商务交往中的性别差异_Gender differences in intercultural business communication.doc

gender differences in intercultural business communicationabstract: according to the latest research in the united states of america, men and women talk in such different ways that it is like people from two different cultures trying to communicate especially in the business world. these differences are mainly divided into two parts: body language and verbal communication. there are lots of reasons as well.key words: communication，gender difference，reasonas a symbol system and social phenomena, language is the carrier of human thinking as well as communication tools, inevitably reflecting each side of community life. gender differences commonly exist in every language, most gender differences in language originated from different social roles they played.most people know that gender differences exist in body language and non verbal behaviors. however, gender differences influence communication in the business world. men and women tend to have distinct variations in the sending and receiving of messages via body language. some of these differences include: women typically are more skilled than men at both sending and receiving nonverbal messages. they tend to use body language both consciously and unconsciously to establish rapport, make judgments about truthfulness and deceit, and influence others in both overt and very subtle ways. they also tend to be better at spotting contradictions between verbal and nonverbal messages. men typically are less skilled than women at both sending and receiving nonverbal messages. this does not mean, however, that body language is something men do not use or understand. on the contrary, men use nonverbal behaviors regularly to communicate things like status, dominance, protection, and aggression. they tend to be better at sending and receiving nonverbal messages when interacting with other men.much has been written about men and women using body language in social and romantic situations, but there is increasing attention being focused on interactions in the business world. the information emerging from this focus is quite fascinating and can be very useful when navigating through gender communication differences in the workplace. language behavior differences between male and female exist in different social groups, in spite of larger differences in some communities; there are smaller differences in other communities. generally speaking, compared with feminine language, male language tends to be more straightforward, more confident, and more certain rude while feminine language has characteristics such as polite, euphemistical and non-arbitrary. it is found that male is always in domination during conversation between male and female. unlike male, female is always a subordinate during conversation between male and female generally 10. for example, during conversation we will often encounter the following situations: men always take initiative to interrupt others topics during conversation in order to get the discourse power in conversation while women are more likely to listen to others who interrupt them; in addition, women take part in the discussion by means of asking questions. men usually give accurate answers to questions others raised in conversation, or they will turn deaf ears to them in order to strengthen their important roles. however, women often dare not to give their own opinions directly; instead, they give their own ideas under the condition of others approvals and hope to get others support in order to continue their own opinions.with the deepening development of gender differences, the focus of gender differences gradually shifted from vocabulary differences to gender differences in discourse styles which greatly broadened the horizons of studies and allowed the researchers to understand and master the relationship between the use of language and gender differences comprehensively and accurately at a higher level. linguists investigation of discourse situation in social interaction shows that there exist different degrees of differences in the choice of topic, the volume of speech, the mode and strategy of discourse. in general, female behaves more cooperatively in conversation, usually they take turns in speech and everybody has chance to speak, individuals rarely takes a long time in speech. when starting their speech, female tends to refer to previous things which others have expressed explicitly and tries to link what she want say to them. they pay attention to maintaining the continuity and smooth of talking. therefore, they tend to spend more time on the same topic, thus the topics change more slowly. female pays more attention to the reaction and participation of listeners during conversation and makes this attention reflect on speech (for example, more use of personal pronouns such as we, you which conclude listeners or imperative sentences and tag questions begin with lets). by comparison, male often shows strong competition during conversation, tending to control the choice of topics and chances of speech instead of letting others say, and the result may be someone talking much more than others. when starting their conversation, male rarely refers to previous things which others expressed, instead they only pay attention to their own topic, thus there will be more unexpected topics, jumps and weak continuity in their conversations. as to the listeners, male pays less attention on their reaction and participation. male reacts slowly when others express their opinions, usually after others speeches, whats more, their reactions are brief, and most are noncommittal with few positive comments. male interrupts others more than female does during other peoples speech, even with direct and blunt tone and few apologizes. as speakers, male will send a clear protest against those who interrupt them generally while most female keeps silent. thus, male always keeps high volume of speech during conversation; they tend to attack against each other more easily. bickering, shouting, cursing, threats, ridicule, etc. are all significantly more than the conversation between different genders.gender differences in communication is an extremely complex social, cultural, psychological and physiological phenomena which involves factors like the political language, ideological, social status, role relations, language attitude, occupation, educational level, social interaction, scope of activities and neurological, psychological and other factors. but the investigation found that some important factors are physiological factors, psychological factors, historical factors and social factors which lead to gender differences in english language.innate biological differences between men and women decided that men are different from women. according to the latest medical research, womens left hemisphere becomes mature earlier than mens as to the development of language ability. as a result, women speak more fluently and with more emotion colors than men.so far, the influential explanations of gender differences in speech act are from the perspective of social psychology linguistics. men are good at transferring all his power to control others including women; women realize that they are weak in power, they will quite the power struggle in conversation automatically and seek other chances to get self-protection in conversation with men and support from other women in conversation with women, that is elegant and polite language.gender differences are easy to produce gender discrimination and gender inequality. to eliminate gender discrimination, it is bound to find out the reasons for gender differences. western classical feminists believe that the formation of unequal gender relations has go