新编跨文化交际英语教程参考答案Unit3

Unit 3

Cultural Diversity

Reading I

Different Lands, Different Friendships

Comprehension questions

1. Why is it comparatively easy to make friends in the United States?

Because few Americans stay put for a lifetime. With each move, forming new friendship becomes a necessity and part of their new life.

2. Do people from different countries usually have different expectations about what

constitutes friendship and how it comes into being?

Yes. The difficulty when strangers from two countries meet is their different expectations about what constitutes friendship and how it comes into being.

3. How is friendship in America different from friendship in West Europe?

In West Europe, friendship is quite sharply distinguished from other, more casual relationships, is usually more particularized and carries a heavier burden of commitment, while in America the word “friend” can be applied to a wide range of relationship and a friendship may be superficial, casual, situational or deep and enduring.

4. In what country does friendship have much to do with one’s family? And in what country does it not?

In Germany, friendship has much to do with one‘s family as friends are usually brought into the family, while in France it doesn’t as, for instance, two men may have been friends for a long time without knowing each other‘s personal life.

5. What is friendship like when it is compartmentalized?

For instance, a man may play chess with a friend for thirty years without knowing his political opinions, or he may talk politics with him for as long a time without knowing about his personal life. Different friends fill different niches in each person’s life.

6. What are friendships usually based on in England?

English friendships are based on shared activity. Activities at different stages of life may be of very different kinds. In the midst of the activity, whatever it may be, people fall into steps and find that they participate in the activity with the same easy anticipation of what each will do day by day or in some critical situation.

7. Do you think friendship shares some common elements in different cultures? If you do, what are they?

Yes. There is the recognition that friendship, in contrast with kinship, invokes freedom of choice. A friend is someone who chooses and is chosen. Related to this is the sense each friend gives the other of being a special individual, on whatever grounds this recognition is based. And between friends there is inevitably a kind of equality of give-and-take.

8. What do you think is the typical Chinese concept of friendship? Is it similar to or different from any of the Western friendships?