Listen To This2第31课
Lesson 31
Denise: On the contrary, I don't agree at all with people who say graphology is all nonsense. I think that at last it is beginning to be taken seriously as a proper science and not as some kind of fairground entertainment.
Leo: How did you start to become interested in graphology?
Denise: I've always been fascinated by people and what they are like, and then one day I was just looking at a book about different styles of handwriting and I got to thinking that it must all mean something, because we all have a different and individual style of our own. So that's how I began.
Leo: What exactly is the connection between the way we write and the way we are?
Denise: If you think about it, our handwriting, and our doodling too, are all products of our brain—a kind of extension of ourselves on paper, so, consciously or unconsciously, we are giving a kind of 'computer printout' of what we think or feel when we write. As the brain is where our thoughts and feelings lie, there is every reason to assume that our character is transmitted into our handwriting.
Leo: Now I know that a number of European firms have used graphology to evaluate potential employees for some time now, but I believe it's catching on in America too.
Denise: I'm now running my own San Francisco-based consultancy firm, which I started a decade ago, and now over two hundred firms come to me for advice on would-be employees.
Leo: How does it work out, then? Do they show you samples of an applicant's handwriting?
Denise: Yes, most companies nowadays require their new job applicants to provide at least a one-page writing sample which is then passed over to me for interpretation.
Leo: How long does it take you to analyse a sample?
Denise: Oh, anything from three to eight hours, depending on the amount of detail required by the client.
Leo: And what can you tell from the sample you get?
Denise: A whole range of personality traits can be assessed, such as enthusiasm, ambition, imagination, diligence, sincerity, secretiveness—just about everything, in fact.
Leo: Can you give us some tell-tale clues about the way we write? I'm sure our listeners will all be dying to hear something.
Denise: OK, you just write the letter 't', not a capital but an ordinary 't', please, Leo.
Leo: All right. There you are. Now what can you tell me from that?
Denise: Mmm ... well, the 't' you've written, which is more or less straight up and crossed with a diagonal stroke from south-west to north-east, as it were, indicates an optimistic kind of character to me. Would you describe yourself in that way?
Leo: Mmm, yes, I think so. Can you describe any other kinds of 't' for the benefit of our listeners?
Denise: Yes, of course. If, for example, you had written a 't' but crossed it only with a stroke on the left of the vertical stem, which didn't even reach it in fact, that would indicate a procrastinating character, someone who puts things off until tomorrow. Inefficiency can be identified by a 't' where there are two vertical strokes in the stem, reaching up to a rounded point, and then crossed right through. Mmm, what else can I say? A thick cross on the left of the stem, tapering to a point on the right of the stem, tells me that the writer is a sarcastic kind of person. Another thing is that a very practical sort of person always crosses his 't' halfway down the letter, whereas a 't' crossed high up the stem shows a dreamer. The letters 'm' and 'n' are also indicative of personality, depending on whether they are rounded or wedge-shaped.
Leo: I see. That's most interesting.
Denise: One little success story of mine, which I must tell you about, concerns Royal Office Products of New York. They once took a big chance on my analysis of an applicant's writing. His name was Harry Benson, in fact, and he was after an executive job, and he was a person they would never have taken on otherwise ... because he came across very badly orally and in his appearance. However, on the strength of my interpretation of his writing they took him on, and now, only a few years later, he's already President of the company.
Leo: I'd like now to turn to doodling because most of us doodle away merrily, quite absentmindedly, and hear what you have to say about that.
Denise: Oh, you can tell a great deal about people from their doodles as well as their handwriting. The doodle, to my mind, is a message straight from the subconscious. The reason you are feeling the way you are is always written in your doodles.
Leo: Can you give us some indication of what you mean?
Denise: Take, for example, very angular or tangled horizontal lines ... Now, if a person when doodling does a lot of them, it is very indicative of hidden anger and frustration. Arrows, when drawn, stand for ambition, and when they are aimed in a lot of different directions, this will mean confusion in reaching goals.
Leo: Before we started the programme, I happened to be doodling on this pad here. What does that tell you about me? —that's if you can repeat it! (Laughs).
Denise: Well, let me see. You have drawn a very detailed and symmetrical design which tells me, superficially at any rate, that you are a very orderly and rather precise person—a conformist, if you like—who doesn't like chaos and has to have everything planned.
Leo: Yes, well, you're right to some extent. I've got one or two others here done by people in the studio. What can you say about them?
Denise: This one here, which has lots of little stars on it—now, they generally represent hope. And here, on this one, somebody has drawn a human eye, which is indicative of a suspicious or distrustful nature.
Leo: I'd better not tell you who is the artist, then!
Denise: Now, in this one, somebody has drawn a little human figure, which probably means they make friends very easily—and enemies too, incidentally.
Leo: Does everybody doodle?
Denise: Most people do it because they are bored, but some do it more than others. Creative people like architects or fashion designers do a great deal of aimless doodling, whereas writers, on the other hand, do very little because they have a way of expressing themselves in words. I think probably people with disabilities are the best doodlers, because their normal outlets are blocked.
Leo: What about actual writing implements, does it make any difference what you choose to write with?
Denise: Indeed, yes. If you give people a choice of writing implements—say a pencil, a felt tip or an ordinary pen—the middle-of-the-roaders will go for the ordinary pen, those who want to leave the biggest impression with the least amount of work will take the felt tip. As for pencils, I won't say it's true in every case, some pencil users aren't very honest; pencils can be erased, you see, so it's a way of leaving no traces. Criminals will almost always choose a pencil, although of course I'm not suggesting that all pencil users are criminals, of course.
Leo: Well, thank you very much, Denise. That was very interesting, and I'm sure from now on we'll all be careful not to leave our doodles lying around.
The number of adult smokers in the United States keeps going down, down, down, almost twenty percent in the past decade, according to a new survey by the American Cancer Society. Their report based on the government's statistics shows that, while more and more women are taking up the smoking habit, more than enough men are quitting to make up for it. But that news about the women troubles Dr Ervin Mann, an obstetrician at Paxtang, Pennsylvania and he decided to do something about it. If you are a pregnant woman and if you smoke cigarettes, then Dr Mann will make you an offer that he hopes you can't refuse.
"What we will do is, if you will not smoke throughout your pregnancy, then we'll offer you one hundred dollars off the obstetric bill."
"And how much is the typical bill, so how big is this discount going to be?"
"Basically the obstetric bill is one thousand two hundred dollars. So it's a little less than ten percent."
"What inspired you to try this hundred-dollar rebate?"
"We know that smoking during pregnancy results in lower birthrate incense. In other words because of smoking babies are small at birth. And that's the one thing we really know. There have been other things that've been implicated that there is increasing birth defects in smoking women."
"You should explain to me, explain to our listeners why that is of a concern to a doctor, or to a mother and her baby?"
"We know that smaller weight babies have more difficulty in thriving in an early life, so that it takes both babies who are light in weight at the time of birth, will take at least a year of good care before they will come up to the standards."
"So what are the results, does money talk in this case, or are women in your practice buying the idea?"
"Well, money partially talks. We have had seventy-five women who have completed their pregnancy who have previously smoked. And of these seventy-five women, thirty-five of them have gone without smoking during the pregnancy."
"Ah, so they're getting the hundred dollars."
"They are getting the hundred dollars back. Certainly we haven't had any low birth weight children in that group of patients."
"How do you know for sure that those thirty-five women have indeed not smoked at all? Maybe they're misleading you."
"It's all an honor system. Each time they come for an examination they reaffirm their refusal to smoke. And certainly we trust those patients and feel that they are following it. Other patients, of course, have stated they have started smoking again. So I think it's a pretty good cross section."
"And just one more thing. When, if we come back to you in a year from now, how much do you think..."
"I can improve those figures."
"Let me ask you this though, How much do you think you will be paying women to stop smoking?"
"Well, we'll probably be raising it up to two-hundred or two-hundred-fifty-dollar range, I would think."
Ervin Mann is an obstetrician at Paxtang, Pennsylvania.
Marriage Customs
Today we are going to look at the social custom of marriage from a sociological point of view. All societies make provisions for who may mate with whom. The benefits of the social recognition of marriage for children are obvious. It gives them an identity, membership of a socially recognized group and some indication of who must support them and their mother.
Now almost all societies have marriage, but there are wide variations in marriage systems. I will give three of the important areas of variation, and some details of each area. The three areas I shall deal with are: firstly, the number of mates each marriage partner may have; secondly, the locality of the marriage (that is, where do the newly married partners set up home?); and thirdly, what arrangements there are for the transfer of wealth after the marriage. Let me deal with each of these in turn.
First, how many mates? In existing human societies there are three possibilities. Most societies recognize POLYGYNY, and that's spelt P-O-L-Y-G-Y-N-Y, POLYGYNY, or the right of a man to take more than one wife. In a few societies (not in Africa) there is POLYANDRY, and that's spelt P-O-L-Y-A-N-D-R-Y, POLYANDRY, in which a woman is married to two or more men at the same time. Finally, especially in Europe and societies of European origin, there is MONOGAMY, and that's spelt M-O-N-O-G-A-M-Y, MONOGAMY. Monogamy limits one man to one wife and vice-versa.
The second area of variation is, as we have said, the locality of the marriage. Here there seem to be three possibilities: at the husband's home, at the wife's home, or in some new place. The old term for the arrangement when a wife moves to her husband's family's household is a PATRILOCAL marriage, and that's spelt P-A-T-R-I-L-O-C-A-L, PATRILOCAL; a more modern term is VIRILOCAL, and we spell that V-I-R-I-L-O-C-A-L, VIRILOCAL. The opposite, when the man moves, is termed MATRILOCAL, and we spell that M-A-T-R-I-L-O-C-A-L, MATRILOCAL, or UXORILOCAL, and that's spelt U-X-O-R-I-L-O-C-A-L, UXORILOCAL marriage. The third possibility when they set up a new household somewhere else is called NEOLOCAL marriage, and that's spelt N-E-O-L-O-C-A-L, NEOLOCAL.
The last area of variation is transfer of wealth on marriage. Here, once more, we seem to have three possibilities. Firstly we have BRIDEWEALTH, and that's spelt B-R-I-D-E-W-E-A-L-T-H, BRIDEWEALTH. In this system wealth is transferred by the husband or his relatives to the bride's family.
This, of course, is the system familiar in Africa. We should remember that the bridewealth may take the form of the husband's labour services to his father-in-law rather than giving cattle or money. In some other societies the opposite system prevails and the wife brings with her a portion or DOWRY, and that's spelt D-O-W-R-Y, DOWRY, in the form of money or other wealth such as land. This was the system of, for example, traditional European societies, and is still practised in the Irish countryside. The third possibility is for the transfer of wealth to take the form of gifts to help the young couple set up the new household. This system is associated with the neolocal type of marriage. In England, these gifts are called wedding-presents. The near kin, that is, the near relatives, of both bride and groom contribute and so do friends, neighbours and workmates. The presents customarily take the form of useful household goods, such as saucepans, tea sets or blankets.
