A Comparative Study Of Nonverbal Communication In American And Chinese Food And Drink Advertisements: From The Cultural Value Perspective

As an indispensable and important composition of communication, nonverbalcommunication is a product of culture. It is confined by culture, and at the same time, itreflects the culture more directly and clearly. In the international communications, the verbalcommunications can be acquired by the study on language. While the acquisition andunderstanding of the nonverbal communications must rely on the comprehension of theculture and the value concept.Advertisements are overwhelming. They attract people to the products and spread thevalue invisibly. As a branch of the general advertisements, food and drink advertisements canembody the culture better. Therefore, a comparative study of the differences and similarities ofthe nonverbal communications in the American and Chinese food and drink advertisementscan facilitate our understanding and analysis on the differences and similarities of two culturesand values, and help us understand other countries'cultures better.According to Hofstede, Malandro and other scholars'theories on value orientations andnonverbal communications, the thesis contrasts and analyzes the nonverbal behaviors in 180American and Chinese food and drink advertisements from the body movements, clothes andappearances, and logo perspectives. The aim is to identify the reciprocity between nonverbalcommunications and the cultural value. By proposing two research questions and threehypotheses, the thesis discusses how nonverbal communications in the food and drinkadvertisements reflect cultural values and how cultural values influence nonverbalcommunications and bring forth the differences and similarities to nonverbal communicationsbetween the western and oriental cultures.By means of the data and content analysis on sample advertisements, we can see that: first,although there are more and more economic and cultural cooperation among countries, thecultural assimilation is not so obvious, that is, as a nation's soul, the cultural value will not bereplaced by another one; second, the differences and similarities of the nonverbalcommunications existing in two countries'food and drink advertisements more clearly reflectthe differences and similarities in two cultural values, that is, the nonverbal communicationsdo show a country's culture and value to some extent. Therefore, the number or the amounts ofthe differences in cultural values are more than that of similarities existing in nonverbalcommunications according to our analyses on two countries'advertisements.