Cross-cultural Communication, Nonverbal Behavior

Generally speaking, human communication is performed in two ways: vocal language communication and nonverbal communication. Although the former is a more important form , we cannot neglect the latter, which is an important complement to the former. For instance, human vocal communication is always accompanied by kinesics, paralanguage, object language, environmental language and so on. American anthropologist Birdwhistell claims that 65% information is conveyed through nonverbal communication. With the development of the society,we have more chances to communicate with people from other countries. Intercultural communication is no longer strange to us. Since different nonverbal behaviors have different meanings in different cultures, conflicts are unavoidable. Nonverbal communication is attracting more and more scholars' attention. On the basis of different cultures, the paper makes an analysis of nonverbal communication so as to find ways to deal with the conflicts and achieve success in intercultural communication.