A Comparative Study On Chinese And American Verbal Communication Patterns

The increasingly close intercultural communication is one of our world's prominent characteristics. Although new advances in transportation and communication technology have removed many of the physical barriers against communication between the world people, there remain cultural barriers people must overcome in order to achieve successful communication between different cultural groups. Culture has a subtle and far-reaching influence on human communication. Each culture offers specific rules of speech and communication patterns for members to follow. Any behavior of members is governed by these rules of social interactions and reflects the attributes of this culture. Consequently, cultural diversity in behavior (esp. in speech behavior) is the main difficulty people face in intercultural communication. Because of considerable differences in their cultural backgrounds, miscommunication doesn't occur uncommonly between Chinese and Americans. To resolve the cultural problems that hinder Sino-American communication, this thesis has made a cultural inquiry into Sino-American communication. The efforts are devoted to a comparative study of their different communication patterns (esp. different modes of speech) and the examination of the cultural roots of such differences.This thesis falls into four parts: I. Introduction; II. An Intercultural Study of Chinese and American Verbal Communication Patterns; III. Miscommunication between Chinese and Americans; IV. Conclusion.Part I begins with the definition of culture and communication and then explores their interconnection. Because cultural patterns serve as the basic roots of human communication behavior, a general study is made on Sino-American cultural orientations as well as on their different cultural characteristics, the focus being on Hofstede's and Hall's dimension of culturalvariability--individualism-collectivism and low- and high-contextcommunication. The cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede and Hall7prove to be very effective in explaining communication differences across cultures and hence become the foundation for the subsequent study on differences between Chinese and American verbal communication patterns. The last section is to convince you of the significance and necessity of the intercultural study in this thesis.Part II makes a comparison of different verbal communication patterns in Sino-American culture and the emphasis is on the cultural roots of such differences.Given that communication is a social process and it always takes place within a given society at a given time, it is imperative for us to examine the underlying cultural assumptions, beliefs and expectations concerning how people perceive themselves and how they relate to each other in order to gain a profound understanding of the ways they communicate. To begin with, different interpersonal orientations are observed between China and America. Interpersonal relationship in the Chinese context is underpinned by collectivism and the Confucian ethic principles of Ren (-fH) and Li (-^L), which emphasize proper personal relationships and people's devotion to the hierarchical social relations. By contrast, individualism and equality serve as the basic rules of interpersonal interactions in the American culture. Considering these differences, it is understandable that the main function of Chinese communication is to preserve harmony within the group, but to Americans, communication is primarily utilized to achieve individual goals and self-autonomy.Another attempt is made to discuss the relative importance of contextual cues in organizing and interpreting messages in the American and Chinese culture. While in the American low-context communication, most of the information is embedded in the explicit code, in the Chinese high-context culture, people like to express themselves implicitly and the listener is expected to understand the speaker's intentions, interpreting his or her messages as part of the whole context. Consequently, unlike the AmericansIV...