Cultural Difference In Nonverbal Communication And The Development Of Intercultural Communicative Competence

Human communication covers two forms: verbal and nonverbal. Verbalcomrnunication is commonly thought as our most important, efficient, powerful means ofcommnunication. Because of this we are apt to overlook nonverbal means of humancommunication. By far, much attention has been given to the research on verbalcommunication. And much stress has been laid on the verbal form of interculturalcommunication. However, in face-to-face communication the bulk of information is sentand received through nonverbal channels. It is estimated that no more than 30% ofinfonnation in social communication is carried by words, the other 70% is conveyedthrough nonverbal means. This suggests that nonverbal communication plays a vital rolein human communication.The study of nonverbal communication is a young branch of learning. It has beengrowing rapidly since the 1950's.Since the study of nonverbal communication emerged asan ii~dependent discipline. It has aroused the interest of many anthropologists, linguists,psychologists, sociologists and language teachers. There is an increasing amount ofresearch findings in this area. However, the systematic research on nonverbalcommunication from the perspective of intercultural communication in our country hasnot gone far although some scholars have done some work. The writer of this dissertationintends to explore the cultural differences in nonverbal communication in the hope ofincreasing learners' cultural awareness in intercultural communication and developingtheir intercultural communicative competence.This dissertation is divided into six chapters.Chapter One is the introduction, which provides a historical background anddevelopment of nonverbal communication research, and at the same time gives a briefaccount of the current state of nonverbal communication study in China. This chapter endsby putting forward the purpose of this dissertation.Chapter Two deals with the exploration on the nature of human communication,which covers the definition of communication, the components of communication, thecharacteristic of communication and forms of communication.Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the core chapters of this dissertation. ChapterThree is concerned with nonverbal communication. It focuses on four key points ofnonverbal communication. That is, the importance of nonverbal communication, thefunction of nonverbal communication, the characteristics of nonverbal communication aridthe taxonomies of nonverbal communication.Chapter Four illustrates the relationship between nonverbal communication andculture. It gives a detail account of the nonverbal intercultural differences in kinesics,proxemics, paralanguage and time language. This chapter also explores the developmentof intercultural communicative competence, including the notion of ICC competence,models of ICC competence, components of ICC competence, the relationship betweenICC competence and communicative competence. And finally, the author talks aboutsome techniques of developing ICC competence and discusses some possible ways to helpachieve the aim.Chapter Five giyes implication of nonverbal communication in FLT. The authorholds that ICC competence includes nonverbal communicative competence. If our aim ofFLT is to cultivate learners?ICC competence, then nonverbal behavior must surely beinvolved in the learning process. Only when. we realize the importance of nonverbalcommunicative competence and develop the learners?abilities to use it correctly, can ourFLT be a success. Within this chapter, the author proposes some suggestions for nonverbalcommunication teaching in classroom.Chapter Six comes to the conclusion that nonverbal communication playssignificant role in successful intercultural communication. To cultivate learners' ICCcompetence, the cultural divergence in nonverbal communication must be given enoughattention to.