Latins and Mediterranean Arabs prefer ____distance.

Cultures of Arabs, Southern and Western Europeans, Jews and Latins belong to touch culture.(       )

When leaving a party, the following share the same etiquette __________. A: British B: Dutch C: Japanese D: Latins

Passage 4 A U.S. male brought up on the East Coast of America stands eight to twenty inches away from another male when in conversation. In talking to a woman he will increase the distance by about four inches. To stand at a distance of about thirteen inches usually has a sexual or aggressive connotation. However, in most parts of Latin America thirteen inches is just the right distance when talking with a person. When a man brought up in a Latin American environment tries to talk to a man brought up on the East Coast of the United States an interesting thing happens. The Latin will try to maintain what he considers the right talking distance. The American will step back. Both will feel uncomfortable without quite understanding why. All they know is that there is something wrong with the other one. Most culture-blind Latins feel that the Americans are withdrawn and uncommunicative. Most culture-blind Americans think that Latins are pushy. In most American urban areas, to be two minutes late for an appointment is all right. Three minutes is significant, but an apology is not expected. After five minutes the latercomer mutters an apology. In most Latin countries a five-minute unit is not important, an apology is expected only for a time unit longer than twenty minutes. Latins, influenced by their own cultural conditioning, feel that Americans are not polite and are obsessed with time because they expect persons with whom they have appointments to be at a certain place at precisely a given time. A person unfamiliar with North American cultural conditioning has difficulty realizing that Americans handle time much like some tangible material – spending it, taking it, using it up or wasting it. Different people live almost literally in different worlds, not just the same world with different names attached. The barriers between cultures would perhaps be relatively unimportant if only a few people were crossing international borders. But people the world over are on the move today as never before, traveling for business and more for seeing and experiencing other ways of life. All this has its obvious benefits. At the same time, however, there are some dangers, particularly for a person who plans to spend any appreciable amount of time in another culture. One of these dangers is the sense of confusion and misunderstanding that social psychologists call culture shock. A person who enters a foreign culture ordinarily passes through three phases of adjustment. First, he is a spectator; he observes what is going on around him but does not participate. Second, he become personally involved in the ways of the foreign culture and tries to come to terms with them. Finally, either he will have mastered the new situation and will get along smoothly in the new culture or he will realize that his own culture is the only workable one for him. In the first phase, that of spectator, the initial reaction to a new country is likely to be one of curiosity and delight. Everything looks interesting. However, a few weeks’ time change one’s perception of the environment. Living in a country is quite different from just visiting it. As the person begins to move into the second and most difficult phase, that of participation and personal involvement in the unfamiliar culture, he becomes aware of the differences that exist between himself and the people with whom he is living. The situations which, in his first phase as spectator, were interesting are now incomprehensible and perhaps even unpleasant. He feels that he can’t get through to them and he becomes uneasy and insecure because he doesn’t know the right way of doing things. Culture shock is precipitated by the distressing feelings of uncertainty and anxiety that result from not finding all the familiar symbols, signs, and cues that guide a person through her own culture. She finds herself having to use a different design for living. She doesn’t know what people expect of her and what she should expect. She is not sure when to shake hands, how much to tip, where to buy things she needs, or what to say to waiters, and she finds that the social etiquette she has learned is no longer useful. Culture shock is often accompanied by a linguistic shock that makes it even more difficult to cross the cultural barriers. When I was suffering linguistic shock, English sentence would sound to me like a long, unpronounceable string of harsh noises. At that time I deeply regretted that I had chosen to learn English instead of some sensible language. I couldn’t see why the English people had to use these odd, barbaric utterances instead of speaking with normal human words like everyone else. I sometimes had the feeling that Americans spoke English in order to confuse unsuspecting foreigners. 96. The statement “the Latin will try to maintain what he considers the right talking distance” implies that the Latin will _____.