2005年NPR美国国家公共电台三月-European, U.S. Differences on E-Mail Etiq（在线收听） |
| The playwright George Bernard Shaw once quipped England and America are 2 nations divided by a common language. If he were writing today, he might add "divided by a common technology, E-mail." Here is Day to Day's Eric Weiner with observations on the great E-mail divide. Two distinct styles of email have emerged on either side of the Atlantic. Euromail and Amerimail. Amerimail is informal and chatty. It's likely to begin with a breezy "Hi" and end with a "bye". The chances of Amerimail containing a smiley face or an "xoxo" are disturbingly high. We Americans are reluctant to dive into the meat of an email. We feel compelled to first inform hapless recipients about our vacation on the cape which was really excellent except the jellyfish were biting and the kids caught this nasty bug, so we had to skip the whale watching trip; but about that investors' meeting in New York. Amerimail is a bundle of contradictions, rambling and yet direct, deferential yet arrogant. In other words, Amerimail is America. Euromail is stiff and cold often beginning with a formal "Deal Mr.X"and ending with a brusque "Sincerely". You won't find any mention of kids or the weather or jellyfish in Euromail. It's all business. It's also slow. Your correspondent might take days even weeks to answer a message. Euromail is also less confrontational in tone, rarely filled with the kind of over nastiness that sometimes characterizes American email disagreements. The fact is Europeans and Americans approach email in a fundamentally different way. For Europeans, email has replaced the business letter. For Americans, it has replaced the telephone. All of this can probably be explained by deep cultural differences. Americans tend to be impulsive and crave instant gratification, so we send emails rapid-fire and get antsy if we don't receive a reply quickly. Europeans tend to be more methodical and plodding. They send and reply to emails only after great deliberation. So which is better, Euromail or Amerimail? Personally I'm a convert or a defector if you like to Euromail. I realize it's not popular these days to suggest we have anything to learn from Europeans, but I'm fed up with an inbox cluttered with rambling barely cogent missives from friends and colleagues. If the alternative is a few stiffly written ,politely worded bits of Euromail, then I say :"Bring it on." Eric Weiner, NPR news. |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/NPR2005/40526.html |