2010年高考英语北京卷 - 阅读理解C - Pacing and Pausing（节奏和停顿）

Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve’s new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn’t hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.
萨拉想和她的老朋友史蒂夫的新婚妻子贝蒂交朋友，但贝蒂似乎没什么表示。萨拉觉得贝蒂没有打断她的谈话时，贝蒂向史蒂夫抱怨说萨拉从来没有给过她说话的机会。这个问题与人们对节奏和停顿的期望有关。

Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there’s no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I’m finished or fail to take your turn when I’m finished. That’s what was happening with Betty and Sara.
谈话是一种轮流进行的游戏。当我们的习惯相似时，没有问题。但是如果我们的习惯不同，你可能在我说完之前就开始说，或者在我说完的时候你没有接上。贝蒂和莎拉就是这样。

It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.
这可能不是巧合，贝蒂是英国人，她期望在转换之间停顿长一点，而萨拉是美国人，她期望停顿短一点。贝蒂常常感到被萨拉打断，但是当她遇到来自芬兰的客人时，她自己成了打断别人的人，总是自己在说。萨拉在遇到来自拉美或以色列的发言者讲话时也很难插嘴。

The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping. And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in--and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.
通常就是这样，像节奏和停顿这样的谈话小技巧会让人们得出关于个性和能力的结论，而不是关于谈话风格。这些习惯性差异往往是危险的思维定式的基础，这些社会现象会产生非常私人的后果。例如，一位来自美国西南部的妇女到东部城市居住，从事人事工作。当人事部开会时，她会一直在寻找合适的时间插话——但始终没有找到。虽然在家乡她被认为是外向和自信，但在华盛顿她则被认为是害羞，不善与人交往。年底对她考评时，被告知要参加培训，因为她不会说话。

That’s why slight differences in conversational style --- tiny little things like microseconds of pause --- can have a great effect on one’s life. The result in this case was a judgment of psychological problems --- even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.
这就是为什么谈话风格上的细微差别——像几微秒停顿这样的小事——会对一个人的生活产生巨大影响。案例的结果是对心理问题的判断——甚至在这位女士自己的头脑中，她真的很想知道她到底有什么问题，而去报名参加自信心培训。