英语论文跨文化交际中肢体语言的沟通

英语论文跨文化交际中肢体语言的沟通

Introduction

As the trend of globalization is strengthened step by step, international communication is frequent and important day by day. Thus, the significance of body language in intercultural communication has been greatly realized. “ Research sh ows that when people meet someone for the first time, only 7% of their initial impact on others is determined by the content of what they say; the other 93% of their message is made up of body language (55%) and the tone of their voice （38%）.”

Body language helps us to manage and guard against these tendencies, and also - significantly especially in flirting/dating/mating rituals - body language often helps people to communicate and resolve relationship issues when conscious behaviour and speech fails to do so.

Body language has evolved in spite of human awareness and conscious intelligence: rather like a guardian angel, body language can help take care of us, connecting us to kindred souls, and protecting us from threats. While the importance of body language in communications and management, etc., has become a popular interest and science in the last few decades, human beings have relied on body language instinctively in many ways for many thousands of years.

And thus this paper intends to present its meaning and classification, cultural differences and analyze the factors that influence body that influence our communication of body language so that we can improve our communication skills and abilities by understanding it well.

2 Body Language

2.1 Definition of Body Language

Body language is a term for communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sounds, verbal language or other communication. It forms part of the category of paralanguage, which describes all forms of human communication that are not verbal language. This includes the most subtle of movements that many people are not aware of, including winking and slight movement of the eyebrows. In addition body language can also incorporate the use of facial expressions.

Western scholars have made a lot of definitions about it, the most vivid and specific definition is that body language is the non-verbal language which can express information that language cannot express and the actions most people can understand.

To get good at reading body language, go out and do the “R” over and over. Open your eyes and ears. Turn off your biased,over-analytical brain and observe the way a child observes.

A toddler sees objects and actions in a more stand-alone way than adults, who go to extraordinary means to make connections. He has no preexisting framework to overlay his observations onto, so he’s a much better collector of pure body language than older, well socialized people. If you place a wrapped box on the table in front of a young child capable of speech, the questions are endless. As you get older, you answer the questions for yourself, assuming you know what everything means.

2.2 The Classification of Body Language

Body language can be divided into eye contract language, body touches language, posture and gesture, manner, facial expression, flavor language, proxemics and clothes language.