精選書評:The Culture Map

 

The Culture Map:

Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

作者:Erin Meyer
出版社:PublicAffairs
中譯版:談判地圖,哈林文化

預估閱讀時間:02:55
文章難度: ★★★★★

 

Since acquiring and reading The Culture Map about six months ago, I have endeavored to get every student I teach to read it. It makes my life astronomically easier when students read this book. After reading these stories and understanding Erin Meyer's 8 measures for cross-culture communication, my business English students have a much clearer idea of what to expect and how to interact with me, their Texan teacher. For example, in Texas we express our emotions much more, and we frequently use "straight talk" to get our ideas across -- both concepts that my students need to learn and sometimes find pretty challenging!

《The Culture Map》這本書我入手才大約半年,讀了之後決定要向我每一位學生推薦它,因為這絕對會讓我的教學人生變得超級輕鬆。讀過書中的故事、瞭解了作者Erin Meyer的「8項文化刻度」後,我的學生更知道該如何跟我這個來自德州的英文老師互動。例如讓他們理解,我們德州人為了清楚表達意見,說話都比較直,情感也較為豐富。這是我一直試著想說,他們卻不見得能體會的。

 

Meyer's view of communication between cultures divides cultural influence on individual behavior into 8 areas -- she calls them "scales" to emphasize that each represents where a person or culture is on a set of spectrums. Her 8 scales are Communicating, Evaluating, Persuading, Leading, Deciding, Trusting, Disagreeing, and Scheduling. These scales are generally created by one or two characteristics to measure on a spectrum -- for example, “Disagreeing” is defined by whether a culture is confrontational vs. non-confrontational, or emotionally expressive vs. emotionally unexpressive.

作者對於跨文化溝通的觀點,由個人行為的層面切入,試圖尋找文化在其中的影響。他發明「8項文化刻度」評估方式,旨在顯出一個人、或一個文化在光譜上中的位置。這8個刻度分別是溝通、評估、說服、領導、決策、信任、不同意、和時程安排。這些刻度一開始是文化特徵的比較,進而演變成一種文化光譜。例如:「不同意」的這項刻度,就起源於比較兩個文化在不同意他人時,是「具衝突性或不具衝突性?」以及「強烈表達情緒或不常表達情緒?」。

 

The Culture Map is written in accessible, day-to-day English to make it as accessible as possible for its audience. It follows a typical pattern for well-organized books on practical skills, and shows key information through short personal stories, explaining methods and strategies, and numbering or bullet pointing the really important parts -- this makes the book easy to skim for core details and easy to digest. You can expect stories entirely from a business context, usually involving executives who needed to relocate to work overseas. The author also frequently references her frequent cross-cultural communication business workshops, which appear to be the backbone of her consulting work.

《The Culture Map》以日常的英語書寫而成,非常平易近人,也擁有工具書般層次分明的架構。書中總以簡短的故事解釋重要的觀念與方法。為了讓讀者能夠快速的瀏覽核心要素,並消化理解,文章重點也都會以符號或數字醒目標示。你也可以在裡面看到在商業背景下所發生的故事,例如公司主管受派海外調適的心路歷程等。另外,作者在書中也引述了許多「跨文化商業溝通工作坊」的案例,此工作坊同時也是作者諮商事業中的重心。

 

 

 


 

文/ Max Power

收錄於英語島 2018年9月號
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