研究生公共英语教材阅读B第3、4、10、11、14课文原文及翻译 

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 he 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. It is a remarkably persistent pattern, even in modern India, where public transportation reserves a separate space for women. For example, Chandigarh is a modern Indian city designed by a French architect. The apartments were built according to European concepts, but the Indians living there found certain aspects inconsistent with their previous use of living space. Ruth Freed, an anthropologist who worked in India, found that Indian families living in Chandigarh modified their apartments by using curtains to separate

the men’s and women’s spaces. The families also continued to eat in the kitchen, a traditional pattern, and the living/dining room was only used when Western guests were present. Traditional Indian village living takes place in an area surrounded by a wall. The courtyard gives privacy to each residence group. Chandigarh apartments, however, were built with large windows, reflecting the European value of light and sun, so many Chandigarh families pasted paper over the windows to recreate the privacy of the traditional courtyard. Freed suggests that these traditional Indian patterns may represent an adaptation to a densely populated environment. 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.

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.

7. In some cultures a significant aspect of spatial perception is shown by the amount of ―personal space‖ people need between themselves and others to feel comfortable and not crowded. North Americans, for instance, seem to require about four feet of space between themselves and the people near them to feel comfortable. On the other hand, people from Arab countries and Latin America feel comfortable when they are close to each other. People from different cultures, therefore, may unconsciously infringe on each other’s sense of space. Thus just as different perceptions of time may create

cultural conflicts, so too may different perceptions of space.

1. 不同的文化对空间有着不同的感觉。西方许多国家对空间的意识是基于对物体在空间的感觉，而不是对空间本身的感觉。西方人对形状和维度的感觉，就是空间是一种光线、 颜色、视觉和触觉的领域。本杰明?沃尔夫在他的经典著作《语言、思维和现实》中，就用下面的解释来说明西方人为什么会以这种方式来感觉空间。西方的思维和语言主要源于以拉 丁语为母语的古罗马文化，而这是一种基于实际和经验的体系。一般来说，西方文化已经采 用古罗马人的思维模式，把客观“实体”视为主观或者内在经验的基础。一直到这种在知性上

不成熟的古罗马文化受到希腊文化抽象思维的影响的时候，拉丁语才发展出一套意义重大的 词汇—抽象的非空间术语。但是空间意识和具体化的古罗马—拉丁成分已经在西方思维和语言模式中保存了下来，尽管也继承了希腊人的抽象思维和表达能力。

2. 然而，有些文化语言系统朝着相反的方向发展，就是从一套抽象、主观的词汇发展到一 套更为具体的词汇。例如，沃尔夫告诉我们，在霍皮语中，“心”这个字，是一个具体的术语， 可它是在先有了“思维”和“记忆”这种抽象术语之后才形成的。同样地，尽管在西方人，特别 是美国人看来，客观的、有形的“实体”一定要先于主观的或者内在经验，但实际上，许多亚洲和非欧洲文化把内在经验看成是对有形的实体感觉的基础。因此，虽然美国人被教导在空 间中感知物体的排列和做出反应，会认为除非空间中充满物体，否则就是“被浪费了”，而日 本人却被训练为对空间本身赋予意义，对“空旷”的空间赋予价值。例如，在许多日本艺术中， 像绘画、园林设计、插花艺术等，布局的主要特性是日本人称之为美的精髓的“素雅(shibumi)”。一幅画包罗万象，而不是留有空间，这体现不出美的精髓。日本艺人常常画笔一刷，就呈现 出一片天空；或者用一条简单的轮廓线条绘出远处的一座山峰。然而，在西方人的眼中，画 中的大片“空旷”的空间使画显得还缺了点什么东西。

3. 东西方不仅仅是在空间模式上存有差异。当我们观察西方不同文化中城市规划的时候，还体会各种各样跨文化空间的感觉。例如，在美国，城市的布局通常是沿着一个网格展开， 轴心一般是南北向和东西向。街道和建筑物按顺序编号。当然这种安排对美国人来说是完美 的。当美国人在像巴黎这样的城市漫步时，他们往往会迷路。因为巴黎的街道是从中央辐射 开来的。此外，巴黎的街道是命名的而不是按序编号的，而且常常不用经过几个街区，街名 就变换了。美国人对当地人如何能够到处行走大为疑惑，而巴黎人却显得行动自如。霍尔在 《无声的语言》一书中认为：法国城市空间布局的特点仅仅是反映法国文化特征中中央集权 的一个方面。因此巴黎是法国的中心，法国政府和教育系统高度集中。在法国人的办公室里， 最重要人物的办公桌就摆在其中央。

4. 空间文化模式的另一个方面涉及到空间的各种功能。在美国的中产阶层，特定的空间是为特定的活动而设计的。任何活动，一旦跨越其特定空间，人们立刻就会觉得不合事宜。相 比之下，在日本就不是那么回事了。墙壁可以移动，房间使用的目的白天和晚上是不一样的。 在印度，又是另一种空间使用的文化模式。印度的公共和私人场所在功能上均有优劣的概念。 在印度的城市、乡村、甚至是家庭里，某些场所因为所从事的活动和使用这些场所的人的缘 故而被认定是肮脏或者卑劣的。印度的空间是给隔离开来的，以便社会等级高的和等级低的、 男

的和女的、世俗的和神圣的活动都分隔开来进行。这种模式沿用了几千年，在印度古城挖 掘出来的考古证据就说明了这一点。即便在现代的印度，这种空间模式仍旧相当的清晰和顽 固，哪怕是在公交车上也要把妇女使用的空间隔离开来。例如，昌迪加尔是印度的一座由法 国建筑师设计的现代化城市。公寓大楼均按欧洲理念建造，但是住在那里的印度人却发现某 些方面与他们以前居住的空间模式不一致。在印度工作的人类学家鲁思?弗里德发现，居住在昌迪加尔城的许多印度家庭都改造了他们的公寓，用窗帘把男人和女人的空间隔离开来。只有自家人时，他们就仍然依照传统模式在厨房里吃饭, 而有西方客人光临时他们才启用客 厅或是饭厅。传统的印度乡村生活在一周围墙里边进行, 院子给每户人家提供了隐私的空间。 然而，昌迪加尔城的公寓大楼, 建有很多宽敞的窗户，从而折射出欧洲人对光线与阳光的重视。而许多昌迪加尔城的家庭却把窗户玻璃上糊满了纸张以便重建传统式院落的隐私空间。弗里德认为这些传统的印度模式也许反映出人们对人口密集型环境的一种适应。

5. 从整体上研究不同文化的人类学家已经察看到了时间观与空间观之间的联系。例如，正如我们所察看到的，美国人把没有活动的时间看作是“被浪费了的时间”，把没有物体的空间 看作是“被浪费了的空间”。霍皮人再一次提供了有趣的对比。在英语中，任何表示地点或者空间的词都可以单独使用，能呈现出各自的特征而无需任何参照。例如，在英语里，可以说： “这房间很大”或者“美国的北方冬天很寒冷”。我们无需表明“房间”或者“北方”与任何其他表空间或地点的词语有联系。但在霍皮语里，地点或者空间地域的词语本身不能在句子里单独 使用。霍皮人不能单独地使用“北方”这个词，他们得说“在北方”、“从北方”或者用另一种方 式给“北方”这个词加上一个方向性的后缀。同样地，霍皮语没有一个单词能够被翻译成“房 间”。霍皮语中的“房间”是词干，是意思为“房屋”，“房间”或“居室”词的一部分，但是不能单 独使用，必须加上后缀才使这个词表示“在房子里”或“从居室”。霍皮语中像“房间”、“居室”或“大厅”这些表示空洞空间的概念只有跟其他空间关联时才具有意义。霍皮人的这种空间感觉模式似乎与他们对时间的感觉模式相似。在西方文化中，各时段被认为是时间延续过程中 的独立片段，而在霍皮语中却要将各时段连结成连续统一体。

6. 人类学家不知道为什么一种文化会产生一种时空观，而另一种文化却会产生另一种时空观。空间观也许是对特定环境的适应：人口稠密的程度、耕地的多少、像海与山这样的天然 屏障的有无以及一个地区特征性陆标的多少。例如，爱斯基摩人的环境是一片辽阔的雪原， 几乎终年见不到什么陆标，于是他们的空间感就得到了极大的发展。他们得学会区分各空间 元素之间的细微差别，因为这是他们远离家园外出打猎时赖以生存的技能。

7. 某些文化对于空间感觉的一个重要方面就体现于人们所需的彼此感觉舒适却又不觉拥挤 的“私人空间”。例如，北美人彼此感觉舒适所需的空间距离大约是４英尺。而阿拉伯人和拉美人反而是彼此靠近才会感觉舒服。因此，不同文化的人可能会无意间侵犯别人的空间感。 正如不同的时间观可能会造成文化上的冲突，不同的空间观也会引发同样的问题。