Cultural Differences in Body Language 英语专业(毕业论文).docVIP

PAGE 2 Cultural Differences in Body Language Ⅰ. Introduction: When a Chinese converse with an American friend of the opposite sex, would it be indecent to looking at the other person? An American says, “yes”, while lowering the eyes. Dose he really mean “yes”? If two young Chinese friends of the same sex walk with their arms around each other’s shoulder or hold hands, would English-speaking people regard this as proper? These are not questions about language, but about body language, about nonverbal communication. What’s the body language? It has the definitions in both narrow and broad senses. In the narrow sense, body language includes body movement and facial expression, which can send messages. As to the broad one, it includes gesture、posture、 facial expression、 timbre of the speaker、 distance between speaker and listener, and clothes of the speaker(胡文仲 1988. 10.). In my point of view, body language should includes facial expressions, body movements, and body contact. In the social interaction, when we converse with others, we communicate by much more than words. By our expressions, gestures and other body movements, we convey messages to the other people. Body language exists in every culture, but not all body languages mean the same thing in different cultures. Different peoples have different ways of making nonverbal communication. The answers to the questions of this paper at the beginning are all no. As the global village tends to become smaller and smaller, it is more important for people to communicate across culture and language barriers, particularly to those who have verbal language barriers. In fact, body language is more important to people from other culture than it is to the native. To native-born people, the spoken word is by far the most important communicational tool. In other culture, however, the way words are spoken along with the gestures, postures and the facial expressions that accompany those words is of greater