The Difference of Nonverbal Communication between Chinese and Western Cultures

The Difference of Nonverbal Communication between

Chinese and Western Cultures

Nonverbal communication refers to any information or behavior that is expressed but does not involve the content of spoken words. It plays an important role in intercultural communication, with the functions of replacing, regulating, conveying, repeating and complementing. Actually, we usually gain more information from nonverbal communication than we do from what people really say. As we all know, nonverbal behaviors are influenced by culture and different cultures have different ways of making nonverbal communication. And with the increasing contact between China and Western, we should have a better understanding about the difference of nonverbal communication between both cultures.

The nonverbal communication covers many classes, such as time language, space language, body language, paralanguage and so on. To know more about the cultural differences, I’ll try to give a brief introduction about two aspects of body language. They are facial expression and gesture.

1. Facial Expression

Facial expression is one of the most powerful means to give information of nonverbal communication. Recently, there is a compelling drama series called Lie to me which mainly shows that your facial expressions will tell people whether you are lying or not. It is inspired by the scientific discoveries of a real-life psychologist.

So we can see from it that the human face has great communicative potential.

Facial expressions often convey information of people’s emotions. Generally speaking, it is indicated joy and amusement when people laugh in both cultures. However, some Chinese people may laugh not for something funny or laughable, but because of embarrassment. As for making apologies, the Chinese often use a smile as a display of embarrassment. However, Westerners do not accept apologies with a smile. For Westerners, making apologies with a smile conveys less apologetic intention. And Chinese cultures tend to restrict the range of facial expressions in public. People would learn to conceal their real feelings. As a result, Westerners may express their feelings and emotions more easily than Chinese do, even their negative feelings.

2. Gesture

Gestures refer to the movement of hands, or arms to complement a verbal message. Gestures are not universal, but culture-specific. It means that people in some cultures use one gesture while people in other cultures use another gesture to express the same meaning or a certain gesture may have different senses in different cultures.

As you can see, a Chinese beckons somebody to come over by extending his hand toward the person with palm facing down and all fingers crooked. When the Americans want to beckon someone to come over, they would just wave the index finger or upturn their fingers with palm facing the body. To express the same

intention, Chinese and Westerners gesture differently. Besides, there are a number of gestures which Westerners use while they are not used by the Chinese. For example, Americans would put their middle finger on top of the forefinger to wish someone good luck. This gesture is specific to Anglo-American cultures. Chinese people basically do not use this gesture.

Above all, there exist many differences between these two cultures in nonverbal communication. And I just explained a little about it. Next, I want to say something on this course. To be honest, I didn’t expect this course to be English teaching. It surprised me at the beginning. But now, I do feel it is proper to grasp the comparison and contrast between Chinese and Western cultures in English.

With the studying of English for seven years, I have learned something about cultural differences but not very much. This course gives me a chance to learn more systematic knowledge about cultures. The purpose of studying a foreign language is to communicate. But communication without culture background can be meaningless. Also it may barricade our communication with foreigners without knowing cultural differences. In my opinion, this course is of great importance. I’m so glad that I have chosen this course. As an optional course, I can’t know about cultures perfectly by taking it, but it does give me some guidance.