Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach by Neuliep James W

Author:Neuliep, James W. [Neuliep, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2016-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

8 The Nonverbal Code

© iStockphoto.com/Carol_Ann_Peacock

Learning Objectives

Define nonverbal communication

Compare and contrast verbal and nonverbal codes

Identify and define the eight different channels of nonverbal communication

Compare and contrast the eight different channels of nonverbal communication across cultures

Recount the fundamental assumptions of the nonverbal expectancy violations theory

Try to imagine what it would be like if you were unable to comprehend the meaning of a nonverbal gesture. Imagine that you have traveled to Japan for a study-abroad semester. You have been in Japan for only a short time. Today, you are out shopping with a Japanese acquaintance in downtown Tokyo. While looking over some expensive designer clothing items, you notice that your Japanese friend takes the index and middle fingers of his right hand, pretends to lick them, and then wipes his eyebrows. He does this several times. Although you suspect this is meaningful in some way, you have no idea what it signifies. Your uncertainty level skyrockets. Are you doing something wrong? Is he trying to tell you something? Is your acquaintance just weird? A native Japanese person would not be anxious about this at all because he or she would understand that your friend is simply trying to tell you that the expensive designer clothing items you are considering are fakes. Do not be too alarmed by what has just happened to you. Research shows that the longer you stay in Japan, or any other culture, the more your ability to recognize gestures—and, hence, your intercultural communication competence—will increase.2

When you interact with someone from a different culture, a challenge you will face is learning the implicit rules of interpersonal communication. Becoming interculturally competent requires that you acquire some understanding of the verbal language of the new culture, but even more important is that you become proficient in your host culture’s nonverbal system of communication. And like the verbal system of communication, the nonverbal system not only varies across cultures but also varies between men and women within any culture.

Many linguists, psychologists, and sociologists believe that human language evolved from a system of nonlinguistic (nonverbal) communication. To these scholars, language and communication are not the same. As humans, we possess a host of nonlinguistic ways to communicate with one another through the use of our hands, arms, faces, and personal space. When we combine verbal and nonverbal language, we create an intricate communication system through which humans come to know and understand one another.3

All animals interact nonlinguistically—that is, nonverbally—through sight, sound, smell, or touch. Moths, for example, communicate by smell and color. Through smell, some species of male moths can detect female moths miles away. Elephants communicate with low-frequency sound waves undetectable to humans. Felines are well known for rubbing their scent on (marking) people and objects to communicate their ownership of them. This kind of animal or nonlinguistic communication is probably innate and invariant within a particular species.

Most scholars also recognize that a significant portion of our nonverbal behavior, such as the facial expressions accompanying certain emotions, is innate and varies little across cultures.

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