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Intercultural Communication 跨文化交流 (通识核心-创新)

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5 活在爱中的秘诀-黄维仁 爱情心理学.doc

 

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5从深度心理学的角度看爱情.doc

 

附精品文章:

 

男女交谈为何如此困难 

 

(下面附英文全文:Sex, Lies and Conversation; Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other?  from The Washington Post, June 24, 1990. 作者Deborah Tannen为世界著名社会语言学家,跨文化专家。

译文出处:《当代研究生英语》读写教程(上)参考答案)

 

     那是在弗吉尼亚郊区一个住所的客厅里,我正在一次小型聚会上发言——这是一次女性的聚会,但也邀请了男性参加。整晚,一位男士表现得极为健谈,他不断地发表自己的看法,讲述奇闻轶事。而他的妻子却安静地坐在他身旁的沙发上。聚会接近尾声时,我说,一些妻子经常抱怨丈夫不与她们交谈,这位男士立刻表示同意。他指着妻子说:“在家里爱说话的是她。”于是满屋子哄堂大笑,这位男士一脸茫然和委屈。“这是真的,”他解释说,“我下班回家后总是无话可说,如果她不说话,我们会整晚沉默。”

    这段小插曲反映了一种具有讽刺意味的现象,即美国的男性尽管在公共场合比女性健谈,在家里却比女性说话少。而正是这一现象使婚姻受到严重威胁。

    社会学家凯瑟琳·凯尔·里兹曼在她的新作《离婚谈》中说,她采访过的大多数女性将离婚的原因归咎于缺乏交谈,但只有少数男性将此当作离婚的理由。

    在我本人的研究中,女性对丈夫的抱怨大多不是集中在一些实际的不平等现象,例如为了跟随丈夫的事业而放弃了发展自己事业的机会,或者她们所承担的日常生活琐事远远超过她们份内的部分。她们的抱怨总是集中在交流问题上,如“他不听我说话”,“他不和我说话”。我发现多数做妻子的都期望丈夫首先是自己的交谈伙伴。但是很少有丈夫对妻子抱有同样的期望。

    简言之,最能体现目前这种危机的是一个老套的卡通画面:一个男人坐在早餐桌旁,手中拿着一张报纸看着,而他的妻子愤怒地盯着报纸背面,渴望与他交谈。

 

两性间的唇枪舌剑

 

    在婚姻中的交流问题上,为何男女会持有如此不同的观点?为什么男女的兴趣和期望普遍不一致?

    斯坦福大学的埃莉诺·麦科比在19904月《美国心理学家》刊物上发表了她自己和他人研究的结果。研究结果表明,儿童的发展主要受同龄伙伴交往过程中社交结构的影响。无论男孩女孩都喜欢与同性伙伴玩耍。不同性别的儿童小群体有不同的组织结构和交际准则。

    我相信,儿童时代社交过程中的不同规则,导致了两性间的交谈如同跨文化交流一样难。我本人通过对男女对话的研究发现,成年男女对话的模式类似于儿童群体交流过程中的模式。

    成年女性同女孩一样,彼此亲密是她们感情关系的纽带。而交谈是编织这种纽带的线。小女孩通过相互交换秘密来建立和维持友谊。同样,成年女性也把交谈看作友谊的基础。因此,女性期望丈夫成为自己新的、更好的知心朋友。对她们来说重要的不是某个具体的讨论话题,而是在说出自己的想法、感受和印象时所表现出来的那种亲密的、分享生活的感觉。

    男孩间的关系和女孩一样紧密。但男孩间的关系与其说建立在交谈基础上,不如说建立在共同动手基础上。既然他们不认为交谈能够巩固感情关系,他们不知道女人需要何种交谈,也不会因为没有交谈而感到遗憾。

    男孩的群体比女孩的要大,所包括的人更广泛,也更具有等级特色。因此,男孩们势必要努力争取不在群体中处于从属地位。这也许是为什么女人抱怨男人不听她们说话的根源之一。

    当女的对男的说“你没有在听”,而男的反对说“我在听”时,常常男的是对的。这种给人没有在听的印象是由于男女对话方式的不同而引起的。这种不同在男女各自就位时就已表现出来了。我对心理学家布鲁斯·多维尔录制的关于儿童与成人分别与他们的同性好友交谈时的录像带进行了研究。研究发现,无论多大年龄的女孩和成年女性,都采取面对面的姿势,眼睛看着对方的脸。而各种年龄的男孩和成年男子就座时,相互位置都成一定的角度,眼睛看着屋子别的地方,只有时不时瞥对方一眼。男性这种看着别处的习惯,可能给女性一种印象,那就是他们没有在听,即使他们在听也会给人以没有在听的印象。一个年轻的女大学生感到很失望,因为每当她告诉男朋友她想跟他谈谈时,他总是躺在地上,闭上眼睛,并用手臂挡住脸。她对此的理解是,“他想睡一会儿”。而他则坚持说他在非常认真地倾听。在一般情况下,他会环顾屋子四周,所以容易分心。而躺在地上,蒙住眼睛会使他专心致志听女友说话。

    转移话题是男人的另一种习惯,这种习惯也给女人一个印象:他们没有在听。特别是当他们把话题转移到自己身上时更是如此。在我的研究中,女孩往往就一个话题谈得很详细,而男孩倾向于不断改变话题。

    我对lO年级的孩子所进行的研究发现,当女孩对朋友倾诉烦恼时,对方总是刨根问底,并且表示同意和理解。男孩却不把对方的问题看得那么严重。例如,托德安慰理查德说他饮酒“不是什么大问题”。当托德说他遭受冷落时,理查德回答说:“你怎么会这么想?你认识的人比我还多。”

    女性把这种回答看作是轻视她们的问题和不支持她们。但男性似乎对这种回答很满意。女性的回答暗示:“你不应该感到难过,因为我也有过类似的经历,”从而彼此安慰。而男性通过暗示“你不应该感到难过,因为你的问题并不那么糟糕”来彼此安慰。

    还有更简单的原因来解释为什么女人总觉得男人没有在听。语言学家莱内特·赫希曼发  现,女性比男性发出更多的倾听者的声音,如“对”,“嗯嗯”,“是”等来表示“我理解”。她发现,男人通常是静静地倾听。而女人期待听到一连串倾听者的声音,她们把静静地听理解为根本没有注意听。

    男性的对话习惯使女性感到失望,同样,女性的对话习惯也使男性感到失望。男性期望的是静静地注意听,他们将一连串倾听者的声音理解为过头的反应或是不耐烦。此外,当女性在一个亲密、舒适的环境里交谈时,常常互相搭话,说完对方未说完的句子,并且能够预料到对方要说什么。我把这种做法叫做“参与式倾听”,男性往往将此理解为干扰、冒犯和缺乏注意力。

    同样,男女之间的差别也使丈夫抱怨妻子,“她只想表达她的观点。如果我向她表达另一种不同的观点,她就对我生气。”多数妇女在交谈时,认为谈话伙伴要做的事就是表示赞同和支持。而很多男人则认为,谈话时指出问题的另一面才是他们的责任。在女性看来,这样做是一种不真诚的表现,是拒绝给予必要的支持。这不是因为女性不想听到别的观点,而是因为女性更喜欢将这些观点以建议或询问的言词表达出来,而不是以直接了当的挑战形式表达出来。

沉默的声音

 

     上述这些区别可以解释为什么在婚姻内的交流问题上,男女抱有如此不同的期望。对女性来说,交谈可以使关系亲密。婚姻关系是一种无比密切的关系:你可以说出你的感受和想法,对方会依然爱着你。女性最大的恐惧是被排斥。但是,男人生活在一种等级分明的世界里,谈话的目的是保持自己的独立性与地位。他们必须时刻警惕,保护自己,以免受人压制或受人摆布。

    这一点也解释了那个健谈的男人说他那沉默的妻子“她才能说呢”这种矛盾局面。在公共场合,他觉得迫不得已要表现自己的聪颖、展示自己的理解力。但在家里,他不需要证明什么,也不需要提防任何人,所以他不想说话就不说话。对他的妻子来说,在家意味着不必担心自己说的话会得罪别人,或者引发矛盾,或者显得炫耀自己。在家里,她可以想说什么就说什么。

    交流问题威胁着婚姻,但不能通过机械的手段来修补。这些问题要求我们用一种新观念来看待谈话在人际关系中所起的作用。从心理学的角度所作的许多解释都无济于事,因为这些解释往往责怪女性(不够自信),或者责怪男性(不关心她们的感情)。如果从社会语言学的角度,将男女对话看作跨文化交流,我们便会理解这个问题,找到问题的答案,而又不责怪任何一方。

    一旦问题得到理解,情况自然有所改善。那些通常因丈夫不倾听或不谈论每天发生的事情而感到被遗弃、感到丧失生活乐趣的女性会高兴地发现,她们的丈夫一旦知道了不起眼的谈话在女性关系中的地位后,正努力地在适应。如果丈夫不适应,妻子仍然能够得到安慰,因为她知道,对男人来说,这不是不亲密的表现。当妻子接受了男女存在区别这一事实后,便会去找自己的朋友或家人说一说话。那些不能够给予妻子谈话快乐的丈夫,也不应该觉得妻子提出了无理要求。仍然会有一些夫妻决定离婚,但起码他们的决定是建立在比较现实的期望基础上的。

 

Sex, Lies and Conversation;

Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other?

by Deborah Tannen

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/sexlies.htm

The Washington Post, June 24, 1990

I WAS ADDRESSING a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room -- a women's group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don't talk to them. This man quickly concurred. He gestured toward his wife and said, "She's the talker in our family." The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. "It's true," he explained. "When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn't keep the conversation going, we'd spend the whole evening in silence."

This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage.

The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late '70s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book "Divorce Talk" that most of the women she interviewed -- but only a few of the men -- gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year -- a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.

In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking, social arrangements and errands. Instead, they focused on communication: "He doesn't listen to me," "He doesn't talk to me." I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives.

In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk. Linguistic Battle of the Sexes

How can women and men have such different impressions of communication in marriage? Why the widespread imbalance in their interests and expectations?

In the April issue of American Psychologist, Stanford University's Eleanor Maccoby reports the results of her own and others' research showing that children's development is most influenced by the social structure of peer interactions. Boys and girls tend to play with children of their own gender, and their sex-separate groups have different organizational structures and interactive norms.

I believe these systematic differences in childhood socialization make talk between women and men like cross-cultural communication, heir to all the attraction and pitfalls of that enticing but difficult enterprise. My research on men's and women's conversations uncovered patterns similar to those described for children's groups.

For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven. Little girls create and maintain friendships by exchanging secrets; similarly, women regard conversation as the cornerstone of friendship. So a woman expects her husband to be a new and improved version of a best friend. What is important is not the individual subjects that are discussed but the sense of closeness, of a life shared, that emerges when people tell their thoughts, feelings, and impressions.

Bonds between boys can be as intense as girls', but they are based less on talking, more on doing things together. Since they don't assume talk is the cement that binds a relationship, men don't know what kind of talk women want, and they don't miss it when it isn't there.

Boys' groups are larger, more inclusive, and more hierarchical, so boys must struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group. This may play a role in women's complaints that men don't listen to them. Some men really don't like to listen, because being the listener makes them feel one-down, like a child listening to adults or an employee to a boss.

But often when women tell men, "You aren't listening," and the men protest, "I am," the men are right. The impression of not listening results from misalignments in the mechanics of conversation. The misalignment begins as soon as a man and a woman take physical positions. This became clear when I studied videotapes made by psychologist Bruce Dorval of children and adults talking to their same-sex best friends. I found that at every age, the girls and women faced each other directly, their eyes anchored on each other's faces. At every age, the boys and men sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere in the room, periodically glancing at each other. They were obviously attuned to each other, often mirroring each other's movements. But the tendency of men to face away can give women the impression they aren't listening even when they are. A young woman in college was frustrated: Whenever she told her boyfriend she wanted to talk to him, he would lie down on the floor, close his eyes, and put his arm over his face. This signaled to her, "He's taking a nap." But he insisted he was listening extra hard. Normally, he looks around the room, so he is easily distracted. Lying down and covering his eyes helped him concentrate on what she was saying.

Analogous to the physical alignment that women and men take in conversation is their topical alignment. The girls in my study tended to talk at length about one topic, but the boys tended to jump from topic to topic. The second-grade girls exchanged stories about people they knew. The second-grade boys teased, told jokes, noticed things in the room and talked about finding games to play. The sixth-grade girls talked about problems with a mutual friend. The sixth grade boys talked about 55 different topics, none of which extended over more than a few turns. Listening to Body Language

Switching topics is another habit that gives women the impression men aren't listening, especially if they switch to a topic about themselves. But the evidence of the 10th-grade boys in my study indicates otherwise. The 10th-grade boys sprawled across their chairs with bodies parallel and eyes straight ahead, rarely looking at each other. They looked as if they were riding in a car, staring out the windshield. But they were talking about their feelings. One boy was upset because a girl had told him he had a drinking problem, and the other was feeling alienated from all his friends.

Now, when a girl told a friend about a problem, the friend responded by asking probing questions and expressing agreement and understanding. But the boys dismissed each other's problems. Todd assured Richard that his drinking was "no big problem" because "sometimes you're funny when you're off your butt." And when Todd said he felt left out, Richard responded, "Why should you? You know more people than me."

Women perceive such responses as belittling and unsupportive. But the boys seemed satisfied with them. Whereas women reassure each other by implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because I've had similar experiences," men do so by implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because your problems aren't so bad."

There are even simpler reasons for women's impression that men don't listen. Linguist Lynette Hirschman found that women make more listener-noise, such as "mhm," "uhuh," and "yeah," to show "I'm with you." Men, she found, more often give silent attention. Women who expect a stream of listener noise interpret silent attention as no attention at all.

Women's conversational habits are as frustrating to men as men's are to women. Men who expect silent attention interpret a stream of listener noise as overreaction or impatience. Also, when women talk to each other in a close, comfortable setting, they often overlap, finish each other's sentences and anticipate what the other is about to say. This practice, which I call "participatory listenership," is often perceived by men as interruption, intrusion and lack of attention.

A parallel difference caused a man to complain about his wife, "She just wants to talk about her own point of view. If I show her another view, she gets mad at me." When most women talk to each other, they assume a conversationalist's job is to express agreement and support. But many men see their conversational duty as pointing out the other side of an argument. This is heard as disloyalty by women, and refusal to offer the requisite support. It is not that women don't want to see other points of view, but that they prefer them phrased as suggestions and inquiries rather than as direct challenges.

In his book "Fighting for Life," Walter Ong points out that men use "agonistic" or warlike, oppositional formats to do almost anything; thus discussion becomes debate, and conversation a competitive sport. In contrast, women see conversation as a ritual means of establishing rapport. If Jane tells a problem and June says she has a similar one, they walk away feeling closer to each other. But this attempt at establishing rapport can backfire when used with men. Men take too literally women's ritual "troubles talk," just as women mistake men's ritual challenges for real attack. [See box.] The Sounds of Silence

These differences begin to clarify why women and men have such different expectations about communication in marriage. For women, talk creates intimacy. Marriage is an orgy of closeness: you can tell your feelings and thoughts, and still be loved. Their greatest fear is being pushed away. But men live in a hierarchical world, where talk maintains independence and status. They are on guard to protect themselves from being put down and pushed around.

This explains the paradox of the talkative man who said of his silent wife, "She's the talker." In the public setting of a guest lecture, he felt challenged to show his intelligence and display his understanding of the lecture. But at home, where he has nothing to prove and no one to defend against, he is free to remain silent. For his wife, being home means she is free from the worry that something she says might offend someone, or spark disagreement, or appear to be showing off; at home she is free to talk.

The communication problems that endanger marriage can't be fixed by mechanical engineering. They require a new conceptual framework about the role of talk in human relationships. Many of the psychological explanations that have become second nature may not be helpful, because they tend to blame either women (for not being assertive enough) or men (for not being in touch with their feelings). A sociolinguistic approach by which male-female conversation is seen as cross-cultural communication allows us to understand the problem and forge solutions without blaming either party.

Once the problem is understood, improvement comes naturally, as it did to the young woman and her boyfriend who seemed to go to sleep when she wanted to talk. Previously, she had accused him of not listening, and he had refused to change his behavior, since that would be admitting fault. But then she learned about and explained to him the differences in women's and men's habitual ways of aligning themselves in conversation. The next time she told him she wanted to talk, he began, as usual, by lying down and covering his eyes. When the familiar negative reaction bubbled up, she reassured herself that he really was listening. But then he sat up and looked at her. Thrilled, she asked why. He said, "You like me to look at you when we talk, so I'll try to do it." Once he saw their differences as cross-cultural rather than right and wrong, he independently altered his behavior.

Women who feel abandoned and deprived when their husbands won't listen to or report daily news may be happy to discover their husbands trying to adapt once they understand the place of small talk in women's relationships. But if their husbands don't adapt, the women may still be comforted that for men, this is not a failure of intimacy. Accepting the difference, the wives may look to their friends or family for that kind of talk. And husbands who can't provide it shouldn't feel their wives have made unreasonable demands. Some couples will still decide to divorce, but at least their decisions will be based on realistic expectations.

In these times of resurgent ethnic conflicts, the world desperately needs cross-cultural understanding. Like charity, successful cross-cultural communication should begin at home.