Comparison Of Verbal Behaviors In Different Chinese And American Interpersonal Relationships

"Once a human being has arrived on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationship he makes with others and what happens to him in the world about him."(Knapp, 1984, xiv). Along with the development of transportation and information technology, the globalization of economy and the increase of population, communication is not confined to between persons in one culture. It has become a cross-cultural-, intercultural- interpersonal exchange. Successful intercultural-interpersonal communication requires the knowledge of different cultural values and language in a broad sense. In a narrow sense, inappropriate verbal behaviors can lead to the failure of intercultural-interpersonal communication. That is to say, we can not ignore the function of verbal behaviors in communication.Although there is a vast amount of research on verbal communication behaviors between Chinese and Americans, the extents of manifestation of those verbal behaviors in different interpersonal relationships are not very well understood. Hence, the thesis first reviews the verbal behaviors that result from the religious beliefs, and cultural values between Chinese and Americans. Chinese verbal communication is generally characterized with indirect, implicit and unassertive behaviors while Americans'verbal communication is featured by direct, explicit and assertive behaviors. The same verbal behaviors shared by both Chinese and Americans are taboo-avoidance behaviors.The author studies Fiske's theory of social relational model, which categorizes social relations into communal sharing, equality matching, authority ranking and market pricing relationships. The extents of manifestation of those verbal behaviors in different interpersonal relationships are identified based on Fiske's social relational model. The type of relational model individuals use in their interpersonal communication determines what type of verbal behaviors individuals enact in their relationships, and how they interpret the behavior of their interlocutors. Because relational models play this central function in determining interpersonal behaviors, their verbal behaviors would manifest themselves in different patterns in different interpersonal relationships. The prediction was tested with a questionnaire in Chinese and American contexts in terms of direct/implicit, assertive/unassertive verbal behaviors and taboo-avoidance behaviors. The results show that the extents of the manifestations of direct and assertive verbal behaviors differ greatly in the four interpersonal relationships among the Chinese sample while the extents of the manifestations of direct and assertive verbal behaviors differ little in the four relationships among Americans. Chinese tend to be direct and assertive in communal sharing relationship while indirect and unassertive in other relationships. However, Americans are likely to be direct and assertive in all four relationships. In terms of taboo-avoidance verbal behavior, the extents of its manifestation in different interpersonal relationships differ greatly among both Chinese and Americans, but the avoided topics are different to an extent. In communal sharing relationship, Chinese do not usually prefer topics concerning sexuality most while Americans avoid topics concerning"family life"most compared with other topics. In other three relationships, the degrees of avoiding the topics of"family life","sexuality","personal affairs"and"unpleasant matters"are high for both Chinese and Americans.