Results (
Thai) 1:
[Copy]Copied!
Cross-cultural Nonverbal ClashesCross-cultural misunderstandings aren’t limited to verbal communication, according to Siu Wa Tang, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at Irvine (Emmons, 1998). When Dr. Tang and a colleague visited pharmaceutical plants in Changchun, China, Tang was well accepted but his colleague was not. The Chinese took an immediate and strong dislike to the colleague. Tang says the problem was facial expressions. His American colleague used facial expressions that Americans would interpret as showing honesty and directness, but the Chinese people interpreted the colleague as aggressive and rude. Based on this experience, Tang conducted experiments to test the universality of facial expressions. He found that a few basic feelings and expressions were understood across cultures. Happiness and sadness, for example, were nonverbally expressed in similar ways. However, other facial expressions did not translate so well. Nine out of ten Americans interpreted a photograph of a face as showing fear, yet six of ten Japanese identified the same photograph as expressing surprise or sadness. A photo that nine of ten Americans identified as showing anger was interpreted by 75% of Japanese as expressing disgust or contempt. Another source of cross-cultural nonverbal misunderstandings is eye contact. Americans generally consider it polite to look another person in the eye when conversing, but Japanese look at each other’s cheeks; to look another in the eyes is perceived as very aggressive. Cross-cultural communication clashes may also occur over gift-giving (Axtell, 1990a, 1990b). An American might offend a Chinese person with the gift of a clock because clocks symbolize death in China. Giving a gift to an Arab person on first meeting would be interpreted as a bribe. Bringing flowers to a dinner hosted by a person from Kenya would puzzle the host because in Kenya flowers are given only to express sympathy over a loss. And the Swiss consider even numbers of flowers bad luck, so giving a dozen is inappropriate, and the recipient would probably interpret the gift as reflecting ill will.
Being translated, please wait..
