A Preliminary Study on Body Language Communication between Chinese Culture and Western Culture(一)

 A Preliminary Study on Body Language Communication
 between Chinese Culture and Western Culture

1.Introduction
Body language is a vital part of non-verbal language communicatiion. Over the years, the role of body language in inter-cultural communication has long been underestimated, even totally neglected？. In the 21th century of the world economic globalization, it’s increasingly extensive for inter-cultural communication of human-beings. Body language communication has become an indispensable  communication means in inter-cultural communication.Body language had been the study issue for many foreign researchers all the time in the past. The researchers in western countries have had the persistent and deep research on the topic of body language. And they had done it very well and gotten great achievements. But due to the different course of social development, China’s researches on body language are behind many western countries, which caused people of China to recognize and understand body language relatively superficially. And it is also less for people of China to understand body language of western countries. The situation is also bound to affect the communication between China and western countries.

After China made reform and opening up and joined the World Trade Organization, the communication between China and western countries is increasingly in a deep-going way. The culture confliction occurred constantly due to the cultural differences. Therefore it is necessary for us to correctly understand a certain body language of the exotic culture. The writer is willing to research this issue in order to help us to understand the differences in history and culture and the understanding of body languages. From this term, those may help our inter-cultural communication. In addition, the readers can learn from the essence of the body language communication behavior in western countries for China’s spiritual civilization construction.

views, the readers obviously understand that people of ancient China had recognized body language much earlier than people in western countries, but why our study is not deeper than western countries. And then the writer shall rise up the social significances of studying body language for our nation. Secondly, after explaining the definition of body language, the writer makes readers understand and acknowledged much better. At last, the writer explores the similarities and differences of body language and analyzes the roots of the differences of body language in China and western countries
By writing this thesis, the writer sincerely hopes to offer commonplace remarks above only to invite more valuable opinions, contributing to more research for our body language.

2. Literature Review on Body Language
The development of human-beings’ communication contains not only the development of verbal communication but also non-verbal communication. The perfect cooperation of the both two makes the human -beings’ communication more effectively. And in the study field of non-verbal communication, the researchers have paid more attention to the study of body language communications. Furthermore, Albacon, American psychologists, provided more precise figures that the information of someone was composed of three aspects: 55% of body language, 38% of the tone and 7% of the words(畢繼萬,1999). And Birdwhistell (1952) also had the same viewpoint. He thought the rate that people used body languages to express their thoughts and feelings is over 65%. Obviously, body language accounts for great proportion of communication in people’s life. And people often exchange their thoughts with body language including facial expressions and gestures, etc. Through these body languages, the communication even can reach the unbelievable aim. This is the efficacy of using body language. However, due to the deep understandings of body language to people, more linguists have been making lots of contributions to body language nowadays.

2.1 Research Development in the Western Countries
More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Roman politicians Cicero had pointed out that all psychological activities were associated with movements. Gesture was just a kind of human language which everybody, even barbarians, could understand. As we know, body language as a non-verbal language also had been recognized early by people of western countries.

In 1872, C.Darwin published the article of Modal Expression of Human and Animal. He had firstly created a research method of linking the non-verbal language of human to the expression of animals that still was widely used in the field of human academic, social language academic, social psychology profession and so on.
In the early 1950s, westerners have been studying body language comprehensively and systematically. However there were three most influential works about body language, including Kretschmer’s Physique and Character and The Variation of Human Physique and Efron’s Gesture and Environment.

In 1952, Birdwhistell’s book of Introduction to Kinestics had conducted a systematic research on body language and created the word of Kinesics. He thought that we should study body language by the way of researching language. And he firstly created the word of Kineme as the minimum body language on researching body language. Through this way, he could compare the structure of behavior with the structure of language so that the research of body language was to be Code Research System. Albacon, American psychologist, provided more precise figures that the information of someone was composed of three aspects: 55% of body language, 38% of the tone and 7% of the words(畢繼萬,1999)
 
In 1980, the study of body language has been as a new discipline. The subjects of zoology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, cross-cultural communication study also promote the study of this subject. And many linguists have been researching body language more deeply

2.2 Research Development in Domesti
People of the ancient China had recognized the body language earlier than western countries. In ancient China, Confucius had said,” if someone can express with sound, say it shortly; if it is not clear, say it more; if it is not sufficient, sign deeply; if it also can not express someone’s feelings, someone has nothing to do but wave and dance.” But China experienced a primitive society and feudal society, and then directly accessed to a socialist society, not like western countries to access to capitalist society with the rapid development of the industrialization. In addition, War of Resistance against Japan and the Cultural Revolution had led to the stagnant development in China. And it is inevitable for cultural backwardness. In the 1950s, when western countries had been studying body language comprehensively, our national scholars who study the field of language theory had no longer considered the roles of the language of hand gestures and other non-communicative tools in the communication because Stalin criticized the “Sign Language” of Marrid in 1950. If referring to the function of non-verbal communication tools, it seems that the behavior had denied Marxist Linguistics. From then on, our understandings of body language are completely behind western countries. After our reform and opening up, the scholars only restarted the study of the non-communication, but not systematically. In the late 1980s to early 1990s, the researches of body language communication get the point of climax.
In recent years, the scholars in the fields of Psychology, Linguistics and Sociology have been put their eyes on body language, such as Action Linguistics of Zhuang Jiyu in 1988, Body Language Survey of Gen Erling in 1988, Non-verbal Communication---Interpersonal Communication Arts of Li Zhonghang and Zhnag Libin and so on.

It is obvious that people of ancient Chinese had recognized body language much earlier than western countries. But due to the different course of social development, China’s researches of body language are behind many western countries. People of China certainly recognize and understand body language relatively superficially. And western countries have had the persistent and deep study on the topic of body language. So it is much less for people of China to understand body language of western countries. The situation is also bound to affect the communication between China and western countries.

2.3 Significance of studying body language in China
The communicative function of body languages is often ignored by us. And even the misunderstanding of western body language often occurs. That is a disadvantage for the communication between our country and western countries. And that cannot contribute an excellent communication. As the development of global economy, the communication between people, races and even countries becomes more and more frequent. Therefore, the scholars of our country should pay more attention to the functions of body language. In the inter-cultural communication, body language often achieves the twice achievements with the half effort. Body language in non-verbal communication, an expression in eyes, a gesture and a facial expression, can make the communication more comfortable. There is no need of too many words to express your ideas. How to use the right body language is the key. Studying and absorbing the advantages of body language in western countries will make the communication with western countries more successful and escape from the misunderstanding. At another point, that also can improve the image of our country.

Body language can reflect the quality of a nation’s civilization and moral standards. In terms of this point, etiquette is a subset of body language. And Chinese nation’s traditional civilization is the foundation for our construction of socialist spiritual civilization.

China is known as serious etiquette. And so many polite body languages in the contemporary society, such as respecting elders, helping children and caring the others and so on, follow the great traditional etiquettes

Over the past 20 years of Reform and Opening Up, China has made remarkable achievements in economic construction. And people‘s life has been improved so much. Even more its international status has been enhanced rapidly. However, compared with the construction of socialist spiritual civilization of western countries, it is relatively backward in China and exposes many social problems, such as lacking of affection between people, lacking of public awareness, more uncivilized phenomenon and rising crime rate. These do not match with our country‘s image as a major power. Meanwhile, it also caused widespread social  concern.

It is a very urgent task for the contemporary society to promote civic moral standards, establish progressive civic image and speed up the construction of socialist spiritual civilization. Through developing the suitable education, building a fine moral environment and enhancing the social moral restraint mechanism and so on, the overall level of Chinese nationalism will raise gradually. So this will be an important part for China to be as the rule of virtue.
3. Brief Introduction to Body Language

3.1 Definition of body language
What’s the Body Language after all? In the “Dictionary of British and American Culture”, Hu Wenzhong (1994) said,” Body language refers to the expressions and movements to transmit the communicative information.” Faste (1970) views,” Body language is the reflection or non-reflection action of body or a part of the body when you exchange with the outside. ” In short, body language is a non-verbal communicative means to convey human beings’ feelings and ideas through the every parts of the human bodies.

Body language is the varieties one in the non-verbal languages. According to statistics, the number of the body language vocabulary can reach a few hundred thousand. Just a person’s facial expression will be more than 250,000. And 1,000 different gestures can be made by hand. An instant facial expression can reveal the person’s inner world; a subtle gesture can transmit the person’s love- hatred and sadness-happiness. It is called that observes one’s behaviors and then know one’s

3.2 Semantic Features of Body Language
During the process of communication, body language and speech language is compatible. Body language is a supplemented method for speech language communication. And its existence and change are based on the premise of the existence of speech language. By comparing it with speech language, we can conclude some semantic features of body language as follows.

3.2.1 Imagism
Speech language uses phonemes and letters to express meanings. And the relation between them is arbitrary. However, body language takes facial expressions, gestures and movements as its material forms. The combination of body language and its meaning are different because of different people. Those special expression forms are more vivid than voiced language. The speech language depends on people’s sense of hearing. But it cannot be felt by people’s sense of sighting. However, the body language works on people’s visual organs because it can transmit information with solid pictures that are built up with its stereoscopic and sensible expressions, gestures and movements. Therefore, body language has the feature of imagism.

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