| As a newly budding branch of science, the study of nonverbal communication onlybegan in1950s, although nonverbal communication has a much longer history than verbalcommunication. For a long time, people in their daily life normally put a strong emphasison verbal communication. It is true that verbal language is a chief means ofcommunication. However, there are also other ways being employed to express feelingsand convey messages such as silence. Silence composes the major part of nonverbalcommunication. It has stayed out of awareness and been defined negatively as merely theabsence of speech or communication. Using and interpreting silence correctly can makeexchange (interpersonal or intercultural) more smoothly and make mutual understandingeasier.With the fast steps of globalization, people among different countries, regions andcultures have contacted more and more frequently. As two large languages in the world,Chinese and English play leading roles in politics, economy and cultures. Just as verballanguage is the carrier of culture, nonverbal behavior–silence is also culture-bound. Ininter-cultural communication, verbal language can be acquired by studying, while theacquisition and understanding of silence must rely on the comprehension of culture andvalue concept.Recently, with the development of pragmatics, more and more scholars at home andabroad begin to pay close attention to silence in communication. However, most scholarsdo research on silence according to all kinds of pragmatic theories and few studies doneon silence from an inter-cultural perspective. What’s more, many scholars use thequalitative method to analyze silence and few use the quantitative method. For studentswho are major in English linguistics, it is very important to apply linguistic theories todaily life.This thesis focuses on the phenomenon of silence in English and Chinese films andelaborates cultural similarities and differences represented by these two languages fromthe perspective of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The cultural difference is one of majorfactors causing the failure of inter-cultural communication. The theory–Hofstede’scultural dimensions is very important to analyze the cultural difference. He takes adescription from five cultural dimensions, namely, collectivism/individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, femininity/masculinity, long-/short-term orientation. Inthis paper, the author carries out the research only on the basis of power distance anduncertainty avoidance dimensions. This author draws19English films and14Chinesefilms at random to collect100silences respectively. By quantification, there are12silences due to power distance and17silences due to uncertainty avoidance in Englishfilms while there are26silences due to power distance and13silences due to uncertaintyavoidance in Chinese films. Hofstede’s research which has been done in IBM Corporationproduces a clear and thorough illustration of what is valued in each culture. PowerDistance Index (PDI) for China is80, that is, PDI for Chinese culture is80. PDI forUnited States is40and for Great Britain is35, that is, PDI for English culture is37.5bysynthesizing. Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) for China is30, that is, UAI for Chineseculture is30. UAI for United States is46and for Great Britain is35, that is, UAI forEnglish culture is40by synthesizing.The data that this author has obtained are generally consistent with Hofstede’s data inproportion. Therefore, it can be proven that Hofstede’s results are right. To summarize,Chinese culture is high power distance, but English culture is low power distance. BothChinese and English belong to low uncertainty avoidance, and Chinese culture is slightlylower than English culture.This thesis is conducive not only to improve the ability of students’ inter-culturalcommunication but also to strengthen the cooperation, eliminate the potentialmisunderstanding and lessen communication barriers or even conflicts. This thesis is alsoenriched with theories of inter-cultural communication. |
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