Согласны ли вы с трактовкой приведенных ниже эпизодов? Какие черты национального характера они раскрывают? Как бы вы повели себя в таких ситуациях?

Timur has been living with the O’Connors for several months. He feels comfortable with his English and has no problems living in his host family’s house. However, when there are household chores to do, he always seems to have to study or to meet friends.

Maureen O’Connor, his American mother, is beginning to get irritated with Timur. He expects her to fix him breakfast in the morning, serve it to him and put the dishes in the dishwasher, even though she also has to hurry to work. She constantly has to remind him to pick up his dirty clothes.

Once Timur was watching TV about 6.30 p.m. when his older sister Betsy came home from work. The door shut noisily as Betsy said, “What a day!” As she kicked off her shoes and walked across the room, Timur called out “Hey, could you grab me a coke?” Betsy turned toward him and shouted angrily, “Why don’t you be responsible and do your share? Everyone works hard in this house!” Timur answered, “That’s’ women’s job! Men have better things to do then put dishes into the dishwasher!”

Student handbook

FSA FLEX, American Councils for international education. 2004.

The conflict arose due to different cultural characters, mentalities of its participants. Timur, coming from an Asia culture, where it’s normal, traditional to consider household chores to be women’s job, did not change his perception of it after coming to the US, where the system of male/female roles is different. What is normal and expected in Timur’s culture, turned out to be unacceptable in a new one. As for his American family, their mentality did not accept Timur’s way of behavior, which was taken as rude and ungrateful; while in reality the boy most likely did not mean any of it. Representatives of 2 different cultures had different perception of the same situation, and acted according to their cultural characters, which also were completely different. As the existing differences were not taken into account, this led to misunderstanding and conflict. Here we can refer to the allegory of two pairs of glasses of different color, representing various cultural characters and values: Timur had his yellow pair on, his American family - their blue ones on, and as they looked at the same white T-shirt, it was of different colors for them.

***

My best friend Alexander was in America three years ago. His American friend with his family invited Alexander to dinner at a nice restaurant. He dined well, and at the end the waiter brought the check and put it in the middle of the table. Alexander expected his friend to pick up the check, but he didn’t. Then Alexander was dumbfounded, when his friend offered to split the check three ways (Alexander, his friend and friend’s wife). Alexander expected that his friend would pay for dinner, and he didn’t expect, that friend s wife would pay for dinner too. Then American friend assured Alexander that this was most unusual in a family, but among friends, splitting the check is common. Unless it was made very clear to you that someone else is paying, or you are, you should expect to pay your share of the check. Certainly, they split the check and paid for dinner.

Source: My best friend Alexander told me. He was in America (Florida) in 2003.

In America, pick up the check and say, «Shall we split it?» is the reasonable course of action. People could also just produce your share of the check, based on what you ate and drank. You may have been justified in expecting him to pay, particularly if he selected the restaurant. But people often propose meals together without intending to pay for the other person.

If you are with friends, and someone else grabs the check and says, “Here, I’ll get this,” you might protest, but you can generally assume the other person genuinely means to pay. If you really don’t want him or her to, you can try to force a bill over, saying, “Here, at least take this.”

A frequent question is whether to simply split the check in equal shares or have each person pay for precisely what she ate. The person who says,” Let’s just split it, shall we?” should not be the one who consumed most extravagantly. So if you ordered filet mignon and insisted on champagne, you should pay more.

This exactitude horrifies foreigners, but it represents not so much stinginess on our part as our fondness for self-reliance and our idea of fairness. If you don’t owe me and I don’t owe you, we have a nice even relationship.

In Russia, when someone invite you at a nice restaurant, a café or somewhere and say,” I invite you to dinner with me at a nice restaurant. I will be waiting for you.” The other person knows that if man come and have dinner, he won’t pay for anything what he ate and drink. When the waiter brings the check, he gives it person, who offered dish. And this man should pay for dinner. In Russia, if people invite you, it means, that they will pay for everything you ate together.

So, if you don’t want that this situation will happen with you, you should acquaint with traditions, culture of the country, which you are going to visit. You should read a lot of books about culture of this country.

Приложение

TABLE 2

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14