Say Thank-You

To better understand how people express gratitude in normal life, anthropologist Simeon Floyd, at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands and his colleagues 【小题1】 a large, cross-cultural study covering five continents and eight languages. They included English, Italian, Polish, Russian and Lao, as well as 【小题2】 languages such as Cha’ palaa, spoken in Ecuador, Murrinh-Patha, spoken in northern Australia, and Siwu, spoken in Ghana. Both verbal and non-verbal expressions of gratitude, such as a smile or a nod, were regarded as interactions.

Floyd’s team left cameras in household and community settings and captured more than 1,500 【小题3】 of social interactions in which one person asked for something and another 【小题4】.

They found that in every culture, people fulfilled requests, but expressions of gratitude, such as saying “thanks” or nodding in 【小题5】, were remarkably rare, occurring just 5.5 percent of the time.

English and Italian speakers had slightly higher rates of gratitude expression—14.5 percent and 13.5 percent of the time, 【小题6】, but still surprisingly low considering how polite Western people think they are, says Floyd. “English speakers are not so 【小题7】 other people, and often prefer not to express gratitude in informal contexts,” he says.

Cha’ palaa speakers had the lowest 【小题8】 of expressed gratitude, with zero examples in 96 recorded interactions. But this starts to make sense when you learn that the language has no easy way to say “thank you”.

Also surprised by the findings was David Peterson, a linguist (语言学家) who developed the 【小题9】 language Dothraki for the TV show Game of Thrones. It too, has no word for thank you, something Peterson 【小题10】 considered to be unlikely. “I thought that you had to have a word to express gratitude,” he says.

Feeling the Dance

Lights move in time to the rhythmic beat issuing from a floor speaker as hip-hop performer Shaheem Sanchez gets ready. Sanchez, who is deaf, 【小题1】 beside the speaker and places his hand on top of it, allowing the sound waves to course through his body. His head nods as he counts the 【小题2】 , catching the rhythm. Then rising, his body moves in so perfect time to the music that dancer and music unite in a single artistic expression. In this moment, art 【小题3】 the gap between two worlds: the deaf and the hearing.

Sanchez is one of a growing number of professional dancers with full or 【小题4】 hearing loss, working to redefine what it means to experience music and, in a larger sense, communicate with others.

Antoine Hunter is another artist who is inspiring a new generation of dancers to take the 【小题5】 . As the director of the Urban Jazz Company in San Francisco, Hunter experienced the way that dance could help people better understand each other, which 【小题6】 altered his life.

But there were few opportunities for a black deaf dancer when Hunter was first finding his feet. He had to create a world in which he could perform. Now he’s sharing it with others, both in his studio and through the Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival. The event 【小题7】 the talents of deaf and hard of hearing people from around the world.

To get more people moving, Hunter ensures that his dance company is fully 【小题8】 to students of all abilities. There are interpreters for deaf and blind students, and a(n) 【小题9】 that turns sound waves into vibrations (震动). These vibrations travel across the floor so dancers can feel the music in their feet.

All around the world, deaf dancers are turning in 【小题10】 performances. Digital media is not only making these performances more visible, but also providing deaf dancers more opportunities to show off their talents. Artists like Sanchez upload performances to online platforms, where they get thousands of views. This allows deaf artists to express themselves to a larger audience.