderly.According to Hall’s cultural continuum that ranges from high to low, the cultural pattern of Chinese is typically high-context culture. Chinese has a strong belief that the past should be guide for making decisions and determining truth. They have no strictly organized and ordered time arrangement. Time schedule is changeable and flexible for Chinese. The concept of time is vague and approximation. However, by contrast, time in low-context culture is highly structured and time table is firmly and inflexible. Since the beginning of reform and opening-up, exchanges between China and some low-context cultural countries are increasing and the conflicts which are raised by the difference of concept of time between two cultural patterns attract more attentions. So under their influence and in order to solve the problems, Chinese started to change their concept of time gradually and achieved progress. The development of Chinese time conception is moving to the low-context culture.2. Definitions and Features of HC, LC and Their Relations with TimeAccording to Hall, different cultures can form a continuum that ranges from high-context culture to low-context culture, in which some countries, such as Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam, belong to the high-context culture, and other countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, and United States, belong to low-context culture. Hall defined these two terms in the following manner: A high-context communication or message is one in which most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicitly transmitted part of the message. A low context communication is just the opposite; i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code. (Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter and Lisa A. Stefani, Communication Between Culture 79)The feature of HC and LC is distinctly different. A high-context culture prefers to use covert and implicit message that rely heavily on nonverbal code systems. The group is very important in HC, and members of the ingroup are easily recognized. Time is not strictly arranged and more responsive to people’s need. For example, one day a Chinese wants to invite his friend to have dinner. They may have a conversation like this:A: Hi, old Wang. How is everything going?B: Very good.A: How about your son?B: He is well, but his study is always a worry for me.A: Do you have any appointment tonight? I want to invite you to have a dinner tonight.B: I want to visit a friend tonight, but I can change it to another day.A: Ok, bye.B: Bye.In this conversation we can get four points about time. (1) The first four sentences are meaningless to the point, and it seems a waste of time, but in some high-context cultural countries, such as Japan and China, it is necessary to warm up the relationship.(2) A will invite B to have dinner “tonight”; therefore, it means B only have 4 to 5 hours to prepare. Chinese have been used to it, but its time of preparation is surprisingly short to low-context cultural people. (3) Before the conversation, B had a plan to visit his friend, yet in order to have dinner with A he changed his plan at last. So time is open and flexible in China. (4) From the beginning to the end of the talk,there is no an accurate time of the dinner. “Tonight” is a vague time, thus vague time is common in high-context country.Low-context cultures are characterized by the opposite attributes: messages are explicit and dependent on verbal codes, group memberships change rapidly, innovation is valued, and time is highly structured. (Myron W.Lustig, Jolene Koester Intercultural Competence114) In low-context cultures, time is highly organized, in part, and everything is in schedules or in details, because of the additional energy required to understand the message of others (Guo-Ming Chen, William J. Starosta, Foundations of Intercultural Communication51). Take the same example for explanation: if a person who come from a low-context cultural country, such as United Stated, wants to invite a friend has a dinner, he will be arrange it four days before the date of invitation. The friend will arrange this appointment into schedule and has enough time to prepare. The starting time of dinner will be detailed into minutes.3. Definitions and Features of Conception of TimePrimitive societies may arrange their lives by simple notions, such as morning, afternoon, season, sunrise, sunset and so on. The ancient Chinese takes a life of “Rise and rest together with the sun”(日出而作,日入而息). For civilized societies the concept of time is increasingly complex and time is more precious. Many proverbs about time are taken as guidelines to alert modern society, for example: “Time and tide for no man” (岁月不等人), “Time fletch away without delay” (光阴似箭,日月如梭), “Lost time is never found again” (光阴一去不复返).Running through all our ideas of time are two contrasting notions: time as a line of discrete events, minutes, hours, days, months, years, each passing in a never ending succession; and time as a circle, revolving so that the minutes of the hour repeat, as do the hours of the day, the day of the week and so on (Fons Trompenaars, Charles Hampden-turner Riding the Waves of Culture 123).Anthropologists stated that how a culture views of time and manages it is a clue to the meanings its members find in life and the supposed nature of human existence. The conception of time is strongly affected by culture because time is an idea rather than an object. How we think of time is interwoven with how we plan, strategize and coordinate our activities with others. Kluckholm and Strodtbeck identified three types of culture: (1) present-oriented, which is relatively timeless, traditionless, and ignore the future. They pay little attention to what has happened in the past and what the future will bring, because past is considered as unimportant while future is unpredictable. (2) past-oriented, mainly concerned to maintained traditions in the past. They have a high sense on traditions like to their ancestors, family, ancient proverbs. The present is tired to be maintained. (3) future-oriented, always takes a strong desire to future and setting out to realize it. They are eager to change and have a more desirable development in economic and social scales (Guo-Ming Chen, William J. Starosta, Foundations of Intercultural Communication 51).Some low-context cultures, such as United States, Germany and Swiss, see very small overlap between present and past but an increasing importance from past to highest the future. A similar behavior is reflected in German culture. Everything else than being right in time is an insult fro waiting person and shame for the person who keeps waiting. Time is considered as very rare and expensive. That is why time has to be well organized.The relation between the continuum that ranges from high-context culture tolow-context culture and time orientation that from past to future: table1.(Table 1:Data from Communication Between Culture,Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter and Lisa A. Stefani 77-80)4. The Conception of Time of Chinese and Its OriginThe conception of time is a vague idea in ancient Chinese. The whole day was traditionally divided into 12 two-hour periods, each being given the name of Earthly Branch, which is “Shi Chen” (时辰) in Chinese, but no accurate divide between any two Shi Chen. In their minds time is consisted by a series of events or history and they are able to do many things at the same time, which also called Polychromic Time (PC) according to Hall’ definition. Besides polychromic time, Hall also takes the idea of Monochromic Time (MC) into our mind, which is opposite to the former one. Table 2 is a contrastive study of PC and MC by Hall and Hall in 1990.(Table 2: Data from Journal of Sichuan Three-Gorges University, 董淑铭, No.2 1999 )4.1 The Traditional Attitude of Chinese to the Time and Its EffectThe Chinese proverb “Consider the past and you will know the present”( 前车之鉴) clearly states how important they consider their culture. Each Chinese develops his or her strong sense of identity from history. (Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter and Lisa A. Stefani, Communication Between Culture 79) Chinese has a long history, which is more than 5000 thousand years. They respect past and take it as a kind of honor and guideline to direct their decisions. The historian Felipe Fernandez-Armestoonce said: “China appears as the home of an uniquely successful imperial experiment, which has endured for over two thousand years with not very conspicuous discontinuities”.In the agriculture-based feudal society, farmers rise and rest together with the sun, therefore, the conception of time is not as accurate as highly developed western countries, which has developed on the basis of mechanization. However during 5000 years’ history, Chinese ancestors has summarized many proverbs about time to persuade their posterity to treasure time, such as “Time is money” (一寸光阴一寸金), “We have only a short life to live”(譬如朝露，去日苦多), “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” (今日复明日，明日何其多), “spring is the starter for a year as dawn is for a day” (一年之计在于春，一日之计在于晨).In spit of treasure of time, actually, frugal Chinese is much more generous with the time than those from LC culture. Beijing opera has well abstracted the slow-paced life style of Chinese 200 years before, which is a most appropriate mirror to show the other aspect of conception of time. Every time actors get on the stage in so slowly step with drums and gongs, that many young people and foreigners can not understand it and bear it. The slow-paced life style was also embodied in greetings, for instance: “slow go/ take it easy” (慢走), “slow eat/ enjoy your meal” (慢慢吃), “slow come/ relax” (不要慌,慢慢来). That is the reason why time schedule is flexible, deadline is changeable, and work is inefficient. However, Chinese can enjoy a leisurely life without much pressure.4.2 The Attitude of Chinese to the Elders, Age and Its EffectThe attitude to elders and age is definitely different from that in LC cultural countries. Age is such important information in China, that every time when we fill in the form we will offer it and experiences in the past. In Chinese conversation age is a necessary topic, because it is a useful way to show their concern and to establish friendship. ( 陈春卿, Journal of Sanming University, sep.2008, No.23) According to traditional proverbs, we can summarize that age means experience, knowledge and wisdom, for example: “An old horse knows the way/ An experienced person knows the ropes” (老马识途), “The veteran goes into action one being equivalent to some”(老将出马，一个顶俩), “The ginger is still old burning/ Sure enough, the old lady”(姜还是老的辣). In LC cultural country, take America for instance, age is highly private information, especially for adult female, which always a forbidden topic in their conversation, because age means negative for them and elder is regarded asuseless.Appellation is another window to understand the attitude of Chinese to elders. They have steeped in Confucianism for 2500 years, which emphasize respecting the aged and loving the young, so they often give a significantly respect to elders. “Grandpa” or “Grandpa” is an idiomatic appellation to elders, even though they have no relatives. “Old” is word in front of the title to show the respect, such as “teacher”(老师), “boss” (老板), “civilian” (老百姓), “husband/ wife” (老伴儿), “veteran” (老将), “aunty” (老大娘) and so on.Therefore, Chinese is more positive and takes more reverence to age and elders than LC cultural countries. This is the precious culture wealth that HC culture leaves for us.4.3 The Conception of Appointment of LC Culture and Its Effect to ChineseSociety is much like a net, which we are living in it, therefore, we cannot live isolated in this world. Canadian philosopher, communication theorist Marshall McLuhan introduced “Global Village”for us. He describes how the globe has been contracted into a village by many kinds of ways of contact. During the procedure of contact, appointment is a necessary and important step, because our partner and we need arrange date by our schedules. But different cultural patterns have different customs and regular about appointment, so in order to achieve a successful communication we must understand them.For LC cultural people, time is as precious as their lives. They take time commitments (deadlines, schedules) seriously, and everything adheres to plan. Take American for example: when the first Americans came to Virginia they were low-efficient almost in everything. Four hours’ work was enough for the whole day. But a new form of time conception came into their minds, instead of laziness to be a doctrine. The feeling of lack of time always threat American, which urge them to have a well arrangement and structure of time. Children were educated to treat time seriously and to study how to make it into details. If an American has a plan to study or read at home, he will refuse any visitor, including his/ her best friends. (张西玲, Journal of Xi’an United University, July 2001, No. 3).In LC culture, a note book for schedule and appointment is carry-on. Once the date was fixed they seldom change it or fail to keep it. They won’t have two appointments at one time, but two periods one day. If the time, which used for aconversation or meeting they are taking now, nearly run out, they will stop it and show their apology, because next appointment is waiting. It is not a wise choice to date them according to Chinese culture, as Chinese is used to adopt fuzzy words to appoint, such as tomorrow, today, afternoon or tonight.The conception of time of Chinese is always criticized and incomprehensible to people in LC culture. Not being punctual is Chinese greatest shortcoming and we have suffered a lot of losses for this reason. Living in global village, every villager seeks unified regulation for harmony; therefore, the regulation of time is increasingly international. Since the beginning of reform and opening-up, the conception of time of Chinese has changed a lot, especially people in the eastern coastal areas. Chinese is more punctual and more precious about their time. For instance: invitation card for wedding ceremony detailed to hour or even minute. Past-oriented time pattern is tending to present or future-oriented; “If you don't work hard today, tomorrow to find work” (今天工作不努力，明天努力找工作) is a rightly example5. ConclusionIn order to achieve successful exchange in cross-cultural communication, we must know the difference between HC and LC culture, because under dissimilar cultural patterns, different conception contains different rules. However, with the development of the world economic integration process, variety of cultures is mixing and tending for harmony. The conception of time of Chinese is increasingly influenced by western culture, but the diversity of culture has determined the variances lasting for ever. Knowing the advantage and disadvantage is helpful not only to our progress but the success of cross-cultural communication. As an important part of context cultural pattern, the conception of time is worthwhile for us to study into depth.ReferencesFons Trompenaars, Charles Hampden-turner, Riding the Waves of Culture, 1998, University Press of America, IncGuo-Ming Chen, William J. Starosta, Foundations of Intercultural Communication, 2005, University Press of America, IncLarry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter and Lisa A. Stefani, 2008, Communication Between Culture. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press &Brooks/Cole/Thomson Learning AsiaMyron W.Lustig, Jolene Koester, 2006, Intercultural Competence. 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