Being a part of intercultural communication issues, nonverbal communication also occupies an important place in our everyday life. However, what is the exact definition of nonverbal communication? According to Wenzhong Hu, nonverbal communication is a means of communication without words, including hand gesture, body gesture, facial expression, body contact and body distance. Basically, nonverbal communication consists of send-outers, receivers, culture, and environment.
The first problem comes to that how culture influences nonverbal communication. Similar to verbal communication, culture stands in an absolutely dominant place in nonverbal communication too. Culture and nonverbal communication influence each other mutually at the same time. Understanding the cultural background should be the cornerstone of running nonverbal communication smoothly. Culture and nonverbal communication are inheritances of countless generations; they are social habits decided by history and tradition, interwoven and influence every aspect of social life subconsciously. Nonverbal communication is the result of a long-time cultural acquirement.
Nonverbal communication consists of a wide range of contents and lots of scholars have tried to make catalog about it; however, at a point of view of intercultural communication, we can classify it into four catalogs in general. They are body gesture, vice language, objectifiable language, and environmental language. Body gesture includes people’s movements, hand gesture, facial expression, and body contact and so on. Vice language consists of taciturnity, switching of topics, and sounds without a specific meaning, like most of the onomatopoetic words. Objectifiability language includes decorations on body, such as jewelry, perfume, make-ups, as well as cars and furniture. Etc. Environmental language consists of spatial information, time information as well as sounds, lights, and different kinds of signs around.
The content of nonverbal communication diverse a lot, and in most circumstance, it is used with verbal communication at the same time. It is in very rare occasion to run nonverbal communication alone. By repeating, stressing, making complements, the aim of the words becomes clearer and clearer, and the effect of the communication becomes better. For example, when welcoming someone, we usually reach out our hands with a smiling face; when we feel dissatisfied with something, we wrinkle up our foreheads and shake our heads; when we are telling others that something is on the table, we point at the table itself. Nevertheless, in some occasions the content of verbal communication and nonverbal communication carries an opposite meaning. For instance, if a person is freaked out by something, he or she may pretend that he or she is at ease and says “I am OK, I am fine”, but his or her body and voice trembles all the time; if a boy breaks his arm in front of a girl, he may say “it’s nothing”, but he covers his arm with another hand tightly with his face turning pale gradually.
In the following content, I will show some specific difference in nonverbal communication among different countries which is very interesting.
1. The difference in choosing time for visiting or dating.
Usually, Chinese people feel like visiting friends on weekends or during holidays, because when they get together, they usually have dinner which takes a long time. However, people in America or Europe do not like visiting friends or being visited on holidays, they regard holidays or weekends as very private time which should be spent with families, so they usually keep company with them, having a trip or doing some cleaning at home rather than hanging out with friends. They will be very unhappy if being invited or visited.
2. The difference in smiling habit in different cultures.
People here smile a lot, even to strangers, which is seldom seen in China, and to people in Russia, they always feel Americans smile inopportune or inappropriate; on the contrary, people here always feel Russians are too cold and detached because they seldom smile. American people consider the expressions on listeners’ faces as very important response to what they are talking about, so they want to see different kinds of expressions, such as exciting, astonishing which indicate that the listener is intrigued by the conversation; however, Chinese people hide their emotion a lot, they seldom show exaggerate expressions on their faces. Although in some cultures, direct eye contact is impolite or threatening, people in the U.S. like looking directly into eyes of the listeners when they are talking, if they cannot get the eye contact, they may feel they are not attractive enough or listeners do not like them. On contrast, Chinese always avoid eye contact in order to show respect, politeness and subordinating.
3. The difference in some hand gestures.
When Chinese people make wishes, they close their hands in front of their chest, while Americans and Englishmen cross their index finger and mid finger to say “wish you good luck” or “I hope so”.
Russian people put their hand in front of their neck in order to tell they are full after dinner and cannot eat any more, which means chopping off one’s head in Chinese culture. However, in France, people raise their hands to the space between mouth and nose to indicate they are full while Canadian put their right hands up above their foreheads.
4. The difference of hand signs.
In America, raising hands above head and clapping suggests the victory and the pride of the war, which means friendship in Russia. When President George Bush visited Australia, he thumbed up at the airport to show his satisfaction about his trip which caused hug disagreement in Australia because this gesture is of wretched appearance in Australia culture. Chinese and Japanese Usually scratch their heads and make “si…” sound when they are confused. However, this gesture will never be understood by people from European countries, when they see this, they get confused themselves.
It is very interesting to read about your perception of how Americans communicate nonverbally and how this compares to people from other cultures. While there is truth to your interpretation of the meaning behind these actions, I don’t quite agree with every assessment about habits and gestures, which I suppose is indicative of the nature of communication according to the transmission model – messages are encoded and sent, then received and decoded. Even if an action is interpreted differently than was intended, the perceived meaning is legitimized through its internalization and the reaction it evokes. Another thing that is interesting to note about your discussion is how nonverbal communication generally trumps its verbal counterpart. If someone’s words directly contradict their behavior, we are generally more likely to believe the nonverbal messages we perceive rather than that which is being spoken. This therefore attests to how powerful our body language is, especially in this society where so much emphasis is placed on words.
ReplyDeleteI was fascinated to read your take on American culture and nonverbal communication. This style became very apparent to me when I lived abroad and was something I had to grapple with and learn to understand, which was sometimes more difficult than learning the language itself.
ReplyDeleteLike Steph said, not every assessment is black-and-white. People among all cultures fall on different points on the cultural values and behavior continuum. That said, it is still something to evaluate and make note of when traveling overseas and simply when interacting with people from different backgrounds--it all comes to a fold in this state of globalization.
Lastly, on a side note: I wrote a related blog entry some months ago when I was studying in Taiwan about differences in cultural norms and behavior. Perhaps you might be interested: http://crackingtheegg.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/the-essential-mental-packing-list-for-study-abroad-students-in-taiwan/
This is a great thread! I definitely agree that nonverbal communication are difficult to separate from their cultural context, especially because we do unconsciously learn to associate different meanings to nonverbal cues. I was thinking about the example you raised in Weaver's class the other day about the boy who felt a need to walk in front of the girl despite his slower pace. As Americans it would be difficult to place his actions in a context that is understandable or that we could we could relate to. It is a good example of how nonverbal cues reach us both internally and externally-but how sometimes we cannot reconcile the two due to cultural differences.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of how the internalized interpretation can trump verbal behavior and external context is the way you call someone to join you in some East Asian countries. Gesturing toward you with your palm down is the way we might call our dog in the US, but in a place like Korea, the opposite is true. We all can understand the context but yet feel offended when the nonverbal action doesn't fit out internalized idea of what it is implying.