词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Sound of Silence

Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: August 14, 2003

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- the sound of silence in American English.

RS: If you're looking for clues to people's emotions, you could listen to what they say. You could also listen to what they don't say. That's the sort of research Emily Butler does.

AA: She's working on her doctorate¹ in psychology² at Stanford University in California. Emily Butler is interested in how people regulate their emotions. She gives a classic example.

BUTLER: "You're with acquaintances and someone makes some remarks that you find highly offensive, but you certainly don't want to get in a fight about it in that circumstance, and so you say nothing, or politely smile and nod as opposed to expressing your actual annoyance³ and anger and disgust or whatever."

RS: "What message does that communicate to the person who made the remark?"

BUTLER: "What I think we're finding in our research is that it depends a lot on the other person, the person who made the remark. Some will blithely⁴ go along having completely not noticed that the other person is suppressing something, and be completely happy with a smile and a nod. Someone a little more astute⁵ or who cares more about the connection to the person who's suppressing will likely pick up that there's something lacking in that response."

RS: "How do you study these reactions?"

BUTLER: "The work that I do, as I say, comes out of the research on emotion regulation, or the different ways that we go about controlling our emotions. And I've had women, young women, come to the lab -- women who haven't met before -- and the work that I do, we're collecting physiological⁶ measures as well as videotaping them, as well as asking them a bunch of questions.

"So typically we would get them hooked up to the physiological recording⁷, show them an upsetting film so that there's some emotional content to be regulated and to talk about, and then ask them to discuss the film amongst themselves. But just prior to the conversation, we secretly ask one of the women to try to hide her emotions during the interaction. And then we compare that to a pair of women where they're just asked to speak normally."

AA: "And what did you find?"

BUTLER: "Probably our central finding that's been replicated⁸ a few times is that when one women hides her emotions during the conversation, her partner's blood pressure goes through the roof."

AA: "Oh my goodness!"

BUTLER: "Yeah, and neither of them are very happy with the interaction. They tend not to want to have anything to do with each other again. And there's also some evidence that the woman who's doing the suppressing is also showing increased blood pressure, although it's not as big an effect or as robust⁹ as in the partner."

RS: "Are they told afterwards that she was a plant [a faker]?"

BUTLER: "Yes, very definitely, because we don't want to have these poor people to go away hating each other."

AA: "So this would be like, if the other person says something like, 鈥榳asn鈥檛 that awful,' and then the other woman just sits there silently?"

BUTLER: "Well, a typical -- I mean, that's exactly how the conversations go. And so one person says 'oh, I was so horrified¹⁰, that was so upsetting.' And the other girl says, 'yeah, it was pretty bad, but I guess I've seen that kind of thing before, and I even thought it might be worse, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.' In this example, in this specific case that we're studying, it's more a lack of expected emotional content than an actual silence."

AA: "Interesting, because I know it's -- to me, when I'm met with a silence, that's really awkward ... "

RS: "It's very awkward, uncomfortable."

AA: "Your first reaction is to try to fill the void."

RS: "You think that's typically American, though, to always want to say something?"

BUTLER: "Yes, definitely. North American culture is very quick to fill silences, and some other cultural groups actually find it rude and disruptive and can't figure out how to carry on a conversation, because of this non-stop noise [laughter] and that there's no time to ponder and construct the next, you know, contribution."

RS: "What can students of English as a foreign language, someone coming into our country, learn from the kind of work you're doing?"

BUTLER: "Well certainly, if they're coming from a cultural group that's less emotionally expressive¹¹ than the North American norms, then the advice is, well, you can make life easier by being as expressive as you can, because I think our work does suggest that a typical North American partner is going to interpret lack of emotional expression in fairly negative terms."

AA: "Even if it's unintended."

BUTLER: "Exactly, because what we see -- like the women who have a suppressing partner, it's not blatant¹², they aren't saying, 'Oh, well, she wasn't showing any emotions.' But they do come away saying, 'well, it was just awkward, and she seemed kind of mean, and she made me kind of mad,' and things like that."

AA: Emily Butler is a Ph.D. candidate in the Psychology Department at Stanford University in California. And that's Wordmaster for this week.

RS: Our e-mail address is [email protected]. And you'll find our programs on the Web at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

MUSIC: "The Sound of Silence"/Simon and Garfunkel

1 doctorate   

n.(大学授予的)博士学位

参考例句：

• He hasn't enough credits to get his doctorate.他的学分不够取得博士学位。
• Where did she do her doctorate?她在哪里攻读博士？

2 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

3 annoyance   

n.恼怒，生气，烦恼

参考例句：

• Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气？
• I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。

4 blithely   

adv.欢乐地，快活地，无挂虑地

参考例句：

• They blithely carried on chatting, ignoring the customers who were waiting to be served. 他们继续开心地聊天，将等着购物的顾客们置于一边。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He blithely ignored her protests and went on talking as if all were agreed between them. 对她的抗议他毫不在意地拋诸脑后，只管继续往下说，仿彿他们之间什么都谈妥了似的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 astute   

adj.机敏的，精明的

参考例句：

• A good leader must be an astute judge of ability.一个优秀的领导人必须善于识别人的能力。
• The criminal was very astute and well matched the detective in intelligence.这个罪犯非常狡猾，足以对付侦探的机智。

6 physiological   

adj.生理学的，生理学上的

参考例句：

• He bought a physiological book.他买了一本生理学方面的书。
• Every individual has a physiological requirement for each nutrient.每个人对每种营养成分都有一种生理上的需要。

7 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

8 replicated   

复制( replicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Later outplant the seedlings in a replicated permanent test plantation. 以后苗木出圃栽植成重复的永久性试验林。
• The phage has replicated and the donor cells have lysed. 噬菌体已复制和给体细胞已发生裂解。

9 robust   

adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的

参考例句：

• She is too tall and robust.她个子太高，身体太壮。
• China wants to keep growth robust to reduce poverty and avoid job losses,AP commented.美联社评论道，中国希望保持经济强势增长，以减少贫困和失业状况。

10 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

11 expressive   

adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的

参考例句：

• Black English can be more expressive than standard English.黑人所使用的英语可能比正式英语更有表现力。
• He had a mobile,expressive,animated face.他有一张多变的，富于表情的，生动活泼的脸。

12 blatant   

adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的

参考例句：

• I cannot believe that so blatant a comedy can hoodwink anybody.我无法相信这么显眼的一出喜剧能够欺骗谁。
• His treatment of his secretary was a blatant example of managerial arrogance.他管理的傲慢作风在他对待秘书的态度上表露无遗。