You are invited to a party. The invitation says the party starts at 20:00. What time will you arrive?
Your answer to this question has a lot to do with your culture. Some of you will have said 20:00 exactly, because that is when the part stats. Others will have said 19:45, because it is polite to be early. Others will have said 20:30โฆ or 21:00โฆ or later because it is awkward to arrive too early.
Your answer to my question is connected to how your culture understands time: the direction of time; the use time; punctuality; and more
So today I want to look at the cultural meanings of time, highlight some common cultural misunderstandings that will be relevant for any of you living/studying/or working internationally, and do all of this while introducing new English vocabulary and practicing your English listening comprehension.
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Vocabulary
- punctuality (n): the quality of arriving or doing things at the scheduled time
- In Japan, punctuality is extremely important, especially in business settings.
- linear (adj): relating to or arranged in a straight line; sequential
- Most Western cultures have a linear view of time, focusing on past, present, and future.
- cyclical (adj): occurring in repeated cycles; circular in pattern
- Many traditional societies see time as cyclical, like the changing of the seasons.
- schedule (n): a plan that lists activities or events and the times they will happen
- I checked my schedule to see if I was free for the meeting at 3pm.
- multitasking (n): the practice of doing several tasks at the same time
- She is good at multitasking, often answering emails while attending meetings.
- -oriented (suffix): focused on or directed toward a particular goal, time, or attitude
- The United States is often described as a future-oriented society.
- misunderstanding (n): a situation in which something is interpreted or understood incorrectly
- There was a misunderstanding about the meeting time, so half the team arrived late.
Time as a Construct
What exactly is time?
This is not an easy question to answer. Time has been theorized by scientists including Einstein and Newton. It has been debated by philosophers who like to discuss whether the past and future actually exist.
But for most of you listening, time is just [00:04:00] seconds, minutes, hours. It’s something we measure with clocks or with our watch and with our calendars.
Time is so much more than this, though. It’s not a fixed universal system.
I just finished listening to the audiobook of the novel “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir, which has recently become a very successful Hollywood movie. I’ll try not to spoil the plot, but in the story the human character meets an alien species and they don’t experience time in the same way.
They have to find a common time. One minute is 25 seconds in the Aliens time system. One Earth Day is equivalent to 4 days 5,100 seconds in the alien system.
So these characters have to come to some kind of agreement. They have to understand each other’s [00:05:00] time.
And that really just showed me, reinforced to me, that time is not a fixed thing. It’s a social construct. It’s something that we have decided.
Different cultures think about and use time differently. Project Hail Mary is an extreme example, but there are much clearer examples.
For instance, in some countries, time is treated like money. People talk about “saving time“, “wasting time“, “spending time“. Life is organized around a schedule or a deadline. And you shouldn’t be late. You should attend things on time or early.
But in other parts of the world, especially many African or Middle Eastern cultures, parts of Latin America as well, time is so much more flexible. People tend to prioritize their relationships or their experiences more than the [00:06:00] schedule.
So in these cultures, being on time is less important than maybe it is in parts of Europe or North America.
There is a big contrast here.
In some cultures, time is something you control and manage. In other cultures, time is something you experience and share.
Three Time Models
According to the cultural researcher Richard D. Lewis, there are three main ways humans understand time.
These are “linear time”, “cyclical time“, and “procedural time“.
The word linear is used to describe something that travels in a straight line from a starting point to the end without repeating or going backwards. Think of a straight line.
The word cyclical describes something that moves in a circle like a year with four seasons. The seasons are cyclical.
And procedural refers to a [00:07:00] method or set of rules.
You might be able to guess the meanings of linear, cyclical, maybe procedural time from these simple definitions, but I’ll explain further in any case.
For the majority of you listening, you are likely most familiar with “linear time”. This is the idea that time moves in a straight line. It travels from the past through the present, and into the future. The past is gone. The present is happening now. And the future is something you can plan for and control.
Cultures that follow linear time tend to focus a lot on things like planning and scheduling and progress, because time is something you can organize and manage.
In many Western countries, you’ll hear phrases like, “time is money” or “don’t waste time” because we see time as something moving forward that we have a limited amount of.
[00:08:00] “Cyclical time” is a very different idea. Instead of a straight line, time is seen as a circle.
Think about nature. Day turns into night, which then turns into day again, which turns into night again, and then day. The cycle continues. Or spring becomes summer, then autumn, then winter, then spring again. Things repeat.
In cyclical time cultures, time doesn’t really have a beginning or end. It just, kind of, keeps moving in cycles. This way of thinking can be seen in cultures perhaps that were influenced by religions like Hinduism or Buddhism.
There’s an interesting linguistic example. In Hindi, the word “kal” can mean both “yesterday” and “tomorrow“. Like tomorrow is one day in the future, and yesterday is one day in the past.
In a [00:09:00] linear time perspective, “yesterday” and “tomorrow” are very different things. But if you see time as repeating, they are less different. They are just one day away from where you currently are.
And the third concept of time is called “procedural time”. This is not particularly common in highly developed places, but is still found in indigenous groups like Aboriginal Australians.
In procedural time, you can’t measure time or plan for it. It doesn’t travel in a line or a circle. Instead, time is understood through events and actions. Time only exists when things happen.
This probably sounds really confusing, but maybe some examples will help. If I asked you,“when is summer?”, what would you answer?
People in a linear culture might answer July and [00:10:00] August ( if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere). We say July and August, ’cause that’s what it is on the schedule. We can plan for it.
People in a cyclical culture might say after spring, before autumn.
But people in a procedural culture would say something like, “after the rain stops” or “when a specific flower blooms”, or “when the river is dry”. Procedural time is in response to real events, real things, not ideas.
July and spring are just ideas. Months and seasons are words and concepts. They’re not real things. You can’t touch July. You can’t touch spring. But you can touch rain, you can smell flowers, you can feel or see or experience, and so that’s procedural time.
Time is measured in response to real events that are happening. Something [00:11:00] happens after something else.
Clock vs Event Time
Okay, let’s move on from these theories of time and instead think about how people use time to organize their days.
One of the biggest differences between cultures is something called “clock time” versus “event time”.
Clock time is what many of you will be used to. It means that everything is organized according to schedules. If a meeting starts at 9:00 AM it starts at 9:00 AM. Not 9:05, not 9:10, exactly 9:00 AM.
Time is divided into minutes and hours, and each activity has a place in the day. This approach is common in many Western countries and also in Japan, where punctuality is taken very seriously.
Things happen at a fixed time, and if the event or the meeting or the bus is late, it’s seems as unprofessional or disorganized.
Now think about [00:12:00] event time. In event time cultures, schedules tend to be more flexible. A meeting or a party will start when everyone is ready, not at a fixed time. So it’s based on the event, not on the clock.
I guess activities begin and end more naturally depending on the situation. This is common in parts of Asia, parts of Africa, parts of Latin America.
“Clock time” versus “event time” is one of the main reasons why some people seem late or early, or things go off schedule in international meetings and events.
Time Orientation Focus
Another important way in which cultures differ is something called “time orientation”. Time orientation refers to which part of time a culture likes to focus on: the past, the present, or the future.
In past-oriented cultures, people [00:13:00] place a strong value on their traditions. They think a lot about history, and they follow established ways of doing things. Follow your customs, follow your traditions.
Some people describe the UK as a past-oriented culture or maybe China
Present-oriented cultures focus on now. Rather than thinking too much about the past or planning too much for the future, people focus on their immediate needs and their current experiences. People say some parts of Latin America and Africa are present-oriented cultures.
And future-oriented cultures are focused on their goals, planning and progress. The United States is the classic example.
People spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to achieve in the future, how to organize their lives, and how to improve their future.
Monochronic vs Polychronic
The anthropologist Edward T. Hall introduced another useful way of distinguishing [00:14:00] between cultures.
” Monochronic” and “polychronic” time. Monochronic and polychronic sound confusing, but if you look at the parts of the word the meaning is clear.
Chronic is derived from the Greek “kronos” and means “related to time”. While “mono” and “poly” are prefixes, meaning one and many respectively.
In monochronic time, “mono” means one. So this way of thinking is all about doing one thing at a time. People in monochronic cultures follow a schedule and plan their day carefully.
You do one task after another. One thing at a time. Countries like Germany and the United States are examples, and Japan as well is strongly monochronic, especially in business. With monochronic time, workplaces will focus on productivity and [00:15:00] punctuality and finishing your work before you start the next project.
Polychronic cultures are the opposite. “Poly” means many, so people are comfortable doing multiple things at the same time. Multitasking is very common in polychronic cultures. People do multiple tasks at the same time.
Time is more flexible and less predictable. Events can be rescheduled, meetings can be changed, and there’s a lot more group involvement.
When Time Cultures Clash
So now that we’ve looked at lots of different ways of understanding time, what happens when these different understandings, these different time systems, meet?
Imagine you’re invited to a party that starts at 7:00 PM. What time would you arrive?
Well, I’m British. I come from quite a punctual, schedule focused culture. I would probably arrive at 6:55 and wait outside. And then knock on the door exactly at 7:00 [00:16:00] PM.
But if you come from a culture with a different understanding of time, you might not arrive until 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM or later.
And depending on where the host is from, the host of the party, they might be expecting the party to start exactly at 7:00 PM or start much later.
Tokyo Sushi Story
I actually have a great example of when different time cultures clash.
When I lived in Tokyo a few years ago, a Japanese friend invited me and two other friends to eat sushi together. My two friends were from Fiji in the Pacific and the Ivory Coast in Africa.
We agreed to meet at 5:00 PM at a train station near where we lived. I turned up at the train station at 4:50PM and met my Japanese friend at exactly 5:00 PM. We sat outside the station waiting.
About 45 minutes later, so 45 [00:17:00] minutes late, my Fijian friend joined. By the time it got to 6:00 PM we hadn’t heard from the friend from Ivory Coast, so we went to eat sushi, and then we went to a local bar where we had actually all met each other in the past.
At 9:00 PM, the friend from the Ivory Coast finally arrived.
I was focused on the schedule and my Japanese friend were focused on the schedule. 5:00 PM was the time that we were going to meet, and I organized my day around reaching the station at 5:00 PM. So did my Japanese friend.
But my friends from Fiji and the Ivory Coast had events in their day that they had organized around. It’s just a different perspective on time.
In countries like Japan, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, being on time is important. In fact, arriving exactly on time can sometimes feel like you are late. Many people including me, aim to arrive [00:18:00] early.
From my perspective being punctual shows respect. What if the event starts exactly on time?
But in other parts of the world, Fiji or the Ivory Coast, or perhaps Brazil, India, time tends to be a bit more flexible. Arriving late might be normal and not considered rude. In some cases, arriving too early can be rude and arriving too early can be awkward.
This same behavior, “being late“, can have completely different meanings depending on the culture.
In monochronic cultures waiting is sometimes seen as a problem. If you have to wait for someone, for a meeting to start, or for an event to begin, it feels like you’re losing time.
But in polychronic cultures, waiting tends to be a bit more accepted. Waiting can also be connected to your status. The more important or the more powerful you are, the more you might keep other people waiting.
So it’s [00:19:00] not always negative, it can just have different social meanings.
Why People Are Late?
The title of this podcast episode is probably something like, “Why are Some People Always Late?” I’ve not decided yet. It’s likely this title.
So let me try to answer that question.
If I invited you to a party at 8:00 PM and you turned up exactly at 8:00 or earlier, you are probably from a culture that is more linear in how you see time and more monochronic.
In your culture, being early or on time is a way of being respectful and professional. You also likely look at the clock to schedule your day.
If you turned up to my party late, you might come from a culture that understands time in a more cyclical or event-based way. Your time may be more present-oriented or polychronic.
If you arrive late, maybe it’s not a problem in your culture. [00:20:00] Maybe it’s expected. Maybe people will understand you were doing something else instead. Your schedule is just less fixed.
Once you understand this, once you understand that different cultures have different understandings of time, it becomes much easier to be flexible and less frustrated when people behave differently.
It can also make it easier for you to communicate. If you know someone who comes from a culture that really focuses on punctuality, being on time, well then make an effort to turn up exactly at that time.
Or if you know someone comes from a culture that’s a bit more flexible, a bit less concerned about the exact time on the clock, maybe go to the party a few minutes late, rather than early like I would.
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Final Thought
This episode has tried to take a look at different cultural understandings of [00:21:00] time. We saw how different cultures understand the direction of time, how different cultures use time differently, how different cultures look at the past or the present or the future, and how all of this can create challenges and misunderstandings.
Right at the beginning of the episode, I asked you a question.
You are invited to a party. The invitation says the party starts at 8:00 PM. What time will you arrive?
I want to know your answer. And maybe what would the average person from your culture or your country do? Would you arrive at 8:00 PM? 7:45PM? 9:00 PM? And what do you think that says about your culture?
But what do you think?
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