Lecture The Study of Intercultural Communication Key Terms

3.12 Time
Another important dimension of nonverbal communication is time. Chronemics is the way in which time affects communication. The amount of time elapsed before being considered late for an appointment varies widely from culture to culture. The Japanese are extremely prompt in meeting with someone at an appointed time. It is considered very rude to keep someone waiting even for several minutes. Many Japanese students have never been late for a class. In contrast, individuals in Latin America and the Middle East are extremely relaxed about punctuality.
The length of time for a certain type of communication may also be culturally determined. Let’s take the following example. An American was invited by officials in a Japanese advertising agency to a 10.00 a.m. meeting at their office in Tokyo. The topic was interesting, and the discussions were exciting. But after 11.00 a.m., the visitor noticed that he was the only one talking. The Japanese officials seemed to have lost any interest in the discussion. Later, he learned that the appointment had been pre-set for one hour. Because Japan is a high-context culture, this point was not explained to the visitor. It was assumed that he knew. The Japanese officials had other appointments at 11.00 a.m.
Time can be organized into technical, formal, and informal components. Scientists developed the atomic clock to be the most accurate available; time is measured by the vibration of electrons in atoms. Formal time involves the process of separating units of time into days, weeks, and months. In the United States, formal time is used for precise appointments: government hearings, court dates, job interviews. Informal time in the same culture has a more loosely defined (within limits) approximation: 8.00 can mean anywhere between 8.00 and 8.15 to 8.50. Informal time involves attitudes about punctuality within a culture.
Symbolic uses of time can be related to a person’s or culture’s orientation. In the West, time is viewed as a linear progression from the past, to the present, to the future. Other cultures do not segment events the same way. Some cultures have a reverence for past experience; they value precedent and reject the present as untested. Other cultures have a future orientation – visions of how life will be. Others find both looking backward and forward irrelevant – the present is what counts.
Language can reveal a culture’s attitudes towards time. In the United States we “spend” time; “time is money”; and we ask if we can “have some of your time?”