Abstract

Different Aspects of Intercultural Nonverbal Communication: A Study

Author(s): Saurabh Kaushal

Communication is a dynamic and wide process with its ever changing roles of sending and receiving information, ideas, emotions and the working of mind. Communication is not only a word but a term in itself with multiple interpretations. Out of a number of forms, there are two very important kinds of communication, verbal and non-verbal and the relation between them is inseparable. Non-verbal communication keeps the major portion of the periphery occupied and in absence of it communication can never happen. In the era of caveman, just using nonverbal communication could help to understand the other person, but in the complex society of today both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication are needed to fully understand each other. We start taking lessons in nonverbal communication from the very starting of our life from parents and the society in which we are surviving. There is a very common perception among people that for understanding any oral message we have to concentrate and subsequently be able to understand the nonverbal elements, but in reality nonverbal communication is not as easy to understand as it seems to be. Often it is misinterpreted and because of that wrong message is understood by the receiver. Another widely accepted fact states that by focusing upon the body language of a person we can predict how he/she feels about any situation. But all that varies from context to context, from culture to culture. Studies in the field of nonverbal communication have well illustrated the fact. Since nonverbal behavior arises from our cultural common sense, we use different systems of understanding gestures, postures, and silence, emotional expressions, touch, physical appearance, and other nonverbal cues including personality. This paper focuses mostly upon the basic understanding required to be taken into consideration while understanding non verbal elements along with verbal elements in different cultural settings.

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