朗文英语听说教程三(2)

expression can have different meanings, right? Take a smile, for example, what does it mean?... Uh, Mike?

STUDENT 2: Uh .. . uh, agreement, I guess. \TEACHER: OK. Yes, it could mean \also mean \trying to make you feel comfortable,\or maybe, uh, \point is, the situation or the relationship between the people involved gives a particular meaning to the smile. All right. Now although today I want to focus on physical nonverbal communication—uh, often called body language or kinesics, that's K-I-N-E-S-I-C-S—you should know that there are other types of nonverbal communication. G. W. Porter, for example, divides nonverbal communication into four categories, which I'd like to look at just briefly. There's the Physical N.V.C. I just mentioned. That includes facial expressions, tone of voice, sense of touch and smell, and body movement. Secondly, there's Aesthetic N.V.C.— that's A-E-S-T-H-E-T-I-C, meaning related to beauty. And Aesthetic N.V.C. takes place through creative expressions, like playing instrumental music, dancing or painting, sculpting. And we certainly know that we can communicate with people through creative expressions like these.

Now, next is Signs, which is a mechanical type of com-munication. Now, it includes the use of things like signal flags used at airports, the twenty-one gun salute used in the military, and police sirens used on public streets. And last is Symbolic N.V.C, which uses religious, status, or ego-build-ing symbols—you know, things like wearing crosses in the Christian religion or special pins to show membership in a particular club, like a fraternity. So, again, you've got physi-cal, aesthetic, signs, and symbolic nonverbal communication. Got that?

But let's go back to Porter's first type, Physical N.V.C, or body language .... Um, it's divided into two main types— static features and dynamic features. Static features include distance, orientation, posture, and physical contact. Let's look at distance first. The distance a person stands from another often sends a nonverbal message. In some situations it's a sign of attraction; in others it's a reflection of social sta-tus; in others it shows the intensity of the exchange. Distance has to do with personal space and what an invasion of someone's personal space signifies, what it means. Britney? STUDENT 1: Yes, what is personal space exactly? Could you explain it a bit more, please?

TEACHER: Ah, well, good question. Well, it's kind of like a bubble each of us places between ourself and others—an invisible border or limit. Now this affects how close we stand to others, where we sit in a room, at a meeting, and uh, so on—things which affect how comfortable we feel. Generally speaking, the higher your status, the more space you'll have and the easier it'll be to invade other people's space. Uh, I hope that's clearer.

Now, orientation's different from distance and has to do with the way we position ourselves in relation to others. For example, people cooperating are likely to sit side-by-side, while competitors are likely to sit face to face ... right? And posture's different again; it concerns whether we're slouched

or we're standing or sitting straight. You know: Are our legs crossed, our arms folded? That sort of tiling. These convey the level of formality or relaxation in the same situation. Then comes physical contact, and here we're talking about touching, holding, hugging, and so on. These convey or show messages—particularly how intimate we feel—and their meaning can vary a lot between cultures. Hands touching in one culture may be an act of great intimacy, whereas in another . . . simply a sign of friendship. The fact is, though, that touching and physical intimacy can send a more direct yet subtle message than dozens of words. Be careful though: This kind of communication can easily invade someone's personal space, and that can .. . lead, uh . . . cause mistrust, lead to problems—and actually shut down the communication.

So those are Porter's static features. Let's now look at his dynamic features. These are basically things like facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, and uh, body movements. Facial expressions, then .. . these continually change during a conversation, and participants constantly watch and respond to each others' expressions. These expressions usually communicate the emotions and attitude of the speaker. Take eyes for example; they. . . . Well, let me ask you, what do you think they reveal? Yes? STUDENT 2: Um ... happiness and sadness? TEACHER: Fear? Fright? STUDENT 3: Friendliness.

TEACHER: Yes, some of these things are revealed in the eyes, happiness and sadness yes . . . also fright and surprise. Think about it. Think about how your eyes respond when you hear something surprising, or frightening, or sad, or cheerful. Now, the lower face—the mouth and jaw—also reveals happiness or surprise, especially the smile, as we've said. The upper face, eyebrows, and forehead can also reveal anger. In some communication studies, it's been estimated that facial expressions provide 55 percent of the meaning of a message; vocal cues, such as pitch and volume, provide 38 percent; and verbal cues only 7 percent. So, a person's expressions seem to be a better indicator of his meaning than words, which play a minimal part.

OK, now where are we? Oh. We're looking at Porter's dynamic features of communication. Next we come to ges-tures. You know, one of the most important parts of gestur-ing, hand movements, is one of those least understood by scientists. Most are not universal, and as we all know, the same gesture can have different meanings in different coun-tries. Here in the U.S. we make a circle with our thumb and first finger and it means \\story goes that former President Richard Nixon made a huge mistake on a trip to South America when he held up both hands using this \in the audience were quite shocked! The fact is, we have to be very careful about what our bodies are saying . .. especially when in a different culture.

Now let's move on to eye contact. Eye contact is a very powerful form of nonverbal communication. One thing

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about eye contact that is generally agreed on is that someone with higher status usually maintains eye contact longer if he's talking to someone of lower status. In other words, he stares. Anything else you think a direct stare indicates? STUDENT 1: Determination . . . uh . . . openness.

TEACHER: Exactly, and it creates a feeling of trust. And looking downward?

STUDENT 1: That shows dishonesty, guilt,... uh .. .

TEACHER: Yes, it does, but also modesty, in some cases. And eyes rolled upwards suggest tiredness. I don't see any of that right now, I'm glad to say!

And the last, the fourth item on Porter's list is body move-ment. You know, it's interesting that a lot of the work on non-verbal communication has been done for corporations. They want to improve their employees' performance. So for example, if you lean forward in an interview, this suggests you're energetic, somebody prepared to make major changes. If you hold yourself at your tallest, uh, this suggests you're probably a presenter, and good at selling yourself or the organization. And with side-to-side movements, if you take up a lot of space while talking by moving your arms a lot, you're seen as a good informer and listener, so you're desirable to the company. See?

So to finish up, I'm going to list five things that differen-tiate verbal and nonverbal communication. I'd like you to note them down. First, while spoken languages differ from country to country, emotions are communicated in much the same nonverbal way throughout the world. Second, although we know a lot about the grammar of spoken language, we still don't know very much about the \of N.V.C. Third, we don't have any dictionaries for N.V.C. If you go to a foreign country and somebody makes a hand gesture you don't understand, there's no dictionary to help you. And fourth, we can ask for repetition or clarification of what somebody has said, but it's practically impossible to ask, \you repeat that smile?\or \does that facial expression mean?\We have to understand nonverbal communication the first time around. And finally, we can hide our true feelings with spoken language, but it's more difficult with N.V.C. We can't just stop ourselves from turn-ing red, or slow down our heartbeat, right? So whether we like it or not, body language can't lie—although I'll bet there are times we all wish it could.

So in conclusion then, nonverbal communication is an integral part of communication. OK, now let's quickly get into groups and talk about some of the differences I've just mentioned. This is what I want you to do. Just pull your chairs around. .. .

Unit 5 Marriage: Traditions and Trends

race for thousands of years. And, although some would say that the institution of marriage has come under attack in recent decades, marriage isn't going to disappear anytime soon. We're going to start today by looking at some defini-tions of marriage. Then, we'll consider the selection of a marriage partner, a critical decision that—you will see—has been handled very differently by different cultures. We'll see that how societies handle this question has changed in recent decades, and this change is having a strong impact on marriage in today's world.

OK. So what is marriage? This may seem like a simple question, but not every society answers it in the same way. Generally, we can describe marriage as a more or less durable union between one or more men and one or more women that is sanctioned by society. I know that's long, so let me repeat it. Marriage is a more or less durable union . . . between one or more men .. . and one or more women . . . that is sanctioned by, that is accepted by, society. All right? Now the words \of this definition because social approval is what distinguishes marriage from other relationships between adults. A second important point is that the obligations between partners—or the responsibilities that the partners have toward each other—are specified in marriages. Now what do you think might be an example of a marriage obligation? What are married people expected to do? Yes, Monica.

STUDENT 1: To take care of your marriage partner... . TEACHER: Good. Anything else?

STUDENT 2: Uh ... to take care of the children. . . . TEACHER: Absolutely. Those are the main ones. So one obligation is to provide care for the children and provide them with an acceptable position in society. Now this definition of marriage says that marriage is a licensing of parenthood. OK, just what do we mean by that? A licensing of parenthood means it allows people to become parents. Now in most societies, the key has traditionally been having acceptable social fatherhood. This is called \fatherhood\because traditionally the father is supposed to be responsible for ensuring the, uh . . . the social development of the child. Some people say, though, that this task has more often fallen to the mother. In addition, nowadays, some people prefer to use a term such as \parenthood\and do away with the gender bias of the traditional term. ... I, I see a question. Go ahead.

STUDENT 3: I'm a little confused by what you mean by social fatherhood or social parenthood. Could you explain more about that?

TEACHER: Sure. How about an example? Maybe that would make the idea clearer. In many countries, children can

TEACHER: Good afternoon, class. Today I'd like to talk be adopted. Now in those cases, the adoptive parents are not about a subject which is probably going to be very important the actual birth mother and father. in your future, for many of you at least—marriage. Marriage,

STUDENT 3: OK, so the people who adopt the child as you probably know, has been with the human

become the social mother and social father.

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TEACHER: Exactly. So if you remember that the social mother or father isn't necessarily the birth mother or father, you'll have the idea. STUDENT 3: OK.

TEACHER: All right. So those are a couple of ideas about marriage and how marriage can be defined. Now let's move on to take a look at how marriage partners are selected. The first ideas that are important are exogamy and endogamy. Exogamy. That's E-X-O-G-A-M-Y. And endogamy is spelled E-N-D-O-G-A-M-Y. Do you have that? OK ... so exogamy is the idea that marriage should take place with someone from outside of our group and, uh . . . endogamy is the opposite . . . the idea that marriage should take place with someone inside our group.

Now this sounds quite simple, but if you think about it, any individual belongs to many different groups. For instance, we can belong to a racial group, a national group, a socioeconomic group, or a religious group, to name a few. So one idea of marriage might be that you should marry within your religious group. For instance, the parents of a Muslim child might want their child to marry another Muslim, parents of a Catholic another Catholic, and so on. What would that be? Exogamy or endogamy?

STUDENT 1: Endogamy. Uh . . . because that's inside a group. It's the same religion.

TEACHER: Right. Right. That's endogamy. However, those same parents would almost certainly demand that their child marry someone who was not a member of their immediate family. In other words, you can't marry your brother or sister. That's illegal in many societies. That's a fairly universal example of exogamy. Rules against marrying someone within one's own immediate family are thousands of years old.

If you think about your country, your culture, or your par-ents for a few minutes, you'll realize that endogamy is an extremely powerful idea in most societies. However, this concept is changing. Take my brother as an example, or I guess I should say a counter-example. What I mean is that his marriage is a good example of exogamy. He's married to a woman who is a different race and different nationality. They speak different native languages. Although our family has been understanding and supportive of his marriage, he's the only person in the entire family who has married outside of our national, cultural, and language group, so his marriage is far from the cultural norm. In many other parts of the world, the cultural norm as well is to marry within the national, racial, and linguistic group. This is interesting to think about, and I'll give you chances to discuss this later. Now let's move on to the second point . . . about how marriage partners are selected. Who chooses the marriage partner. If we look at different cultures throughout the world, the decision is made either by the family—usually the parents—or by the couple who is getting married. The first case is called an arranged marriage. In an arranged marriage, the family restricts or controls the choice of marriage partner. In extreme cases, the individuals getting married don't meet each other until the wedding ceremony itself.

Obviously, there's no dating or romance before the wedding in this situation. Now, depending where you come from, you may be very familiar with arranged marriages because they're still common in the Middle East, Africa, and ... uh, some countries in Asia. Arranged marriages are found in cultures in which the extended family is common. That is, the family is made up not only of parents and children, but also grandparents, grandchildren, and perhaps even aunts and uncles and so on. In extended families, marriage is a family affair, and individuals are expected to conform to the overall wishes of the group. In other words, the people getting married have little or no independence in terms of choosing their marriage partner.

Now, in contrast to arranged marriages, people in many places around the world have a great deal of freedom in deciding who they'll marry in what some call \mar-riages.\sion between two people is not a traditional idea. Typically, marriage has been the business of the whole family or even the whole tribe. This has been the norm throughout most of the world, and the idea that men and women could marry freely is relatively modern. In ancient societies, the tribe had to approve of the match, and the idea of a couple choosing each other freely would have been extremely shocking—and in many cases, against the law of the group. In other words, the wishes of the individual were subordinate to the wishes of the group. Even in the societies upon which modern western civilization is based, meaning the Romans and the Greeks, marrying for love was virtually unknown. The fact is, love has not been the point of marriage in much of human history. Having children and cementing ties between families, tribes, and other groups have been considered far more important. Actually, this all makes sense when you consider that marriage laws are essentially attempts to preserve the type of family unit that is valued in that culture and to protect traditional cultural values.

Now, let's fast-forward to the present. As we're all aware, the situation surrounding marriage has changed. The world has been undergoing rapid changes in the past century, and one of those changes has been a general eroding of the extended family in many parts of the world. The extended family is gradually being replaced with the smaller nuclear family, in which parents and children live separately from other members of the family. In the nuclear family, individ-ual choice is very important. The idea is that mature indi-viduals should make their own choices regarding marriage, and that love and romance are necessary conditions for a successful marriage. The couple is also expected to set up an independent household of their own. So, for better or worse, the world seems to be moving much more strongly toward freedom of choice where marriage is concerned. I think that it's interesting to speculate about the possible results of this trend. For instance, what do you think might happen where endogamy and exogamy are concerned? Do you think we may see a breakdown of endogamy? Will traditional institutions such as arranged marriages begin to erode? Do you think we'll see more interracial and international marriages? If so, how will this affect our world? Well,

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I'd like to hear what you think about these ideas, so take a look at the discussion questions 2 through 5 at the end of Chapter 6, and be prepared to discuss those next class. All right. Any questions?. .. OK. Get out your homework and let's break into groups. . ..

Unit 6 Black Holes, White Holes, and Wormholes TEACHER: Are there any questions before we begin?... No? ... This afternoon I'm going to introduce you to three mys-terious phenomena that have been puzzling astronomers since the early twentieth century—phenomena which promise to tell us a good deal about the origins of our uni-verse and the nature of space and time. I'm talking about black holes, white holes, and wormholes. Are you familiar with these? I'm sure most of you have heard of these things—maybe through movies—but if you're like most people, you probably really don't understand them very well, right? What I'd like to talk about today—in pretty simple terms—is what these things are and what evidence we have that they exist.

Let me start, then, with black holes, which is probably the most familiar term for most people. The term \hole\was first used back in 1969 by an American physicist named John Archibald Wheeler. He used it to describe the final stage in the life of very large stars. Black holes have incredi-bly strong gravitational force—so strong, in fact, that noth-ing can escape their gravity, not even light. And since no light can escape from them, and since we need light to see, we cannot see black holes,... which is precisely why we call them \holes,\

STUDENT 1: If they can't see them, how do scientists know black holes exist?

TEACHER: Excellent question. Scientists know they exist because they can see their effect on nearby objects. For example, black holes pull gases off the surface of nearby stars. Scientists are able to see these gases being sucked into the black hole. STUDENT 1:I see...

TEACHER: So . . . what causes black holes? . . . Well, to answer that question it's helpful to first consider small and medium-sized stars. In the last stage of their lives, small and medium-sized stars become what we call white dwarfs. Now, a white dwarf is a small, very hot mass which is formed when the star's gravity collapses the star. All its heat, energy, and mass are compressed into a smaller and smaller space. This makes the star hotter and gives it a stronger gravitational pull. So that's what happens with small and medium-sized stars. As I've said, though, a black hole is the final stage in the life of a very large star, and this means its gravity's much stronger. Anyone like to suggest why? Sergio?

STUDENT 2: It's larger, so it has more mass, and that makes its gravitational pull stronger.

TEACHER: Yes, Sergio; you're absolutely right. In the case of a large star, there's more mass, and therefore the gravita-tional force is stronger. And, as the gravitational force becomes stronger and stronger, the star gets smaller and smaller until all its energy and mass is compressed into one tiny point called the \—that's \that? The singularity then sucks or pulls in everything near it—even light—because its gravitational force is so strong. So, we get a black hole. In other words, the powerful gravi-tational force of a black hole is caused by an extremely large mass being forced into—drawn into--a tiny space ... the singularity. It's a bit like taking an orange and squeezing it so hard that it becomes as small as the head of a pin . . . but its weight doesn't change. When a large mass is forced into a tiny space like this, we say it's very dense. So, the tiny point called the singularity is an extremely dense object.

Now, here's an interesting question: How small does a star need to become in order to create the huge gravitational force of a black hole? Well, just consider this: We're told that if the sun were the size of a large mountain, it would need to shrink to the size of a small butterfly. Think about that—from a mountain to a small butterfly. Yet, it would still weigh the same as the original mountain. It would, as we've said, be extremely dense!

Now, most of their lives, stars remain a constant size because they have a balance of forces. On one side you've got heat—which is made because the star burns fuel, which helps push the star out. On the other side there's the effect of gravity, which pulls the star in. Heat versus gravity—see? So you get a balance. However, after billions of years, the star uses up all its fuel. Then, there's an imbalance—there's no more heat. Gravity wins the battle, and the star collapses. Now, students often ask me what it would be like to be sucked into a black hole. The truth is we can't really be sure. However, scientists have tried to imagine this event, and it doesn't sound very appealing. Let me explain. The area immediately surrounding a black hole is called the \horizon.\Once you cross this area, the event horizon, you can't go back The gravity there is so strong that you wouldn't be able to escape the black hole. The gravitational force pulling on your legs would be greater than the gravitational force pulling on your head, and the difference between the two forces would stretch you. Each and every atom of your body would be torn apart from the others and pulled toward the singularity at the black hole's center. There, they'd be squeezed until they ceased to exist. Not very nice!

OK, enough about what getting sucked into a black hole would be like. Now I'm going to move on to different types of black holes. Basically, there are two kinds of black holes: rotating and nonrotating. Let me explain the difference. If you cross the event horizon of a nonrotating black hole, it's certain you'll die. However, some scientists believe that this might not happen if you cross the event horizon of a rotating black hole. Because the hole rotates, you may be able to somehow avoid entering the singularity, and you may even be transported to another part of the universe and forced out of a white hole—although only as millions of particles prob-ably. ... Your body would have been torn apart, I'm afraid.

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Now this brings us to our second and third phenomena: white holes and wormholes . . . things we know much less about and which are far more controversial. Basically, a white hole's the opposite of a black hole. Instead of matter being pulled into it, matter is pushed out of it. The idea is that if matter falls into a black hole, it comes out of a white hole at the other end—and matter in this case includes light, by the way. Light which enters a black hole exits via a white hole. This causes that white hole to appear as a bright white object—that's where it gets its name. Now, the actual tunnel through which the matter passes—from the black hole to the white hole—is called a \by a worm. So you can see how the three phenomena are connected, right?

Now like I said, the idea of white holes and wormholes is still very uncertain. What I mean is there's no empirical evi-dence of their existence, it's all only theoretical. However, if a white hole and a black hole could be linked somehow, then whatever falls into a black hole could—in theory at least—suddenly appear out of a white hole some other place in the universe. Yes, Kristy? You have a question? STUDENT 1: Uh, yeah ... yeah, I do. TEACHER: OK . . .

STUDENT 1: I once read a science-fiction novel about peo-ple using wormholes to travel through time. Is that right? I mean, is it possible to travel through time using wormholes? TEACHER: Good question Kristy. The simple answer is . . . we don't know. You're right though; in science fiction, wormholes do allow people to travel across large amounts of space and time very quickly. If you want to understand how, just imagine an insect on a large piece of paper. It would take the insect a long time to walk across the paper, right? But if you folded the paper, the distance for the insect to cross would be much smaller, so it would cross the paper faster. Now wormholes bend space in the same way that you fold a piece of paper. This means that just as the insect never crosses most of the paper, someone traveling through a wormhole never passes through the space between the entrance and the exit. He um ... he basically takes a shortcut, not just through space—what we call the third dimen-sion—but also through time—what we call the fourth dimension. And the exit point—the white hole—may be somewhere far away, possibly in a different universe . . . uh, linked to our own universe only via the wormhole. And if the exit to the wormhole is in the past, then you could travel back in time by going through. But, I repeat, this is more science fiction than reality, and many people deny the existence of wormholes. It's . . . yes?

STUDENT I: But wait a minute. I thought wormholes had been proven mathematically.

TEACHER: True, it's been proven mathematically that they could exist. But that doesn't mean they actually exist in nature. And even if, one day, white holes and wormholes were shown to exist in reality, not just in theory, there'd still be at least two problems with traveling through them. For a

start, scientists believe they wouldn't be stable. Therefore, even a small disturbance, like a person traveling through it, could cause the wormhole to collapse. In fact, some argue that, in order to travel through a wormhole, the black hole (the entry hole) and white hole (the exit hole) would have to be identical, and any small difference between them could destroy the wormhole. So that's problem number one. The second problem's this: Even if wormholes exist and are stable, chances are you'd be killed by the radiation inside them. So you see, although these are interesting concepts, right now it's difficult to know how real they are or how useful they might be to us.

All right, that's all 1 want to talk about today. I've tried to give you a simple introduction to three mysterious phe-nomena that astronomers are still trying to understand. Let me just recap some of my main points. I've said that black holes have incredibly strong gravity. That gravitational force pulls everything near a black hole into the tiny center of the hole called the singularity. When objects, including light, get squeezed into the singularity, they're destroyed. However, I made a distinction between rotating and nonrotating black holes. In the case of rotating black holes, if the object crosses the event horizon—the area just on the edge of a black hole—it may avoid the singularity and exit from a white hole in another part of the universe. This might, in theory, make time travel possible. You'll remember that a white hole is the opposite of a black hole; instead of sucking matter in, it forces matter out. And a wormhole is like a tunnel that connects the black hole and the white hole.

To wrap it up, I'll just say once again that there is evidence that black holes exist, even if we're not clear about how they work. We're much less certain, though, that white holes and wormholes exist—and if they do, what value they might be to mankind. One more thing to consider is this: If time travel is possible, then shouldn't we now be meeting people from the future? OK, that's it for today. Any questions?

Unit 7 Animal Talk

TEACHER: OK, let's get started . . . um, on today's topic of animal communication. I'm just wondering . . . how many of you have pets? Dogs, cats, birds, . . . any kind of pet. Quite a few, I see. In my case, I have a golden retriever. I'd certainly like to think that I'm able to communicate with him, but what kind of communication are we really engaging in? Actually, this is a very interesting and controversial question because, in many ways, it's difficult to compare animals and humans. Humans are one species, and there are many species of animals. And each species has its own way of communicating, and some of those forms of communication are completely different from what we use. For instance, some types of fish use electrical currents to communicate, some insects use vibrations, and bats use ultrasonic signals. And then there's the sense of smell. Even though humans try to cover natural body odors with soap and deodorant and perfume, odor is a common method of communicating for many animals.

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