10 pages essay for ATH 301 course

Intercultural communication usually refers to the communication between people of different cultural backgrounds. Because of different regions, races and other factors, cross-cultural communication may take place in the international, but also in different cultural groups.

We usually observe a culture from the perspectives of communication and language, self-awareness and space, clothing and dressing, food and eating habits, time and time awareness, seasonal concepts, various interpersonal relationships, values and norms, beliefs and attitudes, thinking process and learning, work habits and practice, etc. If we need to understand a cultural system, we can examine the research system: kinship system, education system, political system, religious system, association system, health care system, entertainment system, etc.

The so-called cross-cultural communication occurs in such a situation: the sender of information is a member of one culture, while the receiver is a member of another culture.

In our daily life, we can find that there are many problems in cross-cultural communication. I simply classify them into two categories: language barrier and non-language barrier. Because each country and region has formed its own unique language cognition in the long history of development, it is inevitable to encounter various embarrassing problems in the communication between different cultures, which is called language barrier. In addition, the symbolic meaning of our body organs in different countries or regions is also very different. The resulting obstacles are called nonverbal obstacles.

Everyone has different living and growing environment and different education, so the way and method of dealing with others will be different. Because everyone is an independent individual, we can see from our own side that when you get along with this person, you can get along well with another person, or even have conflicts, People from different cultures are more likely to be difficult to get along with.

I remember when I first came to the United States, I found a phenomenon that Chinese students only communicate with Chinese students, and American students rarely make friends with Chinese students. I only thought that this kind of phenomenon was caused by unfamiliar. But with the passage of time, I found that this situation did not improve. On the contrary, it became more and more serious. Sometimes, students from different cultures would have some hostile behaviors. But fortunately, I made some good friends in the United States. In my conversation with them, I learned that the real problem was the cultural incoherence. Chinese students are often implicit, and we think that introversion means respect. Those American students are too active, and they always want to express themselves in any situation. In China, this kind of behavior is regarded as no genty. So Chinese students tend to think that American students don't respect themselves.

American culture pays attention to brave expression. American students tend to like active and publicized people. These implicit Chinese students are often considered to be rigid, not active and do not love life. In fact, this leads to a misunderstanding, which happens to be caused by the fact that both sides do not understand each other's culture. When two students from different regions and under the influence of different cultures meet, this will inevitably happen. Interestingly, this situation is not caused by language, so I call it the non-verbal barrier in cross-cultural communication.

This is the most intuitive manifestation of different cultural backgrounds, which plays an important role for our foreign students and businessmen. Therefore, it is necessary for us to have a deep understanding of the differences between different cultures. When you have a good grasp of this point, and then communicate with people from different countries, you can not only avoid their taboos, but also go deeper Who is not willing to communicate with the people who can talk? Good communication is the beginning of success. So, I think it's a very good way to understand cross-cultural communication through non-verbal barriers.

Nonverbal communication plays an important role in intercultural communication. Each cultural background has its own specific non-verbal behavior system. People from different cultural backgrounds often cause serious cultural conflicts due to Non-verbal Barriers in communication. This paper compares several nonverbal behaviors that are most likely to cause obstacles in cross-cultural communication. In addition, this paper will also analyze the causes of Non-verbal Barriers and give some suggestions on how to avoid them.

In non-verbal disorders, researchers found that non-verbal facial expressions, gestures, body postures accounted for 55%. The scope of nonverbal communication includes eyes, gestures, body posture, smile, facial expression, dress, silence, body contact, distance between speakers, volume of speech, time concept, use of space, etc. Each cultural background has its own specific nonverbal behavior system. The following are some nonverbal behaviors that are most likely to cause obstacles in cross-cultural communication:

Take a very common example in our life. Each of us can make gestures. For example, in China, people usually open their hands and use all their fingers to make gestures together. In the United States, people usually shake back and forth with only one finger. But for Chinese, it's impolite for Americans to greet others with only one finger. In the eyes of Americans, the hand gestures of Chinese people are even more strange. They think Chinese gestures are like saying goodbye. People use different gestures when greeting adults, children or animals. Chinese people usually use the hand gesture of palm down, other fingers swinging back and forth to their own side to greet adults, while when greeting children and animals, the palm up. Americans use the opposite gesture. And once, when I was gesturing with a Chinese friend, the American classmate on the other side mistakenly thought that he was saying goodbye to each other. He was very worried about why we had to say goodbye to each other. When the American friend greeted a Chinese friend, he used a finger to make a gesture. My Chinese friend mistakenly thought that he was not respected. I think this is a very typical non-verbal barrier in cross-cultural communication. People from different countries with different thinking patterns do not communicate with each other without words, but it creates barriers in communication. I am very interested in this, as expected. In later life, I found several similar examples.

When I took class in China, our class would be very quiet. Everyone think it is very right. A quiet class means that students respect their teachers. When the teacher is lecturing in the classroom, the students sitting at the desk will take notes quietly and listen to the teacher carefully. At this moment, when the teacher sees this situation, he will think the students are listening carefully and will give the students a higher grade, and both sides will have a good feedback. But in the class in United States, I found that the students are very positive, sometimes even some students will interrupt the teacher and ask questions to the teacher. I was very surprised, but what makes me more surprised is that American teachers do not reject this kind of behavior. On the contrary, compared with the silence of Chinese students in the classroom, American teachers prefer active students. American teachers think that active students in the classroom have unique thinking, and active thinking in the classroom represents serious listening, so American teachers will give these active students a higher grade for participation. But for Chinese students, they don't like to talk in class, most Chinese students are afraid to express their ideas, just like they were in China, they seldom take the initiative to express themselves in class. For American teachers, Chinese students' behavior means that they don't think actively or listen carefully in during the class. Teachers often question the performance of Chinese students in class. So, most of Chinese students cannot get high grade for participation. For Chinese students, they think that they have respected the teachers, obeyed discipline in class, didn't interrupt the teacher's words, carefully took notes, and listened to the teacher's speech. But the result is not as active as the students, they will think that the teacher is not very nice. So, there are misunderstandings and contradictions. These contradictions are not caused by language barriers, they are non-verbal.

Due to the different geographical conditions, resource conditions, infrastructure, cultural atmosphere, institutional mechanisms, policies and regulations of different ethnic groups, their respective language environments have different language habits, social culture, local customs and other contextual factors. Different cultural backgrounds cause different ways or habits of people to speak. For example, there are differences in thinking patterns. People in different regions have differences in cognition of the outside world, so their perspectives and results of thinking are different, resulting in certain differences. Different codes of conduct. The specific meaning of codes of conduct is the moral standards and codes of conduct that are commonly accepted by the society. Codes of conduct is to tell people that they can do something in a certain environment When people from different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other, they often judge each other's words and deeds according to their own cultural background. Because of the different cultural backgrounds of the two parties, their cognition and understanding of the same problem are not the same. Therefore, the obstacles and even contradictions caused by misunderstanding are common phenomena

So nonverbal communication is inevitable in communication. Like the examples I mentioned above, even if we decide not to say anything, this behavior itself has already conveyed some information to the other party. Nonverbal behavior usually happens in the unconscious state. People tend to trust the information conveyed by nonverbal behavior in communication. Therefore, if it is not used properly, nonverbal behavior is more likely to cause cultural conflict in communication Each culture has its own specific nonverbal behavior system. When people from different cultural backgrounds express the same meaning, they will use different ways and the same nonverbal behaviors to express different meanings in different cultural systems. This kind of cultural difference is an important reason for the non-verbal barrier.

Many of these non-verbal barriers are caused by the lack of understanding of each other's culture. In the absence of practical conditions, watching movies and TV plays is also one of the effective ways to avoid non-verbal communication barriers. In the process of watching, pay attention to how people use non-verbal behaviors to communicate, and how people use non-verbal behaviors in different situations and face to face with different objects.

I think there are not only differences in language and customs between different cultures, but also differences in cultural psychology. From the perspective of culture and psychology, as the carrier and environment of human psychological activities, interpretive culture influences the situation, process, style and result of cross-cultural communication. In order to provide more practical cross-cultural communication skills, from the perspective of psychological research, the essence of Non-verbal Barriers in cross-cultural communication is to explain how to understand, influence, persuade and learn the art of dialogue in communication. We must master the skills of non-verbal communication, as well as the art of conflict resolution and negotiation in cross-cultural communication, so as to re-establish the cross-cultural environment to better play the power of communication.

The use of communication skills can also effectively reduce the emergence of nonverbal barriers in cross-cultural communication. For example, when you don't know how much distance you should keep from the person you are talking to, you can follow this method: if the other person is close to you all the time, it means that the other person likes to talk at a close distance. You just need to stand in the same place and the other person will decide the distance Observation and imitation in communication practice, as well as learning and understanding different cultural systems as much as possible, are all effective ways to improve communication ability and avoid non-verbal obstacles in communication.

In addition, I think the way to solve the misunderstanding caused by nonverbal barriers in cross-cultural communication is mutual understanding. Most of the misunderstandings caused by nonverbal barriers come from the fact that people who grow up in different cultural environments simply think in their own way. Most of them make a mistake that they use their own culture to interpret another people's culture. In cross-cultural communication, everyone should follow the principle of empathy. If they can think from the perspective of each other, they should do well to understand different cultures and explore thinking patterns in other cultures, the misunderstanding caused by non-verbal barriers will be perfectly eliminated. For example, American teachers can try to imagine and understand what happens to Chinese students, while Chinese students can really experience American culture, so both sides can really benefit each other. If they have a deep understanding of each other's culture, then I think not only Non-verbal Barriers, but all obstacles in cross-cultural communication can be solved.

The specific measures are that we can get to know more basic information about foreign countries. To understand the situation of foreign countries, we can start from the whole or pay attention to the details. The overall understanding can make clear the representative thinking mode of foreign culture in a macro sense. From this point of departure, we can reduce the occurrence of more serious problems in cross-cultural communication. Although this method takes a long time, the problems of communication will be reduced gradually through the accumulation of experience. No matter the details or the whole, information is the key. We can use materials such as newspapers, magazines, novels and current affairs reviews to clearly understand the specific social situation, draw cultural knowledge from them, increase cultural literacy and broaden the different cultural perspectives to cultivate and improve the ability of cross-cultural communication. Finally, if we have the opportunity, we should provide ourselves more opportunities to communicating. If we have the conditions, we should have more communicate with foreigners. At the beginning, some problems may arise. With continuous communication, we will gradually adapt to the differences in cultural concepts between the two sides. In cross-cultural communication, we have various problems, and we need to continue to understand and learn from each other, so as to gradually reduce conflicts and avoid them Free from problems, we have achieved really friendly and barrier free communication.