“The most important thing in communication is hearing what is not said”
This quote is is one of many famous and intriguing sayings of Peter Drucker who is known as the Father of Management. He showed his appreciation for the importance of understanding communication without any words or also known as nonverbal communication. In fact, nonverbal communication is a characteristic and indispensable element in any culture and not stopping there, nonverbal communication also demonstrates its influence on intercultural communication.
First and foremost, nonverbal communication is a process of communication through sending and receiving wordless messages. The differences between nonverbal and verbal communication is that we use our voice in verbal
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More than voice or even words, nonverbal communication helps to create your image in others mind and even you can express your emotions and feelings in front of others, give clues and additional information, which you are unable or hard to express in words. Notwithstanding, nonverbal communication can be different between cultures and these discrepancies can often lead to miscommunication between people of different cultures, who usually do not mean to offend. Take my experience for an example. My brother invited an American friend named Charles to his house to have a party with his family. It was the first time he has visited Vietnam. When he came, my brother introduced everyone to him. Everything would be so happy until Charles approached my sister, hugged and then kissed her! Though it was just a cheek kissing, everyone was so surprised and she pushed him then ran away embarrassedly while Charles did not know what happened. The problem here is nonverbal miscommunication in greeting display rules between two cultures which caused misinterpretation and discomfort for everyone, especially the girl. Vietnamese people don’t use kissing as a cordial greeting and our culture also considers it as an insult when a boy hugs and kissed a girl in public even when he only wants to express his friendliness. In contrast, it is widely accepted in …show more content…
First and foremost, you should learn as much as you can about the new cultures that you will be exposed to. The principle is simple – the more effort you make, the richer the reward will be. Your pre-preparation by learning from divergent sources like friends, the Internet can be helpful to avoid culture shocks and help you communicate with others more easily as well as not stumble into cultural barriers. Secondly, you should be open-minded and use cultural differences themselves as a interesting topic in a intercultural communication. By which i mean, you should not hesitate to ask if you feel confused about any characteristics of a new culture. Most people will feel confortable to share with others about the customs of their own culture. By exchanging the knowledge about each other’s culture, not only do you gain a lot of knowledge about it but your communication will also become more intimate and intriguing. Third, you should show your respect to values of other cultures. Do not impose your own cultural values or judge views and behaviors that differ from yours as wrong. For instance, in the aforementioned situation, the foreign guy should not have assumed subjectively that everyone in Vietnamese culture would prefer American’s
With the growing adversity in the country non-verbal communication plays a major role in the law enforcement field. Knowing how to read and listen to someone with a language barrier and or a different background can set the tone on how the encounter might turn out. According to the book (Multicultural Law Enforcement). With the increasing emphasis on community policing and staff diversity in law enforcement, cross-cultural communication skills have become more and more essential not only in establishing good relationships with citizens, but also with professional colleagues. In developing cross-cultural communication and competency skills, police officers who were not born in this country or who spoke another language at home can be a valuable resource, offering insights that can alleviate frustration in encounters with those who are not fluent in English.
Non-verbal communication accompanies or makes up the rest of the channels of communication. It includes body language, gestures, written, and any other communication that is not spoken. The only exception is sign language, which is considered to be a form of verbal communication.
Nonverbal communication, just like language, can be used in a form of text to communicate. Sometimes nonverbal communication alone, is the form of communication but it often accompanies tools like language. While a person may hears words from a language, they also observe body language which serves as the nonverbal communicator. These two forms of communication, language and body language, can combine as contributing parts of a text, such as conversation between two friends at
The Vietnamese student thought that Americans are superficial for the way talk as well as smiling too much. On the other hand, An American Girl viewed that the international students most of them were quite unfriendly. According to this article, there are stumbling blocks that exist in intercultural communication. First is the language whereby there may exist different interpretation concerning a particular vocabulary or sentence (Barna, 1994). For instance, according to this article, when a Japanese hear that ‘won’t you have some tea? ' He may respond ‘no ' meaning that he is interested in taking tea which may mean to an American person that he is not interested in taking the tea. Thus, this may act as a stumbling block. The second stumbling block is nonverbal signs and symbols. In case there exist different meaning of the non-verbal signs and symbols, communication is hindered.
The organization I have chosen is NEA (National Education Association) that deals with communicating cross-cultural and what teachers should know about diversity. The Website address is http://iteslj.org/Articles/Pratt-Johnson-CrossCultural.html which is found in the NEA link. The article explains the need for educators in terms of culturally responsive and competent as schools and classrooms become increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. The article highlights five important points of cultural difference with which all teachers should be aware when teaching students of diverse backgrounds. These five points are ways of knowing, ways of solving problems, ways of communicating nonverbally, ways of learning, and ways of dealing
Nonverbal Communication (term) All forms of communication other than words themselves; includes inflection and other vocal qualities as well as several other behaviors such as shrugs, blushing, and eye movements. (Wood 2015)
Non-verbal communication is the language without words. Hynes states that “understanding the importance of nonverbal communication is often difficult because it is such a natural part of any managerial interaction.” In addition to any managerial interaction it is something we use in every aspect of our lives. Nonverbal communication is everything aided to help communicate a message, without the words, it operates essentially the same way verbal communication does, as in there is a sender and receiver, and the message is sent through some sort of medium. In a work setting having strong nonverbal skills will increase the likelihood of good impressions among colleagues. Many people do not comprehend the importance of nonverbal communication and how it impacts the perception of Messages.
Nonverbal communication is the act of communicating without speaking, and instead involves the use of gestures, facial expressions and body language and is an important part of how people communicate, sometimes more powerful than verbal interaction, and makes up a large portion of daily interpersonal communication. Most acts of nonverbal communication are learned behaviour and are done unconsciously. What is considered acceptable nonverbal communication differs from culture to culture – hand and
The main difference between a group and a team is the member’s attitudes and level of dedication. A team is characterized by clear individuality and a high level of dedication on the part of members. A group does not necessarily mean “team”. A group must go through a growth process before performing as a “team”; most teams are often incapable to progress through the development process.
According to Chira (2014), the Non-verbal communication channel is a supplement more than a substitute of the verbal communication channel. However, it depends on the way that the nonverbal communication is expressed.
In the United States, it is often difficult for someone from one co-culture to participate fully in a group dominated by members of a different culture (Galanes & Adams, 2013). When communicating with individuals from a culture other than our own, it is possible for either party to walk away from the situation feeling that we did not communicate very well. In Lesson 4, we learned that there are many behaviors and social norms that we learn and follow while interacting with our own culture on a normal basis. We must be sensitive to the verbal and nonverbal differences stemming from cultural origins if we want to create effective communication with those we are surrounded by. This lesson has allowed for me to recognize how easy it is to misunderstand members of another culture, and I will now tell my personal experience with cultural differences.
The first point in my theory is that you can better your skills as an interpersonal communicator by better understanding your own culture. DeVito states that there are. “several major cultural distinctions that are crucial for more effective communication” they are: individualism or collectivism, high or low context, high or low power distance, masculinity or femininity, high or low ambiguity tolerance, long or short term orientation, and indulgent or (p. 34). To be able to understand your or anyone else’s culture you must be able to understand the ways that these things affect communication. Once you understand the ways that you are oriented in these seven categories due to enculturation you can understand how you communicate and become a more effective
“Systematic research on the role of nonverbal behavior in social interaction has been common only in the past 20 to 25 years.”(Edinger and Patterson, 1983, p. 30).because that statement was published in 1983, it is apparent that the study of nonverbal behavior has been around for roughly 50 to 55 years. However, that is still a relatively recent amount of time compared to research in other science fields such as chemistry or biology. Despite the fact that this field is relatively recent there are many theories about our interaction with others. This paper will discuss the nonverbal expectancy theory along with two other theories, and describe how these theories can work together.
I am not sure that these are strengths or weakness in handling the whole cultural experience, and I am afraid that being an outsider holds me back. Due to the fact even nonverbal used in both cultures are not really same, it hinders my intercultural communication. I remember when I came to United States for the first time in august 2013, many things got my attention one thing in particular though was the smile on people’s faces (I call it fake smile). In my culture, I can be polite and greet you if we cross each in hall way, in the stairs, if we meet in
people all round the world share different ways and different belief. We are all raise differently the way we talk, behave, how we show emotion.... When Person of different culture meet there might be misunderstanding when they communicate because One thing that is a norm here might be dissrespec in other part of the world and creating more challenge adapting. For example if there were two people that is new to US one from India Krishna and other from Mexico jasmine. They were both learning the customs of here. The norms of customer service are smiling,greeting. It would be a challenge if they both were invited to Muslims wedding because the norm there might be different.