Unit12-2

Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culturem

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." This thought by Thoreau strikes a chord[1] in so many people that it has become part of our language. We use the phrase "the beat of a different drummer" to explain any pace of life unlike our own. Such colorful vagueness reveals how informal our rules of time really are. The world over, children simply "pick up" their society's time concepts as they mature. No dictionary clearly defines the meaning of “early” or "late" for them or for strangers who stumble over the annoying differences between the time sense they bring with them and the one they face in a new land.
I learned this a few years ago, and the resulting culture shock[2] forced me to search for answers. It seemed clear that time "talks." But what is it telling us?
My journey started shortly after I accepted an appointment as visiting professor of psychology at the federal university in Niteroi, Brazil, a small city across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. As I left home for my first day of class, I asked someone the time. It was 9:05 a.m., which allowed me time to relax and look around the campus before my 10 o'clock lecture. After what I judged to be half an hour, I glanced at a clock I was passing. It said 10:20! In panic[3], I broke for the classroom, followed by gentle calls of "Hola[4], professor"and "Tudo bem[5], professor?" from unhurried students, many of whom, I later realized, were my own. I arrived breathless to find an empty room.
Frantically, I asked a passerby the time. "Nine forty-five" was the answer. No, that couldn't be. I asked someone else. "Nine fifty-five." Another said: "Exactly 9:43." The clock in a nearby office read 3:15. I had learned my first lesson about Brazilians: Their timepieces are consistently inaccurate. And nobody minds.
My class was scheduled from 10 until noon. Many students came late, some very late. Several arrived after 10:30. A few showed up closer to 11. Two came after　that. All of the latecomers wore the relaxed smiles that I came, later, to enjoy. Each one said hello, and although a few apologized briefly, none seemed terribly concerned about lateness. They assumed that I understood.
The idea of Brazilians arriving late was not a great shock. I had learned about "manha," the Portuguese equivalent of "manana" in Spanish. This term, meaning "tomorrow" or, "the morning", stereotypes the Brazilian who puts off the business of today until tomorrow. The real surprise came at noon that first day, when the end of class arrived.
Back home in California, I never need to look at a clock to know when the class hour is ending. The shuffling of books is accompanied by strained expression_rs that say, "I'm starving... I've got to go to the bathroom... I'm going to suffocate if you keep us one more second." (The pain usually becomes unbearable at two minutes to the hour[6] in undergraduate classes and five minutes before the close of graduate classes.)?
When noon arrived in my first Brazilian class, only a few students left immediately. Others slowly drifted out during the next 15 minutes, and some continued asking me questions long after that. When several remaining students kicked off their shoes[7] at 12:30, I went into my own "starving / bathroom / suffocating" routine.
I could not, in all honesty, attribute their lingering to my superb teaching style. I had just spent two hours lecturing on statistics in halting Portuguese. Apparently, for many of my students, staying late was simply of no more importance than arriving late in the first place. As I observed this casual approach in infinite variations during the year, I learned that the "mnha" stereotype oversimplified the real Anglo/Brazilian differences in conceptions of time.[8]

The Voices of Time

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken language. It can shout the truth where words lie.
Different parts of the day, for example, are highly significant in certain contexts. Time may indicate the importance of the occasion as well as on what level an interaction between persons is to take place. In the United States if you telephone someone very early in the morning, while he is shaving or having breakfast, the time of the call usually signals a matter of utmost importance or extreme urgency. The same applies for calls after 11:00 p.m. A call received during sleeping hours is apt to be taken as a matter of life and death, hence the rude joke value of these calls among the young[1].
How troublesome differing ways of handling time can be is well illustrated by the case of an American agriculturist assigned to duty as an attaché of our embassy in a Latin country.[2] After what seemed to him a suitable period he let it be known that he would like to call on the minister who was his counterpart. For various reasons, the suggested time was not suitable—all sorts of cues came back to the effect that the time was not yet ripe to visit the minister. Our friend, however, persisted and forced an appointment which was reluctantly granted. Arriving a little before the hour (the American respect pattern), he waited. The hour came and passed; five minutes—ten minutes—fifteen minutes. At this point he suggested to the secretary that perhaps the minister did not know he was waiting in the outer office. This gave him the feeling he had done something concrete, and also helped to overcome the great anxiety that was stirring inside him. Twenty minutes—twenty-five minutes—thirty minutes—forty-five minutes (the insult period)!
He jumped up and told the secretary that he had been "cooling his heels" in an outer office for forty-five minutes and he was "sick and tired" of this type of treatment. This message was relayed to the minister, who said, in effect, "Let him cool his heels." The attaché's stay in the country was not a happy one.
The principal source of misunderstanding lay in the fact that in the country in question the five-minute-delay interval was not significant. Forty-five minutes, on the other hand, instead of being at the tail end[3] of the waiting scale, was just barely at the beginning. To suggest to an American's secretary that perhaps her boss didn't know you were there after waiting sixty seconds would seem absurd, as would raising a storm[4] about "cooling your heels" for five minutes. Yet this is precisely the way the minister perceived the protests of the American in his outer office![5] He felt, as usual, that Americans were being totally unreasonable.
Throughout this unfortunate episode the attaché was acting according to the way he had been brought up. At home in the United States his responses would have been normal ones and his behavior legitimate. Yet even if he had been told before he left home that this sort of thing would happen, he would have had difficulty not feeling insulted after he had been kept waiting forty-five minutes. If, on the other hand, he had been taught the details of the local time system just as he should have been taught the local spoken language, it would have been possible for him to adjust himself accordingly.
What bothers people in situations of this sort is that they don't realize they are being subjected to another form of communication, one that works part of the time with language and part of the time independently of it.[6] The fact that the message conveyed is not expressed in any formal vocabulary makes things doubly difficult, because neither party can get very explicit about what is actually taking place. Each can only say what he thinks is happening and how he feels about it. The thought of what is being communicated is what hurts.[7]