STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump talks regularly of deadlines. He set a deadline for Russia to end its war in Ukraine, then grew impatient and moved the deadline. He set deadlines to impose tariffs on imports from nations around the world and then saw the market reaction and moved the deadlines back. Tomorrow comes another deadline, August 1, which is when the U.S. imposes taxes on the imports from numerous countries. And this raises an intricate question. When Americans talk about deadlines, do people in countries elsewhere hear that the same way? Bhaskar Pant is executive director of MIT Professional Education and studies intercultural communication. Welcome to the program.
BHASKAR PANT: Thank you.
INSKEEP: OK, so when the president says, I got a deadline, I think I understand what that means in America, but does somebody in China hear that a little differently?
PANT: Yes, absolutely. They don't look at clock time, which is what we tend to do in the United States. They look at what is feels right time. They also look at precedent, what happened previously. They look at relationship. They look at how the announcement was made, and, in fact, whether the tone was a certain way, etc. So in other words, they look into nonverbal communication much more than just the content itself. And as I say, they're just not married to clock time because, quite frankly, they've had thousands of years of history. They've looked at time in a very different way than we do here.
INSKEEP: I wondered about that last point. China would claim to be a 5,000-year-old culture or name your millennia. That is why people would think about time differently?
PANT: Yes, absolutely, because they've seen developments, in fact, materialize over a long period of time. They also know that there's a future that will go into hopefully thousands of years, as well. So it's not something that is finite. They look at time in a circular way, that it begins. It doesn't end. It just keeps going. It's infinite. And so they have a range of time, which is much, much larger in terms of consideration of issues that they confront. It's a very different way of looking at time than we do in the Western world.
INSKEEP: And we give the example of China. I guess we could name 20 other countries, and we might find 20 other nuances on this. So does this mean when an American pounds his fist on the table and says, I want this done by tomorrow, people around the world say, we'll get around to it? I mean, they just have a different attitude?
PANT: Well, I don't know about we'll get around to it. It's like, what consequences are there? What relationships could be damaged if we didn't, in fact, abide by the deadline? But it's not dictated by the clock. That's why I said earlier that it has to feel right. And so there are additional considerations beyond clock time is what I'm saying.
INSKEEP: Is there - is this a genuine problem when you get down to trade negotiations, where presumably people in each country know who they're dealing with?
PANT: Yes, and so you're right that they have - they adjust themselves to what we call low-context cultures or individualistic cultures, such as the United States. They have to adapt to that, but because people are more fixated about deadlines, and, in fact, they even spell it out in legal agreements. They don't look at legal agreements as seriously as we do. They look at relationships much more seriously.
INSKEEP: Relationships, rather than the law. That's very interesting.
PANT: Yes, relationships versus task. We are hugely task-oriented. Our thinking is much more linear. They're just very different from that perspective. Not that they're not going to sign legal agreements, but the point is that's a guideline...
INSKEEP: Right.
PANT: ...Rather than this is make-or-break situation.
INSKEEP: Well, Bhaskar Pant, this has been awesome. I could continue this discussion, but we have a deadline to end it, sadly.
PANT: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Thank you so much.
PANT: Understand.
INSKEEP: He's at MIT.
PANT: Thanks, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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