The Differences and Similarities of Nonverbal Comm

Acknowledgment Thanks to Mrs. Zhang who has introduced me to the field of Intercultural Communication and provided me with a lot of knowledge and information about the culture of foreign countries. This leads me to a deeper study on Intercultural Communication and a closer observation to cultural elements reflected on teachers from different countries. Brief introduction to teachers I will talk about The teachers I will talk about include Bob-my oral English teacher and an American in his sixties,Olsen-my teacher in writing course and an American in his thirties, Stephen-my oral English teacher last semester and a young British man, Soledad-my Spanish teacher in her thirties, Li Chunjiang, my teacher in the Integrated English class who is maybe in his forties, and Liu Weishuang-my instructor in her twenties. Abstract As the developments of economic globalization and Chinese economy, communications between varied countries is becoming increasingly frequent and important. Although people from different countries can understand each other by having a good command of the language of the other side,there are cases where people just misunderstood each other because of ignorance in nonverbal culture of the other side. Since nonverbal communication is unavoidable, the study of nonverbal communication is necessary and emergent. This article focuses on the differences and similarities among teachers of different countries in our campus, and the reasons behind these differences and similarities. Key words: nonverbal communication; differences and similarities; teachers.

Outline of This Article I.Introduction 1.The importance of studying nonverbal communication 2.definition of nonverbal communication 3.Classification of nonverbal communication II.Body Details and reasons about differences and similarities in four areas III.Conclusion IV.References I. Introduction 1. Significance of studying Nonverbal Communication There are three reasons to explain why nonverbal behavior is a significant area of communication study. First, it is nonverbal behavior that accounts for much of the meaning we get from conversation, not words. A survey in America indicated that 93% of the meaning in a conversation was conveyed nonverbally, whereas only 7% was transmitted by words. Second, nonverbal behavior spontaneously reflects the subconsciousness. We can control our words and we may sometimes be cheated by others’ words, but nonverbal behavior tells truth. In fact, even professional liars can be detected by subtle nonverbal cues they unknowingly give. In America, there is a course named micro expression analysis in which students study people’s expressions and reason their psychologies through the changes of their expressions. And the micro expression analysis has been used in routing criminals’ psychological line of defense so that they will make a confession of their crimes. Third, nonverbal communication can not be avoided. Sometimes, we may keep silence if we do not want to say anything, but even silence can express your attitude or you thoughts. Or maybe we will refuse to participate in an activity in order to avoid interaction with others. However, in this case, we may do nothing, but we conveys a lot to others, even more than words do.. 2. Definition of nonverbal communication it involves all those nonverbal stimuli in a communication setting that are generated by both the source and his or her use of the environment and that have potential message value for the source or receiver. 3.classification of nonverbal communication In broad terms, nonverbal communication can be divided into four areas: time language, including punctuality, promptness, time orientation and so on; space language, such as body distance and body touch; body language,like posture, stance, gesture, facial expression, eye behavior, appearance; paralanguage as speed, volume, pause, silence. II.Details and reasons about similarities and differences in four areas. 1.Time language When it comes to punctuality, there is a big difference between western teachers and Chinese teachers. All my foreign teachers,like Bob,Olsen,and Stephen, always arrived at class about 5 minutes before the ring. While, most of my Chinese teachers do not care too much about punctuality and usually came into class late for about two minutes or walked into class with the ring. They seldom stepped into class before the scheduled time. It is traditionally thought that westerners put much stress on punctuality and never come ahead of time and that easterners would like to arrive ahead of time. But what I saw is quite different. Maybe this is because these westerners try to do as Chinese when they are in China while Chinese gradually forget their traditional concept of punctuality, or maybe this is because culture is changing and both Chinese and Westerners are changing their concepts of punctuality. As for time orientation, I see a big difference between teachers of different ages. Older teachers like Bob and Mr. Li, like to recall the past times. Bob preferred to talk about his wife who died tens of years before and expressed his sorrow about that and Mr. Li would like to about his college life. Teachers in their thirties more likely talk about their present life, their family and their work. For example, my Japanese teacher who gave birth to a lovely baby last year, often talk about her baby, her present economic condition, experience of shopping on line and chatting tools like Wechat, QQ, SNS. Younger teachers like Miss. Liu tend to talk about future and dream, which are closer to what we students talk about in our daily life. This difference may be due to the fact that older people have less time to expect and their present life are steady, common, with few changes to expect; people in their thirties just settle their work and life, and are at the beginning of enjoying life while younger people have a lot to expect, to complete, to settle and they are eager as well as worried about the future. Besides, I also find that westerners have a different way of organizing time compared to Chinese. There are two examples: One is that Bob have a quite detailed schedule. The time to get up, the time to meet his friends, the time to send email with his new wife and the time to have a