week 6 #2 Proxemics/ Chronemics

Proxemics identified the study of the structuring of person space- the invisible boundary individuals draw around themselves. (p.117) Proxemics tells us what is to close for interaction when communicating. When a person is communicating with an individual they know a certain distant that must be kept before people begin to think of personal space. We all heard the term “can you please get out of my personal space”; proxemics proves this law that there are boundaries when interacting with people unless they boundaries change. For example, when we are interacting with their love ones of that nature, we tend to be closer and talk within peoples space rather interacting with people we do not know we keep an equal distance so the person can hear us. However, when we are to close we tend to break our boundaries that people can feel the warmness of our breath. By then we tend to try to back off without causing problems or a scene, but when the person doesn’t pick up the hint we tend to get aggravated and will tell the person off. On the contrary, proxemics plays a role in different cultures because of their culture environment. For instance, in certain cultures people are greeted with a kiss on the cheek and due to their nature if people are not used to that we will feel that their in our personal space in will react negative if we don’t know the culture habitat. With this we can see that time difference plays a role in how the culture views other societies.

Chronemics is the study of the use of time. (p119) What this means is that different cultures have concepts and ways of thinking of time. In this situation when people talk about time it’s either about money or being on time to things. Additionally this goes with promptness; the manipulation of time is an important dynamic in small group interactions. (p.119) For example, when we are in a professional meeting we must be on time to get things that on the agenda down in a certain time period. Clearly, then we begin to discuss marketing strategies and the person who is charge of this will have more time to talk rather than person that is not on the committee. On the other hand, cultures have different ways of dealing with time for instance when a person of superior is speaking for another country he or she gets most of the time before anybody else says anything, more or less they can use all the time and nobody will be aware because they have the right. Therefore, we set ourselves with boundaries when communicating, and we base our action the given time we are acquired.