Abstract
"Monochronic and Polychronic Time" is an excerpt from Edward T. Hall's book The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time first published in 1983 and in which he studies the relationships between people and how time can challenge the process of communication and especially cross-cultural communication, considering the fact that the way time is perceived and thus managed varies among different cultures. Indeed, time is one of the most central differences that separate cultures and cultural ways of doing things (LeBaron, 2003). In this excerpt he introduces the idea that time is handled according to two different systems depending on whether it is a Mediterranean patterned culture or a North European patterned one, explaining that these systems (and respectively cultures) are polychronic and monochronic.
