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Hi guys.
I know this sounds like a homework thread, but it's not.
I have a test in English tomorrow, about communication, and one of the possible subjects is, get this:
"Is the synchronic culture relevant to China?"
Now, I don't want to know the answer to this, but can anyone please help me understand what on earth does "Synchronic Culture" mean? I tried googling it and I can't find anything that even sounds related to what I need to do.
So, if anyone could shed some light on what I need to talk about when asked this, I'd gladly appreciate it.
Thanks TL!
 
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16976 Posts
Not that it'll be any help, but you're the third result when you google "synchronic culture."
:/
Are you sure it's not just your instructor not knowing English?
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You must be terrible at using google, this took me literally 2 minutes to find. Search "synchronic culture", I see a shitty article that also keywords time, so I search "synchronic culture time" and get an article. Don't be lazy! I shouldn't be helping you but I'd rather do this than study right now.
Learn how to use google
Don't take this too personal, I'm kind of pissed off right now.
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On December 13 2010 07:23 Empyrean wrote:
Not that it'll be any help, but you're the third result when you google "synchronic culture."
:/
Are you sure it's not just your instructor not knowing English?
No, I'm not, since Google seems to push me towards synchronous cultures, which is a whole different thing.
On December 13 2010 07:24 eLiE wrote:You must be terrible at using google, this took me literally 2 minutes to find. Search "synchronic culture", I see a shitty article that also keywords time, so I search "synchronic culture time" and get an article. Don't be lazy! I shouldn't be helping you but I'd rather do this than study right now. Learn how to use googleDon't take this too personal, I'm kind of pissed off right now.
Thanks, I wasn't lazy, I have opened that article myself (i opened all on the first page of Google), but it didn't seem as helpful as I hoped for.
The main problem is that in Romanian it means something different (it's related to the theory of Synchronism, which is somewhat different than what's explained in the article).
So I'm not sure if my teacher translated it from Romanian or is referring to the conception of time in different cultures.
Also, my other issue is that this subject is completely different from the rest, which are very close related to verbal/non-verbal communication. Which makes the whole situation weirder.
But thank you for your help. I will read the article in detail any way and see what I can use.
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16976 Posts
If you want to remove a certain search term, you can just use the - function. For example, synchronic culture -synchronous. It'll remove all entries for synchronous.
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On December 13 2010 07:38 Empyrean wrote:
If you want to remove a certain search term, you can just use the - function. For example, synchronic culture -synchronous. It'll remove all entries for synchronous.
Thanks! Quite helpful.
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Oh, I just hate when teachers want to make clever questions, but simply just fail, because they are asking something almost unanswerable. I mean, answering the question in the OP adequately, would take tons of field work in China - it would actually require that you've been in China and been in contact with the many, many different aspects of Chinese society, but why the hell would you do that kind of study just to answer some random English teachers random question?!!
Unless this question actually was part of your class litterature, how on earth would you be able to answer it? Should you just make stuff up in order to produce an adequate English paper? Is that what you are expected to do? What kind of bullshit is that!
Without sufficient insight in Chinese culture it would probably just end up producing a lot of misconceptions about China. Not fair!
In those kinds of situations I just feel the urge to point out the teachers stupidity eg. by pointing out the flaws of their questions. Screw grades! Common sense and self respect is much more important.
Well, my post won't help you, but my guess is that eLiEs will
Good luck and study hard!
Btw. It's a stupidly made question. Hope you don't get it. Well, you didn't, did you? :-)
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syn·chron·ic
adj.
1. Synchronous.
2. Of or relating to the study of phenomena, such as linguistic features, or of events of a particular time, without reference to their historical context.
What dictionary.com gave me. That said..I still don't get the question =\ sorry.
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http://tesugen.com/archives/06/06/bruce-sterling-shaping-things
Had to read this book for a class recently. Can't really recommend it, but a large part of the book deals with a concept Sterling calls "synchronic society." Relevant passage: "A SYNCHRONIC SOCIETY sets high value on the human engagement with TIME." Does that sound like what your teacher is asking you to discuss? If so, I might be able to explain the concept in more depth, otherwise it's not really worth knowing about.
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On the contrary, people from a synchronic time perception usually do several things at a time. To them, time evolves in a circle and this allows many things to take place simultaneously. Time commitments are desirable rather than absolute. Plans are easily changed. Synchronic people place greater emphasis on interactions with others and promptness depends on the type of relationship.
The characteristics of a synchronic culture are multiple activities happening at a time, approximate appointments, relationships above the schedule, deductive thinking (whole and generalities first), and deadlines as fluid. Saudi Arabia, Greece, Italy, and Spain are more synchronic cultures.
People from synchronic culture can do work in parallel, and follow schedules and agendas loosely, with the main concern of the individual task being performed as a major rule.
In a synchronic culture it’s common to do several things at a time and thus the order plays only a minor role. Time levels melt into one whole regardless of past, future and present. Because tasks are executed in parallel, running late for a meeting is unproblematic because the other members don’t sit there waiting but use the time for something else.
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Never mind that! Yoon yoon hit the nail on the head.
+ Show Spoiler +I've never heard of a "synchronic" culture. Perhaps the teacher meant "syncretic" instead? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncretismI've dealt with questions about syncretic cultures in history classes, so it would make a lot more sense if that were the question. Syncretism is the reconciling of multiple beliefs, some of which may seem contradictory, into a singular culture, religion, etc. Basically it's combining many beliefs into one ideology; one group synthesizes and reinvents many ideas (perhaps including its own) to create something new. An example of Chinese political syncretism would be combining Russian communist ideas with traditional Chinese ideas about governance to create a distinctly Chinese version of communism. As for Chinese cultural syncretism, I'm not well informed enough to come up with a good example, but I'm sure you can think of instances where Chinese culture is the result of combining different ideas from China and other places. Cultural syncretism is a feature of every modern culture. My girlfriend is always telling me that "American Chinese food is totally different from REAL chinese food." I guess that makes American chinese food syncretic cuisine ^.^ There are other examples on the wikipedia page.
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On December 13 2010 10:04 yoonyoon wrote:Show nested quote +On the contrary, people from a synchronic time perception usually do several things at a time. To them, time evolves in a circle and this allows many things to take place simultaneously. Time commitments are desirable rather than absolute. Plans are easily changed. Synchronic people place greater emphasis on interactions with others and promptness depends on the type of relationship. Show nested quote +The characteristics of a synchronic culture are multiple activities happening at a time, approximate appointments, relationships above the schedule, deductive thinking (whole and generalities first), and deadlines as fluid. Saudi Arabia, Greece, Italy, and Spain are more synchronic cultures. Show nested quote +People from synchronic culture can do work in parallel, and follow schedules and agendas loosely, with the main concern of the individual task being performed as a major rule. Show nested quote +In a synchronic culture it’s common to do several things at a time and thus the order plays only a minor role. Time levels melt into one whole regardless of past, future and present. Because tasks are executed in parallel, running late for a meeting is unproblematic because the other members don’t sit there waiting but use the time for something else.
Hmm sounds like some of the excuses girls have used when standing me up.
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On December 13 2010 10:06 UltraVires wrote:Never mind that! Yoon yoon hit the nail on the head. + Show Spoiler +I've never heard of a "synchronic" culture. Perhaps the teacher meant "syncretic" instead? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncretismI've dealt with questions about syncretic cultures in history classes, so it would make a lot more sense if that were the question. Syncretism is the reconciling of multiple beliefs, some of which may seem contradictory, into a singular culture, religion, etc. Basically it's combining many beliefs into one ideology; one group synthesizes and reinvents many ideas (perhaps including its own) to create something new. An example of Chinese political syncretism would be combining Russian communist ideas with traditional Chinese ideas about governance to create a distinctly Chinese version of communism. As for Chinese cultural syncretism, I'm not well informed enough to come up with a good example, but I'm sure you can think of instances where Chinese culture is the result of combining different ideas from China and other places. Cultural syncretism is a feature of every modern culture. My girlfriend is always telling me that "American Chinese food is totally different from REAL chinese food." I guess that makes American chinese food syncretic cuisine ^.^ There are other examples on the wikipedia page.
This would be a lot easier to write an English essay on and it makes sense, but I guess the context of communication makes the original meaning the right one.
Thanks for the interesting read :3 learned a new word today.
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@ Dieoxhide: Yeah, I know. But it's the final year and I don't really wanna bother with the English exam. So far I've got nothing but 10/10 scores in English, because it was mostly grammar, semi-technical vocabulary, and such, but this new teacher seems to have higher expectations, so I just wanna get over it and focus on the "real" classes. 
@ Misillusion: thanks, that's what I started with, but it's not too much help.
@ shudmeyer: Thanks, that's what the article that eLiEs gave me was saying also. I got that notion, it's that China is more base on traditional values, and thus perceives -time- as an entity, rather than "sequential cultures", which view it as a series of alternating events.
@ yoonyoon: Thank you, this is the same as above, but explained in more detail. I needed that, thanks a lot!
@ UltraVires: Syncretism sounds an awful lot like the Romanian law of "sincronism" (Romanian term). It may be the direct translation to it. I've read into that as well, but the question doesn't make sense in this context because Syncretism would be relevant to any nation if it would apply to a wide enough period of time. So I think I'll go with the above, but if if I DO get the subject, I can simply try to ask the teacher if they are referring to this law or to the meaning above. Most teachers do give us these kind of hints, especially if it's something NOT mentioned in the course literature (and it's not).
@ Pyrrhuloxia: ROFL man, thanks for that.
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EPT
