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【Abstract】 This paper discusses the culture differences of body languages intercultural communication. It gives the examples of differences in facial expression, postures, eye contact, touching, hand gestures of different people from different counties in intercultural communication, points out that body language is the most important behavior of nonverbal communication, one cannot be a successful communicator if one doesn’t know the cultural difference of use of the body languages.
【Key Words】 cultural difference; body language; intercultural communication
【中圖分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】B【文章编号】1001-4128（2011）03-0008-02
Any communication process is consisted of verbal communication and nonverbal communication. “Nonverbal communication includes the nonverbal messages of body language, space, touch, time and voice etc.”［1］
Body language is the most important behavior of nonverbal communication. Some scholars think that body language is the basis of the study of all the nonverbal behaviors. “The study of body movements, or body language, is known as kinesics. Kinesics includes gestures, head movements, facial expressions, eye behaviors, and other physical displays that can be used to communicate.”［2］ It shows that nonverbal behavior is as important as language in intercultural communication. Being a successful communicator, one should not only use the languages properly, but also know the history, understand the customs of other countries and learn the nonverbal messages which exist among the various groups and community in different country of the world.
Because of culture differences, the same body languages might have different meanings and have different social functions in different cultures or decode differently by people from different countries. Examples are Arab men often greet by kissing on both cheeks. In Japan, man great by bowing, and in the United States, people shake hands; physical contact between a male and a female is a common practice of social greeting in western society, but it is a taboo in some Asian culture; when Japanese people exchange gifts, they use both hands, and it is also polite to hand objects to others with both hands for most Chinese people. But muslins never use left hand to eat or pass objects to others because they think left hand is unclean. Sometimes even a same behavior would have two opposite meaning. For example, Chinese Tibetans stretch out their tongues when meeting people, this is the way to express their politeness and respect, but when Americans doing this, they want to express despite to others. So body language may cause difficulties and misunderstanding, lead to failure in intercultural communication. Following are some examples of use some of the nonverbal messages in intercultural communication which frequently appear in the course of communication and might easily cause misunderstanding.
I Diversity of Facial Expression
Facial expressions are the most obvious and important source of nonverbal communication. In different cultures, the same facial expressions may acquire different meanings. Smiling is a good example to show the diversity of facial expression in different. “The whole world smiles, but the amount of smiling, the stimulus that produces the smile, and even what the smile is communicating often shift from culture to culture.”［3］ People tend to consider smiling as a universal cue that symbolized a happy feeling. In China, people always think smile is the symbol not only of happiness but also the mark of kindness, friendship, modesty, politeness, apology, etc. Most Chinese people often depicted a friendly and polite person as “He/She is always smiling.” In Thailand, people smile much of the time. In America, a smile also expresses happiness or friendly affirmation. However, in Japan, smiling has some other functions, to them a smile not only expresses happiness and affection but is also a way to avoid embarrassment and unpleasantness. For example, the Japanese always smile at the guests no matter how sad the situation is, in their culture, a smile is sometimes used to mask emotion or avoid answering a question. In Korean culture, too much smiling is often perceived as the sign of a shallow person.
2 Diversity of Postures
Postures are significant for politeness in different cultures. For example, in China, according to the tradition, it is regarded as proper behavior for people “to stand like a pine, sit like a clock, walk like wind and lie like a bow”. That is to say, in China, the postures of stand, sit, walk and lie are the signals to judge a person’s quality and symbols of politeness. But postures are also culture-oriented. The same postures are seen as different meaning by the peoples of different culture backgrounds. Following are diversity of use or understanding of postures in various cultures:
2.1 Postures of Reaction to Introduction
In China, when people meet in some occasions and are introduced to know each other when they are seated, people of both sides should stand up to greet each other, no matter the people are males or females. It is regarded as a rude behavior if one keeps sitting. While in English speaking countries, in this situation, it is polite that all the males should stand up except those very aged, for the females, they are allowed to keep sitting except the hostesses of the occasions. Women are only hope to stand up when they are introduced to those who are much older than themselves.
2.2 Posture of Standing
In China, slouching when meeting others such as older, higher- levered and older generation people are regarded as rude behaviors. In the United States, where being casual and friendly is valued, people never mind slouching when they are standing. For Chinese people, this kind of postures can be the signal of ignorance or despise. In many other countries, “such as Germany and Sweden, where lifestyles tend to be more formal, slouching is considered a sign of rudeness and poor manners.”［4］
2.3 Posture of Sitting
The manner in which people sit also can communicate a message. In China, falling into chairs when talking with others is regarded very rude, but for people of the United States, it is a casual way of talking with others. For Chinese people crossing one’s legs when facing others or talking with others is an impolite behavior, and as some scholars show in their research book, it is a social taboo in Korea, in Ghana and in Turkey, the posture is extremely offensive, people in Thailand never do this, because they believe that the bottoms of the feet are the lower part of the body, they should never be pointed in the direction of another person.
3 Diversity of Eye Contact
Eyes play very special and important role in communication of people, they can express the most subtle and complex meaning. As Chinese people say, “Eyes are the windows of a person’s psyche.” People are more sensitive to eye behaviors than to any other nonverbal behaviors. “The way we use eye contact not only transmits messages to others and reflects our personality but also indicates what we are thinking.” ［5］
In intercultural communication, how to look at others? How to understand the way of being looked at by the others? These are the most difficult questions to answer concerning with the use of body languages in communication. The misinterpretation of the use of eye contact can lead to serious misunderstanding. According to the scholars’ research, people in Western societies expect the person with whom they are interacting to look at them in the eyes. “They believe such contact shows interest in the other person and helps them assess the truthfulness of the other person’s words.”［6］For example, American people like to look directly at in the others eyes, for them, this is a way to show concerning and honesty to the others. The English also consider looking at people directly for a long period as a behavior of attentive listening. “People in the Middle East, especially Arabs, also consider gazing a way to show respect in communication, because they think one can see a person’s soul from the person’s eyes.” ［7］When they talk they look directly into the eyes of their communication partner for long period of time. On the contrary, direct eye contact is a taboo or an insult in many Asia cultures. For example, Chinese people don’t like to look at others directly in the eyes, especially the eyes of strangers or the opposite sex. When they meet people, they just look at others eyes for a short while and then move the eyes away, because they think this is the way to show modesty to the others. Chinese people would feel that the Americans are too aggressive and rude while American people mistake the meanings showed by the eyes of Chinese people as dishonesty, despite, absent-mined, timid or cold. And in China, according to traditional way of thinking, people even think that it is a frivolous conduct if one looks straight into the eyes of opposite sex, “but Italian men may gaze at women all the time and the women don’t feel offended.”［8］ In Japan, prolonged eye contact is considered rude, threatening, and disrespectful. Cambodians consider direct eye contact as an invasion of one’s privacy.
4 Diversity of Touching in Communication between People
“Touch is probably the most basic component of human communication. It is experienced long before we are able to see and speak.” ［9］
4.1 Touching Frequency
The firstly thing should be known about touching is that how often people touch each other? Different cultures allow different frequency in touch. In some cultures, people touch each other more often in communication than in other cultures. For example, people in the Middle East, Latin America, and south Europe touch each other in social conversation much more than people from Asia and northern Europe do.
4.2 Body Parts of Being Touched
The second sensitive question about touching is which part of people can be touched. Cultures also differ in answering this question. For example, most Chinese people don’t think it is polite to touch other people’s heads, especially the heads of males. But it is acceptable to touch the heads and faces of children, because it is regarded as the way to show the favor to them. In the United States, the head is far more likely to be touched, patting children on the head also may be a sign of endearment to them. While in Thailand and Malaysia, it is insult to touch people on the head, even the head of little child, because to them the head is sacred thing, and it is the locus and source of a person’s wisdom, and the top of the head is considered the home of the soul.
4.3 Touching Giver and Receiver
The third thing people should be cautious about is that cultures differ in their expectations about who touches whom. For instance, among Chinese, adults are quite sensitive in touching people of the opposite sex in public, even between husband and wife, but it is quite acceptable to touch the people of same sex frequently. In China, it is common to see women walking arm in arm and man hand in hand in the streets. For those who practice the Muslim religion, even hand-shaking between members of the opposite sex is strictly forbidden. “Many Euro-American, of course, have the opposite reaction, and they react negatively to same-sex touching (particularly among men) but usually do not mind opposite-sex touching.” ［10］
5 Diversity of Hand Gestures
People use all kinds of hand gestures to “talk” with each other in daily communication. But most of the hand gestures are culturally determined. Some common hand gestures have different meaning in each culture.
5.1 Gestures for Greeting
In all cultures, it is a behavior of politeness that when people meet their friends, collages, classmates, neighbors or any acquaintances, they would greet each other by saying of some words of greeting or using some nonverbal codes such as nodding, smiling, hand-waving etc, even when people meet the persons they meet every day. But in intercultural communication, when people use hand gestures in such case, it is easier for them to mistake the gestures and misunderstand the others since even the simple gesture of hand-waving, people from different culture perform and understand it differently. In China, when people meet, most of them would greet each other by raising the right arm and wave the hands to sides with the palms towards the communicating partners. This gesture might be mistaken by people from English speaking countries as a sign of saying “good-bye”. Because their gesture of greeting is to raise the right arms, wave the hands downwards with the palms towards outside, to Chinese this gesture might be a gesture of funny or joking.
5.2 Gesture for Beckoning
Another hand gesture that can easily be misunderstood is the sign people make for beckoning, it is also culturally based. People should also more cautious in learning the nonverbal codes from other cultures. In the United States, when a person wants to signal a friend to come, he or she makes the gesture with one hand, palm up, fingers more or less together and moving toward his or her body. In Thailand, to signal another person to come near, one moves the fingers back and forth with the palm down. Koreans express this same idea by cupping the hand with the palm down and drawing the fingers toward the palm. When seeing this gesture, many Americans think the other person is waving good-bye. In parts of Burma, the summoning gesture is made palm down, with the finger moving as though playing the piano.
5.3 Finger Gestures
In modern society, people tend to learn some finger gestures from other cultures to express certain meaning, most of the case they just know only one which carried by certain finger gesture. But some finger gestures signify different meanings to people from different countries. For example, in the United States, making a circle with one’s thumb and index finger while extending the others is the gesture represents of the word “OK”; in Japan and Korea it signifies “money”. “But in France it means you think someone is a “zero”, “and in Malta, heaven forbid, it’s an invitation to have homosexual sex.”［11］To the Tunisian it means “I’ll kill you.” These gestures should be very carefully used. Otherwise, it is possible that they will get into trouble.
From the above examples, we can conclude that if one wants to behave properly and politely and to be a successful communicator in intercultural communication, it is necessary for people to learn and respect the cultures of the countries or regions from which the communicating partners come.
References:
［1］ ［2］［9］［10］杜瑞清，田德新，李本現 《跨文化交际学选读》 西安交通大学出版社，2005，P193，P208, P209
［3］ ［4］Samovar, L.A., Porter, R.E., & Stefani, L.A. Communication between Cultures. Foreign Language and Research Press. Beijing, 1998. P158，P155
［5］ ［7］［8］［11］Chen, G. M., & Starosta, W. J. Foundations of Intercultural Communication， P 90, P91, P91,P93
［6］ Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter, Lisa A. Stefani, Communication Between Cultures,外语教学与研究出版社，汤姆森学习出版社，2000.8，P120)
【Key Words】 cultural difference; body language; intercultural communication
【中圖分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】B【文章编号】1001-4128（2011）03-0008-02
Any communication process is consisted of verbal communication and nonverbal communication. “Nonverbal communication includes the nonverbal messages of body language, space, touch, time and voice etc.”［1］
Body language is the most important behavior of nonverbal communication. Some scholars think that body language is the basis of the study of all the nonverbal behaviors. “The study of body movements, or body language, is known as kinesics. Kinesics includes gestures, head movements, facial expressions, eye behaviors, and other physical displays that can be used to communicate.”［2］ It shows that nonverbal behavior is as important as language in intercultural communication. Being a successful communicator, one should not only use the languages properly, but also know the history, understand the customs of other countries and learn the nonverbal messages which exist among the various groups and community in different country of the world.
Because of culture differences, the same body languages might have different meanings and have different social functions in different cultures or decode differently by people from different countries. Examples are Arab men often greet by kissing on both cheeks. In Japan, man great by bowing, and in the United States, people shake hands; physical contact between a male and a female is a common practice of social greeting in western society, but it is a taboo in some Asian culture; when Japanese people exchange gifts, they use both hands, and it is also polite to hand objects to others with both hands for most Chinese people. But muslins never use left hand to eat or pass objects to others because they think left hand is unclean. Sometimes even a same behavior would have two opposite meaning. For example, Chinese Tibetans stretch out their tongues when meeting people, this is the way to express their politeness and respect, but when Americans doing this, they want to express despite to others. So body language may cause difficulties and misunderstanding, lead to failure in intercultural communication. Following are some examples of use some of the nonverbal messages in intercultural communication which frequently appear in the course of communication and might easily cause misunderstanding.
I Diversity of Facial Expression
Facial expressions are the most obvious and important source of nonverbal communication. In different cultures, the same facial expressions may acquire different meanings. Smiling is a good example to show the diversity of facial expression in different. “The whole world smiles, but the amount of smiling, the stimulus that produces the smile, and even what the smile is communicating often shift from culture to culture.”［3］ People tend to consider smiling as a universal cue that symbolized a happy feeling. In China, people always think smile is the symbol not only of happiness but also the mark of kindness, friendship, modesty, politeness, apology, etc. Most Chinese people often depicted a friendly and polite person as “He/She is always smiling.” In Thailand, people smile much of the time. In America, a smile also expresses happiness or friendly affirmation. However, in Japan, smiling has some other functions, to them a smile not only expresses happiness and affection but is also a way to avoid embarrassment and unpleasantness. For example, the Japanese always smile at the guests no matter how sad the situation is, in their culture, a smile is sometimes used to mask emotion or avoid answering a question. In Korean culture, too much smiling is often perceived as the sign of a shallow person.
2 Diversity of Postures
Postures are significant for politeness in different cultures. For example, in China, according to the tradition, it is regarded as proper behavior for people “to stand like a pine, sit like a clock, walk like wind and lie like a bow”. That is to say, in China, the postures of stand, sit, walk and lie are the signals to judge a person’s quality and symbols of politeness. But postures are also culture-oriented. The same postures are seen as different meaning by the peoples of different culture backgrounds. Following are diversity of use or understanding of postures in various cultures:
2.1 Postures of Reaction to Introduction
In China, when people meet in some occasions and are introduced to know each other when they are seated, people of both sides should stand up to greet each other, no matter the people are males or females. It is regarded as a rude behavior if one keeps sitting. While in English speaking countries, in this situation, it is polite that all the males should stand up except those very aged, for the females, they are allowed to keep sitting except the hostesses of the occasions. Women are only hope to stand up when they are introduced to those who are much older than themselves.
2.2 Posture of Standing
In China, slouching when meeting others such as older, higher- levered and older generation people are regarded as rude behaviors. In the United States, where being casual and friendly is valued, people never mind slouching when they are standing. For Chinese people, this kind of postures can be the signal of ignorance or despise. In many other countries, “such as Germany and Sweden, where lifestyles tend to be more formal, slouching is considered a sign of rudeness and poor manners.”［4］
2.3 Posture of Sitting
The manner in which people sit also can communicate a message. In China, falling into chairs when talking with others is regarded very rude, but for people of the United States, it is a casual way of talking with others. For Chinese people crossing one’s legs when facing others or talking with others is an impolite behavior, and as some scholars show in their research book, it is a social taboo in Korea, in Ghana and in Turkey, the posture is extremely offensive, people in Thailand never do this, because they believe that the bottoms of the feet are the lower part of the body, they should never be pointed in the direction of another person.
3 Diversity of Eye Contact
Eyes play very special and important role in communication of people, they can express the most subtle and complex meaning. As Chinese people say, “Eyes are the windows of a person’s psyche.” People are more sensitive to eye behaviors than to any other nonverbal behaviors. “The way we use eye contact not only transmits messages to others and reflects our personality but also indicates what we are thinking.” ［5］
In intercultural communication, how to look at others? How to understand the way of being looked at by the others? These are the most difficult questions to answer concerning with the use of body languages in communication. The misinterpretation of the use of eye contact can lead to serious misunderstanding. According to the scholars’ research, people in Western societies expect the person with whom they are interacting to look at them in the eyes. “They believe such contact shows interest in the other person and helps them assess the truthfulness of the other person’s words.”［6］For example, American people like to look directly at in the others eyes, for them, this is a way to show concerning and honesty to the others. The English also consider looking at people directly for a long period as a behavior of attentive listening. “People in the Middle East, especially Arabs, also consider gazing a way to show respect in communication, because they think one can see a person’s soul from the person’s eyes.” ［7］When they talk they look directly into the eyes of their communication partner for long period of time. On the contrary, direct eye contact is a taboo or an insult in many Asia cultures. For example, Chinese people don’t like to look at others directly in the eyes, especially the eyes of strangers or the opposite sex. When they meet people, they just look at others eyes for a short while and then move the eyes away, because they think this is the way to show modesty to the others. Chinese people would feel that the Americans are too aggressive and rude while American people mistake the meanings showed by the eyes of Chinese people as dishonesty, despite, absent-mined, timid or cold. And in China, according to traditional way of thinking, people even think that it is a frivolous conduct if one looks straight into the eyes of opposite sex, “but Italian men may gaze at women all the time and the women don’t feel offended.”［8］ In Japan, prolonged eye contact is considered rude, threatening, and disrespectful. Cambodians consider direct eye contact as an invasion of one’s privacy.
4 Diversity of Touching in Communication between People
“Touch is probably the most basic component of human communication. It is experienced long before we are able to see and speak.” ［9］
4.1 Touching Frequency
The firstly thing should be known about touching is that how often people touch each other? Different cultures allow different frequency in touch. In some cultures, people touch each other more often in communication than in other cultures. For example, people in the Middle East, Latin America, and south Europe touch each other in social conversation much more than people from Asia and northern Europe do.
4.2 Body Parts of Being Touched
The second sensitive question about touching is which part of people can be touched. Cultures also differ in answering this question. For example, most Chinese people don’t think it is polite to touch other people’s heads, especially the heads of males. But it is acceptable to touch the heads and faces of children, because it is regarded as the way to show the favor to them. In the United States, the head is far more likely to be touched, patting children on the head also may be a sign of endearment to them. While in Thailand and Malaysia, it is insult to touch people on the head, even the head of little child, because to them the head is sacred thing, and it is the locus and source of a person’s wisdom, and the top of the head is considered the home of the soul.
4.3 Touching Giver and Receiver
The third thing people should be cautious about is that cultures differ in their expectations about who touches whom. For instance, among Chinese, adults are quite sensitive in touching people of the opposite sex in public, even between husband and wife, but it is quite acceptable to touch the people of same sex frequently. In China, it is common to see women walking arm in arm and man hand in hand in the streets. For those who practice the Muslim religion, even hand-shaking between members of the opposite sex is strictly forbidden. “Many Euro-American, of course, have the opposite reaction, and they react negatively to same-sex touching (particularly among men) but usually do not mind opposite-sex touching.” ［10］
5 Diversity of Hand Gestures
People use all kinds of hand gestures to “talk” with each other in daily communication. But most of the hand gestures are culturally determined. Some common hand gestures have different meaning in each culture.
5.1 Gestures for Greeting
In all cultures, it is a behavior of politeness that when people meet their friends, collages, classmates, neighbors or any acquaintances, they would greet each other by saying of some words of greeting or using some nonverbal codes such as nodding, smiling, hand-waving etc, even when people meet the persons they meet every day. But in intercultural communication, when people use hand gestures in such case, it is easier for them to mistake the gestures and misunderstand the others since even the simple gesture of hand-waving, people from different culture perform and understand it differently. In China, when people meet, most of them would greet each other by raising the right arm and wave the hands to sides with the palms towards the communicating partners. This gesture might be mistaken by people from English speaking countries as a sign of saying “good-bye”. Because their gesture of greeting is to raise the right arms, wave the hands downwards with the palms towards outside, to Chinese this gesture might be a gesture of funny or joking.
5.2 Gesture for Beckoning
Another hand gesture that can easily be misunderstood is the sign people make for beckoning, it is also culturally based. People should also more cautious in learning the nonverbal codes from other cultures. In the United States, when a person wants to signal a friend to come, he or she makes the gesture with one hand, palm up, fingers more or less together and moving toward his or her body. In Thailand, to signal another person to come near, one moves the fingers back and forth with the palm down. Koreans express this same idea by cupping the hand with the palm down and drawing the fingers toward the palm. When seeing this gesture, many Americans think the other person is waving good-bye. In parts of Burma, the summoning gesture is made palm down, with the finger moving as though playing the piano.
5.3 Finger Gestures
In modern society, people tend to learn some finger gestures from other cultures to express certain meaning, most of the case they just know only one which carried by certain finger gesture. But some finger gestures signify different meanings to people from different countries. For example, in the United States, making a circle with one’s thumb and index finger while extending the others is the gesture represents of the word “OK”; in Japan and Korea it signifies “money”. “But in France it means you think someone is a “zero”, “and in Malta, heaven forbid, it’s an invitation to have homosexual sex.”［11］To the Tunisian it means “I’ll kill you.” These gestures should be very carefully used. Otherwise, it is possible that they will get into trouble.
From the above examples, we can conclude that if one wants to behave properly and politely and to be a successful communicator in intercultural communication, it is necessary for people to learn and respect the cultures of the countries or regions from which the communicating partners come.
References:
［1］ ［2］［9］［10］杜瑞清，田德新，李本現 《跨文化交际学选读》 西安交通大学出版社，2005，P193，P208, P209
［3］ ［4］Samovar, L.A., Porter, R.E., & Stefani, L.A. Communication between Cultures. Foreign Language and Research Press. Beijing, 1998. P158，P155
［5］ ［7］［8］［11］Chen, G. M., & Starosta, W. J. Foundations of Intercultural Communication， P 90, P91, P91,P93
［6］ Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter, Lisa A. Stefani, Communication Between Cultures,外语教学与研究出版社，汤姆森学习出版社，2000.8，P120)