Transcript Unit 4 - 厦门大学外文学院

Unit 4
The Cultural Patterning of Space
• Discuss the following topics.
• 1. What are the most prominent buildings
in the town or city where you live? Do they
possess something characteristic of the town
or city?
• 2. What is the most comfortable distance
when you talk to a person of the opposite
sex or to a foreigner, say an African or
American? Can you provide some
explanations?
Ancient Greece and Rome
Ancient Greece
• Stone Age
Old Stone Age: up to 20,000 BC
Middle Stone Age: 20,000-7000 BC
New Stone Age (Neolithic) ca. 7000-ca. 3500 BC
• Bronze Age
• Early Bronze Age: 3000 - 2100 BC
Middle Bronze Age : 2100- 1600 BC
Late Bronze Age : 1600- 1200 BC
• Iron Age
• Greek Dark Ages : 1200- 900 BC
Archaic Period : 900-510 BC
Classical Period: 510 - 404 BC
Hellenistic Period: 404-146 BC
ATHENS
YOU ARE AN ATHENIAN! Be courteous. You have been
superbly educated in the arts and the sciences, and trained to
be extremely productive and capable in times of peace or war.
You are an achiever. Until age 6 or 7, you were taught at home
by your mother, or by a male slave. From age 7-14, you
attended a day school in the neighborhood where you
memorized Homeric poetry and learned to play that
magnificent instrument, the lyre. You learned drama, public
speaking, reading, writing, math, and perhaps even how to
play the flute. You attended four years of higher school, and
learned more about math and science and government. At 18,
you attended military school for two additional years! You are
proud to be an Athenian! Famed for its literature, poetry,
drama, theatre, schools, buildings, government, and
intellectual superiority, you have no doubt that your polis,
Athens, is clearly the shining star of all the Greek city-states.
SPARTA
• YOU ARE A SPARTAN! Be proud! You have endured
unbelievable pain and hardship to become a superior Spartan
soldier and citizen! Taken away from your parents at age 7,
you lived a harsh and often brutal life in the soldiers barracks.
You were beaten by older children who started fights to help
make you tough and strong. You were often were whipped in
front of groups of other Spartans, including your parents, but
never cried out in pain. You were given very little food, but
encouraged to steal food, instead. If caught stealing, you were
beaten. To avoid severe pain, you learned to be cunning, to lie,
to cheat, to steal, and how to get away with it! Some of you
are members of the Spartan secret police and enjoy spying on
slaves. If you find a slave who is showing signs of leadership,
you have orders to kill them immediately. You are fierce,
capable, and proud of your strength. You know you are
superior and are delighted to be Spartan!
Characteristics of Greek Culture
• Western philosophy, tragedy and history
start with the Greeks.
• The Greeks were highly intellectual, using a
keen power of observation to examine the
world as it is, but at the same time building
elaborate theories to “explain” the world
even when observable reality indicates the
contrary.
Rome
• Roman Republic:
The early period (500 BC-300 BC)
The Punic Wars (275 BC-146 BC)
The Civil Wars (146 BC-30 BC)
• Roman Empire:
• The Julio-Claudians (30 BC-68 AD)
The Flavians (69 AD-96 AD)
The Five Good Emperors (96 AD-161 AD)
The Severans (161 AD-235 AD)
The Third Century Crisis
Constantine and his family (312 AD-363 AD)
The Theodosians (363 AD-450 AD)
The Fall of Rome (476 AD)
Rome Culture
• Roman cultural achievements in art,
literature, philosophy and religion were
greatly influenced by the Greek culture and
show very little originality. Only in the area
of law do the Romans provide a significant
new contribution.
Similarities
• Greek story of Zeus
• Roman story of Jupiter
Three basic types of law
developed by Romans
1. Jus civil: Domestic or civil law whereby people
could settle their disputes over property or
morals.
2. Jus Gentium: Criminal law which provide the
basis for most western criminal law.
3. Jus Naturale: The concept of natural law which
states that the laws of God(s) surpassed all
others. This had a great impact on Christianity
and philosophy of the Enlightenment period.
1 Space is perceived differently in different cultures. Spatial
consciousness in many Western cultures is based on a perception of
objects in space, rather than of space itself. Westerners perceive
shapes and dimensions, in which space is a realm of light, color,
sight, and touch. Benjamin L. Whorf, and his classic work Language,
Thought and Reality, offers the following explanation as one reason
why Westerners perceive space in this manner. Western thought and
language mainly developed from the Roman, Latin-speaking culture,
which was a practical, experience-based system. Western culture has
generally followed Roman thought patterns in viewing objective
“reality as the foundation for subjective or “inner” experience. It
was only when the intellectually crude Roman culture became
influenced by the abstract thinking of Greek culture that the Latin
language developed a significant vocabulary of abstract, nonspatial
terms. But the early Roman-Latin element of spatial consciousness,
of concreteness, has been maintained in Western thought and
language patterns, even though the Greek capacity for abstract
thinking and expression was also inherited.
Perceive
• I could perceive the ship coming over the horizon
• She finally perceived the futility of her protest
• Luther had a new perception of the Bible
a man admired for the depth of his perception.
• A key task is to get pupils to perceive for
themselves the relationship between success and
effort.
Dimension
• Space is considered to be three-dimensional and
time is thought of as the fourth dimension. A square
is two-dimensional and a cube is three-dimensional.
• There is a dimension to the problem that we have
not discussed.
• We should not forget that education has an important
spiritual dimension.
• The arrival of the Chinese team has brought a new
dimension to the competition.
Realm
• China will, as always, actively
participate in international activities in
the realm of human rights.
• Because it can spread itself across a
great number of systems in the
commercial, government, and military
realms in a very short period of time.
• We should also take a sober look at the
effects of genetic engineering in the
social and political realms.
Crude
• At times his language turned crude and
made him look foolish.
• Seven hundred thousand tons of crude oil
has poured out of the damaged tanker into
the sea.
• Many of his jokes were crude and sexist.
2 However, some cultural-linguistic systems developed in the opposite
direction, that is, from an abstract and subjective vocabulary to a more concrete
one. For example, Whorf tells us that in the Hopi language the word heart, a
concrete term, can be shown to be a late formation from the abstract terms think
or remember. Similarly, although it seems to Westerners, and especially to
Americans, that objective, tangible “reality” must precede any subjective or
inner experience, in fact many Asian and other non-European cultures view
inner experience as the basis for ones perceptions of physical reality. Thus
although Americans are taught to perceive and react to the arrangement of
objects in space and to think of space as being “wasted” unless it is filled with
objects, the Japanese are trained to give meaning to space itself and to value
“empty” space. For example, in many of their arts such as painting, garden
design, and floral arrangements, the chief quality of composition is that essence
of beauty the Japanese call shibumi. A painting that shows everything instead of
leaving something unsaid is without shibumi. The Japanese artist will often
represent the entire sky with one brush stroke or a distant mountain with one
simple contour line this is shihumi. To the Western eye, however, the large
areas of “empty” space in such paintings make them look incomplete.
Tangible
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that can be felt or touched
tangible evidence 确凿的证据
a tangible roughness of the skin.
摸起来感觉粗糙的皮肤
tangible property.
有形财产
The underlying difficulty, say copyright
experts, comes from trying to
guard intangible electronic "property" using
laws originally crafted with printing press
technology in mind.
Precede
• He preceded his lecture with a humorous anecdote.
• 他以一个幽默的轶事开始他的演说
• one should remember that the construction of
the microscope had to precede the
discovery of the cell.
• The week that preceded May Day last year
had seen days of heavy downpour in that
country and the people there were all
prepared
• 3 It is not only the East and the West that are different in their
patterning of space. We can also see cross-cultural varieties of
spatial perception when we look arrangements of urban space in
different Western cultures. For instance, in the United States, cities
are usually laid out along a grid, with the axes generally north/south
and east/west. Streets and buildings are numbered sequentially. This
arrangement, of course, makes perfect sense to Americans. When
Americans walk in a city like Paris, which is laid out with the main
streets radiating from centers, they often get lost Furthermore,
streets in Paris are named, not numbered, and the names often
change after a few blocks. It is amazing to Americans how anyone
gets around, yet Parisians seem to do well. Edward Hall, in The
Silent Language, suggests that the layout of space characteristic of
French cities is only one aspect of the theme of centralization that
characterizes French culture. Thus Paris is the center of France,
French government and educational systems are highly centralized,
and in French offices the most important person has his or her desk
in the middle of the office.
• 4 Another aspect of the cultural patterning of space concerns the
functions of spaces. In middle-class America, specific spaces are
designated for specific activities, Any intrusion of one activity
into a space that it was not designed for is immediately felt as
inappropriate. In contrast, in Japan, this is not true: walls are
movable, and rooms are used for one purpose during the day and
another purpose in the evening and at night. In India there is yet
another culturally patterned use of space. The function of space in
India, both in public and in private places, is connected with
concepts of superiority and inferiority. In Indian cities, villages,
and even within the home, certain spaces are designated as
polluted, or inferior, because of the activities that take place there
and the kinds of people who use such space. Spaces in India are
segregated so that high caste and low caste, males and females,
secular and sacred activities are kept apart. This pattern has been
used for thousands of years, as demonstrated by the
archaeological evidence uncovered in ancient Indian cities.
concern
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This concerns us deeply.
这事对我们关系极大。
Don't interfere in matters that don't concern you.
别插手与你无关的事情。
Synonyms:
have to do with
involve
be relevant to
interest
affect
pertain
designate
• This area of the park has been specially
designated for children.
• They officially designated the area around
the nuclear power station as unsuitable for
human habitation.
• designated tourist restaurant
5 Anthropologists studying various cultures as a whole have seen a connection in the
way they view both time and space. For example, as we have seen, Americans look
on time without activity as “wasted” and space without objects as “wasted.” Once
again, the Hopi present an interesting contrast. In the English language, any noun
for a location or a space may be used on its own and given its own characteristics
without any reference being made to another location or space. For example, we
can say in English: “The room is big” or “The north of the United States has cold
winters.” We do not need to indicate that “room” or “north” has a relationship to
any other word of space or location. But in Hopi, locations or regions of space
cannot function by themselves in a sentence. The Hopi cannot say “north” by itself;
they must say “in the north,” “from the north,” or in some other way use a
directional suffix with the word north. In the same way, the Hopi language does
not have a single word that can be translated as room. The Hopi word for room
is a stem, a portion of a word, that means “house,” “room,” or “enclosed
chamber,” but the stem cannot be used alone. It must be joined to a suffix that
will make the word mean “in a house” or “from a chamber.” Hollow spaces like
rooms, chambers, or halls in Hopi are concepts that are meaningful only in
relation to other spaces. This pattern of spatial perception among the Hopi
seems to be similar to their pattern of time perception, in which periods of time
are not seen as separate pieces of duration, as they are in the Western cultures,
but are integrated as pieces of a connected pattern.
Look on
• She’s looked on as the leading authority on
the subject.
• She was always looked on with distrust.
• Despite all his difficulties he always looks
on the bright side of things.
Integrated
• He seems to find it difficult to
integrate socially
• We also need to integrate effective paid
caregivers into care for the terminally ill.
• The idea with young children is to
integrate learning with play.
• It's very difficult to integrate yourself into a
society whose culture is so different from
• 6 Anthropologists do not know why one culture
develops one type of time-space perception and another
culture develops another type. Spatial perceptions may
be adaptations to specific environments: the degree of
population density; the amount of arable land; the
absence or existence of natural barriers such as the sea
or mountains; the amount of distinguishing landmarks
in a region. For instance, among some Eskimo peoples,
whose environment is a vast snow plain with few
landmarks visible for most of the year, spatial
perception is highly developed. The Eskimos must learn
to make careful distinctions among different spatial
elements, as their lives may literally depend on these
distinctions when they are hunting far from home.
density
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the density of population
人口密度
density of freight (passenger or traffic)
运输密度
traffic density
交通量
barrier
• Passengers are required to show their tickets
at the barrier,
• Despite the language barrier, they soon
became good friends.
• Shyness is one of the biggest barriers to
making friends.
landmark
• I couldn’t pick up any landmarks in the dark
and got completely lost.
• The invention of the silicon chip is a landmark
in the history of technology.
• This is the art that London taxi drivers have
brought to perfection. They and their taxis
are a landmark of the capital and are
recognized throughout the world, along with
the Queen and Big Ben, as a great British
tradition.