肢体语言在中美文化中的比较

1、摘 要肢体语言是人类语言的重要组成部分，在中美文化交流中扮演着重要角色。本文运用案例法与比较法，从四个方面对两国的手势、身势、眼神交流和面部表情四类肢体语言进行了进行对比与分析，即“相同”含义的相同肢体语言比较、“不同”含义的相同肢体语言比较、“相同”含义的不同肢体语言比较、中美两国各自独特的肢体语言比较，并探讨了背后的文化根源。研究结果表明，两国在生产、生活中存在的诸多共同特征是导致中、美肢体语言存在共性的主要原因，而两国独特的历史文化和语言表达等因素对两国肢体语言差异的形成产生了重大影响。因此，必须深入了解两国肢体语言及其文化背景，才能提高跨文化交际能力，促进中美文化交流。关键词：肢体语言

2、；文化差异；跨文化交际ABSTRACTBody language is a very important part in human language and it plays a vital role in Sino-American cross-cultural communication. Divided into gestures, posture, eye contacts and facial expressions, the body language in China and America had been compared and analyzed from four as

3、pects by case analysis and comparison method. The four aspects included (1) the same body language with the same meaning, (2) the same body language with different meanings; (3) different body language with the same meaning, (4) the special body language exists in Chinese and American culture respec

4、tively. Furthermore, cultural background of body language in two countries was discussed. Results showed that the similar features in both life and production in two countries were the major reason for existence of common cognition of body language. The special historical characteristics and differe

5、nt ways of language expression played an important role in the differences of body language between the two countries. Therefore, in order to improve Sino-American cross-cultural communication, it is necessary to have a good knowledge of body language under different cultural backgrounds in China an

6、d America.Key words：body language; cultural differences; cross-cultural communication 中国最大的论文知识平台Contents1.Introduction12. Literature review22.1 Conceptions of relative words22.1.1 Definition of body language22.1.2 Conception of culture32.2 Overseas and domestic literature review on body language32.

7、2.1 Overseas literature review on body language42.2.2 Domestic literature review on body language43. Comparison of body language in Chinese and American cultures53.1 Same body language with the same meaning63.2 Same body language with different meanings73.3 Different body language with the same mean

8、ing113.4 Unique body language exists in Chinese and American culture respectively134. How to improve the ability of intercultural communication145. Conclusion15Acknowledgements16References171. IntroductionSpeaking of “Body Language” in a board sense, there are in English such expressions as body mov

9、ement, body gesture, body behavior, etc 113,24. A psychologist proposed a formula: the total impact of a message = 7% verbal + 38% vocal + 55% facial expressions and behaviors 315.Nowadays, with the rapid development of economy as well as science and technology, the world is becoming smaller and sma

10、ller, and the communication between people from different countries with different cultural backgrounds is increasing 319, especially that between people from China and America. Since interpretations of body language vary tremendously from culture to culture, it is a necessity to obtain the ability

11、to understand body language while communicating with people from different countries with different culture. Certainly, there were many previous studies made by scholars on body language. However, most of their researches lay emphasis on the differences of body language between China and western cou

12、ntries instead of those between China and America. Meanwhile, few focus on the history and culture roots of body language and the influence of verbal language on body language. Therefore, the thesis is intended to focus on the similarities and differences of body language including posture, gestures

13、, facial expressions and eye contacts under different cultural backgrounds in China and America so as to enable readers to comprehensively understand the exact meanings of body language and to know the corresponding cultural background and social-cultural characteristics of the two countries.The the

14、sis is mainly composed of five chapters. The first Chapter serves as the brief introduction of the whole thesis; The second Chapter presents the definition of body language, culture and the literature review of body language abroad and in China; The third chapter focuses on the similarities and diff

15、erences of body language under different cultural backgrounds in China and America and the corresponding reasons of history, culture and language for those similarities and differences will be analyzed at the same time. The fourth chapter introduces several tips for improving the ability of cross-cu

16、ltural communication between the two countries. And the last part summarizes the whole content of this paper and restates the importance of body language in cross-cultural communication.2. Literature reviewThe observation of body language is important to an effective listener because it communicates

17、 what is the most important to the speaker. When a person is reluctant to put his feelings into words, or has repressed his feelings to the extent that he is not consciously aware of his feelings, then his nonverbal language usually indicates his feelings. Now, to have a better knowledge of body lan

18、guage, the author here will first introduce the literature review on body language as follows.2.1 Conceptions of relative wordsWhen communicating with a person from different cultures, it is extremely important to possess the ability to understand the exact meanings of the body language he uses. Oth

19、erwise, it will cause unnecessary misunderstandings and even lead to some trouble. Body language has a close relationship with culture. Thus, before we come to the study on body language under different cultural backgrounds in China and America, we should first of all have a clear idea about the def

20、initions of relative words: body language, and culture.2.1.1 Definition of body languageBody language is a term for forms of communication using body movements or gestures instead of sounds, or other forms of oral communication 425. It is often called kinesics, composed not only of gestures and post

21、ure, but also facial expressions and eye contacts 523. Gestures refer to the movement of hands or arms to express the meaning of a verbal message which is regarded as the central part of our body language. Posture is the general way of carrying out ones body, especially the head, shoulders and back

22、when walking, standing, squatting, sitting or lying. Eye contact is a very important part in body language which refers to the study of messages expressed by eyes, including eye contact, eye movements, staring, gaze, blinks and pupil dilation. The face serves as the most expressive function in our b

23、ody and it can give us some information about ones character. It should be mentioned that since diverse and complex factors are involved in the study of body language, a considerable amount of academic arguments exist concerning which definition of body language is the most valid and workable. Some

24、scholars claim that body language is the language without words; others give a similar statement that body language indicates all communicative symbols except oral speech. Besides the above mentioned definitions, Samovar and Porter (1995) have made some attempts on a more specific and vivid definiti

25、on of body language like this: Body language is the socially, biologically, psychologically or culturally framed exchange of valuable messages which are not verbally spoken out but conveyed by the body movements, body gestures, symbols or relevant context and surrounding environment etc 510. Also, t

26、here is definition written in dictionary: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines body language as the process of communicating through conscious or unconscious gestures and poses 6 Conception of culture It is difficult to find even a single definition of culture on which s

27、cholars may have agreements since culture is really a very large and evasive concept which is very difficult to define. The anthropologists define it as: common knowledge, perceptions and values that constitute the foundation of social, economical and religious institutions in a society (Svanberg &a

28、mp; Runblom, 1988) 78. It is said that there have been at least over 150 definitions on culture, but none of them seems to be able to tell us everything about culture 814.But, simply put, “culture” refers to a group or a community with which we share common experiences that shape the way we understa

29、nd the world. Most professionals view culture as being the sum total of beliefs, rules, techniques, institutions, and artefacts that characterize human beings 83. In other words, culture consists of socially created and learned patterns of behaviour shared by members of a given societya unique lifes

30、tyle of a particular group of people.From above, we know that culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one group or category of people from another 716. Since China is a developing country while America is a developed country, they have their unique styles in the traditio

31、ns of culture and customs. They are different in many aspects of their life and production which produce a big influence on their body language. When coming to the definition of culture, we should take the cultural backgrounds of two countries history, customs and literature into consideration; mean

32、time, we also should take the cultural factors into consideration when we are taking part in cross-cultural communication. By acquiring the basic theoretical conceptions of body language and culture, we will go further for the study on the meanings of body gestures under different cultural backgroun

33、ds in China and America in the next part.2.2 Overseas and domestic literature review on body languageThis part concerns literature review on body language made by scholars in China and America. Body language, as a communicative method, has a long history and it can be assumed that the history of bod

34、y language is longer than any other natural languages. Body language is the subject which has received the most research and the greatest amount of public attention during recent years.2.2.1 Overseas literature review on body languageBody language may date back to Aristotle, who had studied the expr

35、essions of actions. And Darwins Expressions of Humans and Animals published in 1872 can be regarded as the initial study of body language 916. It is generally accepted that the study of body language became an independent subject in the 1950s. During this period, there was a significant increase in

36、the number of body language researchs efforts. Ray Birdwhistells Introduction to Kinesics in 1952 in which the term kinesics was initiated primarily constructed the conception system of Kinesics. Dr. Edward T. Halls The Silent Language in 1959 explored the importance of cultural factors, and reveale

37、d the profound mystery of kinesics in communication 1026. These two books are regarded as two milestones in the decade.The 1960s witnessed a nuclear explosion of studies on body language. There were extensive studies on specific areas of body including eye behaviors, personal space, body movements a

38、nd body gestures. Dr. Edward T. Hall, professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, went into the cross-cultural perspective of proteomics. Paul Kerman and Wallace Friesen have developed a specific system of classifying nonverbal languages in terms of function in the book The Repertoire of N

39、onverbal Behavior 1120, which provided insights on the origin, usage, and coding of nonverbal behavior.The 1970s made deep exploration on the aspect of body language from different perspectives, among which was Julius Fasts Body Language in 1973 in which he explained by presenting interesting instan

40、ces the meaning of such nonverbal behaviors as gestures, facial expressions, postures, and distance between interlocutors1214. In 1970, Ray Birdwhistell coined the term “kinesics”the systematic study of how human beings communicate through body movements and gesturesin his masterpiece Kinesics and C

41、ontext: Essay on Body Motion Communication.2.2.2 Domestic literature review on body languageChinese researchers have made a great contribution to the study on body language. The study on body language in China originated in the 1970s and prospered in the 1980s 146. In the late 1980s, there were two

42、famous monographs, one is An Introduction to Body Language in 1988 by Ge Erling and the other is Motion Linguistics in 1988 by Zhou Jiyu 1318. And the research in this field reached its research height at the beginning of 1990s. During these years, the number of literary works on this aspect had rea

43、ched over one hundred 326. Since then, an increasing number of anthropologists, linguists, sociolinguists and language teachers are doing researches on intercultural nonverbal communication. The linguist and educator Chen Wangdao pointed out that language is a way to send and receive information, an

44、d he was the first one who made a clear distinction of body language between some other means of message transferring in China 818. Besides, other famous scholars in our country, for example, Hu Wenzhong, Bi Jiwan and Liu Wenrong had issued several articles on cross-cultural communication and transl

45、ated many literature works of body language 145.From above literature review on body language, we can clearly get that scholars have made various studies on body language. However, most of the researches laid emphasis on the differences of body language while the similarities were ignored. Furthermo

46、re, most of the studies focus on the phenomena of the differences instead of the real reasons of those similarities and differences, such as the differences between history, culture, traditions, customs and expressions of verbal language, etc. Therefore, the author will focus on the comparison of si

47、milarities and differences of body language, including posture, gestures, facial expressions and eye contacts, between China and America and analyze the reasons of the differences with case analysis and comparison method as well. And in the process of this study, in order to thoroughly compare the s

48、imilarities and differences of body language between the two countries, the author will analyze the above mentioned four categories of body language one by one from the following aspects: (1) the same body language with the same meaning; (2) the same body language with different meanings; (3) differ

49、ent body language with the same meaning; (4) the special body language exists in Chinese and American culture respectively.3. Comparison of body language in Chinese and American culturesBody language can serve for communication which can make people communicate very well and smoothly. It is much rel

50、ated to culture. Particular body language and the meaning of body language are largely depended on cultural variations 1313. Each culture in the world is unique and has its own system of expressing body language in communication. It is the uniqueness of different cultures that cause misunderstanding

51、s or even conflicts in intercultural communication 1517. Two individuals come from different cultures can understand the meanings of some certain different body gestures while the majority of body gestures varying others and the meanings they conveyed seem to be decided by culture in a large sense 1

52、39. From this we can see that it is important to study body language under the different cultural backgrounds. Besides, we should also have a clear understanding of the deep cultural reasons which cause these differences in body gestures. In this part, the author elaborates the similarities and diff

53、erences of body language, including posture, gestures, eye contacts, and facial expressions with case analysis and comparison method from the following four aspects so as to find out the culture root and social-cultural characteristics. 3.1 Same body language with the same meaningHuman beings have t

54、housands of thousands of body gestures. Although different people live in different places, speak different languages, wear different clothes, people share many similarities in daily life as well, for example, happiness, anger, sadness. So it is not difficult to understand that people share a lot of

55、 similar body language which expresses the same meaning. In this part, the author discusses posture, gestures, facial expressions and eye contacts that convey the same meaning in Chinese and American culture and analyzes the reasons as well.Posture refers to the general way people carry out their bo

56、dy, and it can be divided into three categories: standing, bent-knee positions and lying 1536. The same posture can be seen in the same situation in different countries. No matter in America or in China, it is easy to observe from TV and movies that individuals of higher status usually use a relaxed

57、 postural style, while those who are in a lower status are always in a upright and tense postural style since the “lower status” must show his respect to the senior. Generally speaking, Gestures refer to specific body movements that carry meanings. Gestures are closely related to speech, illustratin

58、g or supplementing it. Gestures carry a great deal of meanings, some of which mean the same in China and America. When they are interpreted by Chinese and Americans respectively, there will not be any problem in understanding each other when communicating. For instance, both Chinese and Americans nod head up and down to mean “yes”, and they shake head from side to side to mean “no”; move hands from side to side to convey the meaning of saying goodbye to somebody; applaud to show approval of a performance. What is more, touch is one of the most fundamental forms of body gestures, like our