Communicative Functions and Cultural Differences of Body Language in Chinese and English Cultures 中英体态语的交际功能及其文化异同文档.doc

Communicative Functions and Cultural Differences of Body Language in Chinese and English Cultures Name : Supervisor : Major: Acknowledgement First and foremost, I would like to avail myself of the opportunity to express my gratitude to my tutor, who has taken her precious time off from her tight schedule, reading my thesis carefully and offering me constant encouragement, valuable suggestions and enlightening instructions, which contribute to the completion of my thesis. I would also like to acknowledge my indebtedness to all the instructors who have contributed their time, thoughts, skills and encouragement to this thesis. I am also grateful to all the classmates and friends who have given me generous support and helpful advice in the past few years. Finally, I wish to devote this paper to my beloved family, who have given my life and love, and have been supporting me. Abstract With the development of the globalization, the cross-culture communication becomes more and more frequent. As we all know, the communication of human beings includes verbal communication and nonverbal communication. The nonverbal communication, such as body language, facial expressions, touching and so on, plays an important role in the cross-culture communication. Because of the cultural differences, one body language may refer to different meanings in different cultures. It will be helpful to have better communication with different people if we are familiar with the meaning of body language in different cultures. For this aim, the author of this paper studies the communicative functions and the cultural differences of body language in Chinese and English cultures. First, the author points out the relations between the culture and the language. Then, the author analyzes the differences and the forming reasons of the body language in Chinese and English cultures. On this basis, the author illustrates the importance of the body language in daily communication. In order to improve