the Summary of Intercultural Communication (7&8)

Nonverbal communication

Comparison

BASIS FOR COMPARISON	VERBAL	NON-VERBAL
Meaning	the sender uses words to transmit the message to the receiver	take place between sender and receiver with the use of signs
Types	formal,informal	Chronemics, Vocalics, Haptics, Kinesics, Proxemics, Artifacts, Oculesics, Paralanguage
Time Consuming	no	yes
Chances of transmission of wrong message	rarely	most of the time
Documentary Evidence	yes, in case of written commmunication	no
Advantage	clearly understood and immediate feedback	emotions, status, lifestyle, feelings of the sender
Presence	doesn’t matter	must

NVC (Nonverbal communication)

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Q: What is NVC?
A: It is communication through sending and receiving wordless clues.

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Q: The features of NVC.
A:

1. Using signs
2. Often transmitting wrong message
3. Face to face
4. Many different types

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Q: What does NVC includes? (PK PC OH)
A:

1. body language (kinesics)
2. distance (proxemics)
3. physical environments of voice (paralanguage)
4. physical environments of touch (haptics)
5. the use of time (chronemics)
6. eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of galances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics)

Q: Nonverbal elements of paralanguage. (6)
A: Voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation, stress.

Q: Nonverbal elements of written texts. (3)
A: Handwirting style, spatial arrangement of words, the physical layout of a page .

Q: The three principal areas of interaction beween individuals in NVC.
A:

1. Environmental conditions where communication takes place
2. Physical characteristics of the communicators
3. Behaviors of communicators during interaction

Q: What is Encoding?
A: The act of generating information such as facial expressions, gestures, and postures.

Q: What is Decoding?
A: The interpretation of information from received sensations given by the encoder.

Importance

Q: Body signals comprise:
A:

1. Physical features
2. Consious and unconsious
3. The mediation of personal space

First impression

Positive and negative impressions

Posture

Q: Please give some examples of body positioning to portray certain postures. (6)
A: Slouching, towering, legs spread, jaw thrust, shoulders forward, and arm crossing.

Q: Why posture can be situation-relative？
A: People will change their posture depending on the situation they are in.

Q: What can posture be used to do? (3)
A: Determine a participant’s degeree of attention or involvement, the difference in status between communicators, and the level of fondness a person has for the other communicator, depending on body “openness”.

Q: What postures can lead to positive sentiment? (2)
A: Mirror-image congruent postures, displaying a forwad lean or decreacing a backward lean.

Clothing

Q: The types of clothing that an individual wears convey nonverbal cues about his or her: (4)
A: Personality, background and financial status, and how others will respond to them.

Q: An individual’s clothing style can demonstrate their: (7)
A: Culture, mood, level of confidence, interests, age, authority, and values/beliefs.

Gestures

Q: How gestures can be made? (6)
A: Hands, arms or body; movements of the head, face and eyes.

Q: Please give some categories of gestures.
A:

1. emblems or quotable gestures
2. speech independent or speech related gestures

Q; How many expressions human faces are capable of?
A: 10,000
(This versatility makes non-verbals of the face extremely efficient and honest, unless deliberately manipulated.)

Q: Displays of emotions can generally be categorized into two groups: negative and positive. Discribe them.
A:

• Negative emotions usually manifest as increased tension in various muscles groups: (1)tightening of jaw muscles, (2)furrowing of forehead, (3)squinting eyes, or (4)lip occlusion.
• Positive emotions are revealed by (1)the loosening of the furrowed lines on the forehead, (2)relaxtion of the muscles around the mouth, and (3)widening of the eye area. When individuals are truly relaxed and at ease, the (4)head will also tilt to the side, exposing our most vulnerable area, the neck.

Gestures can be subdivided into three groups:

Adapters

Some hands movements (are not considered to be gestures) consist of manipulations either of the person or some object(e.g. clothing, pencils, eyeglasses)–the kinds of scratching, fidgeting, rubbing, tapping, and touching that people often do with their hands.

The basis dispositional inferences of the speaker’s emotion(nervous, uncomfortable, bored).

Symbolic

Other hands movements (are considered to be gestures) with specific, conventionalized meanings.

Symbolic gestures are used intentionally and serve a clear communicative function.

Symbolic gestures are usually used in the absence of speech, but can also accompany speech.

Different meanings in defferent culture.

Conversational

The middle ground between adapters and symbolic gestures.

Do not refer to actions or words, but do accompany speech and are related to the speech they accompany.

Not seen in the absence of speech and are only made by the person who is speaking.

Distance

Q: What are 4 primary distance zones?
A:

1. intimate (touching to 18 inches) distance || familiar, closeness and trust
2. personal (18 inches to 4 feet) distance || still close, the most comfortable
3. social (4 to 12 feet) distance || business and classroom
4. public (more than 12 feet) distance || two-way communication is not desirable or possible

Eye contact

Q: Eye contact is the primary nonverbal way of indicating: (4)
A: Engagement, interest, attention and involvement.

Q: What will happen if an individual is interested?
A: The pupils will dilate.

Q: How do people use their eyes to indicate interest?
A: Frequently recognized actions of winking and movements of the eyebrows.

Q: Disinterest is highly recognized when:
A: Little or no eye contact is made in a social setting.

Q: How will Eye contact influence people?
A: The longer there is established eye contact between two people, the greater the intimacy levels.

Q: What are the important cues in NVC about eye contact?
A:

1. The length of a gaze
2. The frequency of glances
3. Patterns of fixation
4. Pupil dilation
5. Blink rate

Q: How do we know someone is being deceptive?
A: Their eyes tend to blink a lot more.

Q: What can be predictive of deception?
A: Eye aversion.

Across cultures

Q: Nuances across different aspects of nonverbal communication can be found in cultures all around the world. What can these differences be besed in?
A:

1. Be based in preferences for mode of communication
2. Be based on how cultures perceive the passage of time

Q: Chronemics can be categorized in two ways:
A:

• Polychronic (when people do many activities at once and is common in Italy and Spain)
• Monochronic (when people do one thingat a time which is common in America)

Gestures

Gestures	Countries	Meanings
sticking your tungue out	Western countries	mockery
……………………	Polynesia	a greeting and a sign of reverence
clapping	North America	applauding
……..	Spain	summon a waiter at a restaurant

Meanings	Countries	Gestures
yes	Northern Europe	nodding heads up and down
…	Greece	the downward nod
no	Northern Europe	shaking head from side to side
..	Greece	the upward nod
goodbye	America	face the palm outward and move the hand side to side
…….	Italy	face the palm inward and move fingers facing the other person
…….	France and Germany	face the hand horizontal and move the fingers toward the person leaving

Q: It is important to note that:
A: Gestures are used in more informal settingand more often by children.

Displays of emotion

Emotions	Countries	Meanings
laughter	Westernized Countries	amusement
……..	Africa	wonder or embarrassment

• Arab and Iranian cultures
  show emotion openly
• Asian cultures
  unacceptable to show emotion openly

Native Americans tend to be more reserved and less expressive with emotions.
Frequent touches are common for Chinese people; however, such actions like touching, patting, hugging or kissing in America are less frequent and not often publicly displayed.

Nonverbal actions

Lots of Examples!!!

Kinesics: movement and body position

Q: What are the aspects of kinesics? (5)
A: Face, eye contact, gesture, posture, body movements.

Q: Kinesic messages comprise: (3)
A: Posture, gaze, and facial movements.

Haptics: touching in communication

Q: What is meainng comveyed from touch highly dependent upon? (4)
A: The culture, the context of the situation, the relationship between communicators, and the manner of touch.

In Thai culture, for example, touching someone’s head may be thought rude.

• Americans, the English, Germans and Northern Europeans are said to belong to low-touch cultures, exhibiting very limited tactile contact in public.
• Hispanics, people of Eastern European descents, Italians, the French, Arabs, and Jews are all said to belong to high-touch cultures.

Proxemics

4 types of proxemics with different distances depending on the situation and people involved:

Types	Description
Intimate distance	close encounters like embracing, touching, or whispering
Personal distance	close friends and family members
Social distance	acquaintances; workplace or school
Public distance	strangers or public speaking

Distance	Description
0-50 cm	intimate lovers and family members
50-120 cm	friends (personal distance)
120-270 cm	acquaintances (social distance)
270-… cm	public space, not belong to oneself
Behind	strangers speaking from behind are allowed to stand much more nearer

Interaction

Q: When communicating, nonverbal messages can interact with verbal messaes in 6 ways:
A: Repeating, conflicting, complementing, substituting, regulating and accenting/moderating.

Conflicting

Conflicting verbal and nonverbal messages within the same interaction can sometimes send opposing or conflicting message.

Complementing

Accurate intepretation of messages is made easier when nonverbal and verbal communication complement each other.

Substituting

Nonverbal behavior is sometimes used as the sole channel for communication of a message.

Chronemics

Monochronic time

1. Things are done one at a time and time is segmented into precise, small units.
2. Time is a precious resource not to be wasted or taken lightly.
3. “Time is tangible“ and viewed as a commodity.

Polychronic time

1. Several things can be done at once, and wider view of time is exhibited and time is perceived in large fluid sections.
2. Much less focused on the preciseness of accounting for each and every moment, but more focused on tradition and relationships.
3. More focus on relationships, rather than watching the clock.

Setting the stage for effective nonverbal communication

Q: How to inmprove your nonverbal communication effectively?
A:

1. Learn to manage stress.
2. Emotional awareness.
3. Good at reading body language.

Q: Are emotions contagious?
A: Yes.

Q: Emotional awareness enables you to:
A:

1. Accrately read other people.
2. Create trust in relationships.
3. Show others that you understand and care.
4. Know if the relationship is meeting your emotional needs, giving you the option to either repair the relationship or move on.

Q: Tips for reading body language:
A:

1. Pay attention to inconsistencies
2. Look at nonverbal communication signals as a group
3. Trust your instincts

Course Notes

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The differences between Polychronic and Monochronic:

Monochronic	Polychronic
Do one thing at a time	Do many things at once
Concentrate on the job	Are easily distracted and subject to interruptions
Take time commitments (deadlines, schedules) seriously	Consider time commitments an objective to be achieved, if possible
Are committed to the job	Are committed to people and human relationships
Adhere to plans	Change plans often and easily
Are concerned about not disturbing others; follow rules of privacy	Are more concerned with people close to them (family, friends, close business associates) than with privacy
Show great respect for private property; seldom borrow or lend	Borrow and lend things often and easily
Emphasize promptness	Base promptness on the relationship
Are accustomed to short-term relationships	Have strong tendency to build lifetime relationship

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