Non-Verbal Communication Technique - Term Paper Example

? 30 November The topic The feature on which I have focused my efforts in this paperis “impact of appearance on non-verbal communication in a multicultural setting”. Communication in a multicultural setting is complicated because of lack of people’s knowledge of and proficiency in foreign languages. Therefore, to convey their meaning effectively, people frequently make use of such non-verbal tools of communication as pictures, facial expressions, body language, and gestures. During this research, I have tried one technique of non-verbal communication in different inter-cultural settings i.e. appearance. In this technique, I would just wear the clothes of cultures different from my own and see how this affects my experience of communication in a multicultural setting. In this paper, I have shared the results and have discussed in which experiments, this technique enhanced my ability to communicate across cultures and why. Rationale Today, we live in an increasingly multicultural and globalized world. Every day, we get to meet and socialize with people from backgrounds of many cultural varieties. Lack of foreign languages certainly hinders our ability to communicate across cultures. But at the same time, the importance of social networking across cultures in the contemporary age cannot be overstated. Be it school, office, or a restaurant, we have to encounter and communicate with people from other cultures and retreating from this is simply not an option. While verbal communication in the inter-cultural setting has been a much studied subject, the non-verbal communication in an inter-cultural setting remains a passive subject of research although it is no less important than the verbal communication. This imparts the need to study how the non-verbal communication across cultures can be enhanced so that people’s experience of socializing with people from different cultural backgrounds can be improved. Research In an experiment conducted in Quebec in the year 2001, the researchers tried to find out whether ethnicity influences people’s tendency to perceive smiles in others.1 For this purpose, the research participants were shown pictures of people belonging to different ethnicities like African, Caucasian, and Asian and were asked to identify the pictures in which the people were smiling. The researchers found that the research participants were more likely to identify the pictures of smiling people who were of their own ethnicity as compared to the pictures of people from other ethnicities. “People tend to favor a member of the in-group over an out-group member when distributing positive outcomes such as rewards to others”. 1 It so happens because of the fact that “[c]ulture strongly influences, and in many cases determines, our interpretations”.2 The famous Indian political leader Jawaharlal Nehru also emphasized upon developing an understanding of different cultures to be able to communicate better across cultures. “If we seek to understand a people, we have to try to put ourselves, as far as we can, in that particular historical and cultural background…If we wish to convince them, we have to use their language as far as we can, not language in the narrow sense of the word, but the language of the mind. That is one necessity” (Nehru cited in3). Adler states that there are certain non-verbal behaviors that can facilitate the conveyance of meaning between two or more people from different cultural backgrounds that include visual restatements, gestures, demonstration, pauses, and summaries. Description of my experiments For this research, I conducted three experiments in total in three different settings, one of which was a school, the other was a clothes’ shop, and the third was a wedding ceremony. One thing that was common between them was that all three were multicultural settings. Experiment 1 I conducted this experiment in my school on an event when students were allowed to dress up in the outfits of their choice. In my school, there are people from different cultures including the Indians, the Africans, the Americans, and the Arabs. For this experiment, I tried to communicate with seniors from different cultures rather than my own class because I did not want the results of my experiment biased because of my previous friendship with the people I communicated with. On that occasion, I dressed up in an Arabic clothing. I wore a turban on my head and a long white gown that dropped from my shoulders all the way to my feet. When I arrived at the school and tried to communicate with my seniors from different cultures. I found that on that particular day, I was able to communicate with the seniors of the Arabic origin with much more comfort and ease than I had ever felt while communicating with my Arabic class fellows. The guy named Khalid indeed knew that I was just dressed up as an Arabic and was personally not Arabic. From his attitude, I could assess that he appreciated this effort of mine and accordingly, our conversation went longer than I could expect with a stranger like him. On the other hand, when I tried to communicate with seniors from the Indian, or Chinese cultures, those experiences were like the usual experiences of discomfort in communication that I had always felt while communicating with people from other cultures. Experiment 2 This experiment was conducted in a clothes’ shop. I dressed up as an Indian. I wore a shalwar kameez with a pair of khussas in my feet. As a customer, I was free to wear anything I wanted to. I met with three salespersons, one was Indian, the other was Japanese, and the third was from Philippine. Of the three, the Indian salesperson’s response was the best. I went to each one by one. While the other two dealt with me like salespersons normally deal with customers, the Indian salesperson wore a smile on his face constantly. I was surprised to notice that more than me, he was eager to communicate with me and although he didn’t know English well and I didn’t know Hindi at all, we developed such a bond with each other that I could understand what he wanted to speak and he understood my meaning immediately too. It was like the bond between us was empowered so much that it was not obstructed by the lack of proficiency in each other’s language. In fact, he became my friend and also invited me to have a lunch at his home with his family. I guess he did that because he wanted to provide me with a greater insight into the Indian culture because he had sensed from my dressing that I liked Indian culture. Experiment 3 This experiment was conducted in a wedding of my cousin. This experiment was different from the first two and was a kind of counter check since in this experiment, I wanted to check what would happen if I dressed differently than all other people who shared a common culture at a place when I also belonged to their culture. The wedding was a very private event and nobody from outside the family was invited. So basically there were my siblings, parents, uncles and aunts, and cousins etcetera. While all of them were elegantly dressed in the traditional American wedding attires, I arrived at the wedding in the same Indian outfit that I had wore at the clothes’ shop. I faced a lot of criticism non-verbally. Although my family members knew that it was me inside those clothes, yet many of my cousins that had been my friends since childhood behaved as if they didn’t know me well. While we did communicate normally, but I could sense absurd, if not negative messages in their body language as they communicated with me. It was not that my dress was bad in any way. It was just that it didn’t go with the setting in which I was where everybody was representing one culture and I was representing a culture from outside. The nonverbal communication between my family members and I was so irritating that I had to go back to my room and wear the clothes that represented my own culture. Conclusion The conclusion that I draw from these experiments is that the appearance in general and the way we dress in particular has a fundamental impact on our nonverbal communication in a multicultural setting. The findings of my experiments second those of Beaupre and Hess who stated that people are biased toward the members of the in-group in the distribution of positive outcomes. However, my findings add to theirs in this respect that one may not necessarily be from a certain culture to gain the empathy and love of the people of that culture; even a simple incentive taken as dressing like them inculcates respect and love in other people for an individual which has a very positive impact on the nonverbal communication between them. By dressing like them, we show people from a certain culture that we are making an effort to understand them better and have gone an extra mile in showing our love for their culture. As a result of this realization, people from that culture welcome us wholeheartedly and communicate with us in a very good mood. Something as simple as a dress works wonders in facilitating and improving the quality of communication across cultures. Another very important conclusion that I can draw particularly from my third experiment that while an individual’s attempt to associate with another culture is appreciated in a multicultural setting, the individual’s similar attempt in a setting of his/her own culture is equally disliked and declines the quality of nonverbal communication between the individual and others. Dressing may be just one way of showing one’s likeness for another culture. There can be many ways that an individual can achieve a similar effect while communicating with people from other cultures. Sometimes, even a small sign like wearing a shirt with a message of intercultural unity and harmony might suffice. I intend to use the technique of wearing the outfits of other cultures in the future particularly when I go to places where there would be a majority of those people and socializing with them would be important for me academically, career-wise, or socially. Furthermore, I also intend to conduct more experiments of similar kinds in which I intend to check the effect of other tools and techniques on nonverbal communication in multicultural settings. I am moved a lot by the strength of effect of dressing on the nonverbal communication in a multicultural setting and I am convinced that much can be done to improve the experience of interaction and communication across cultures with little effort. Works Cited: Adler, Nancy J. “Communicating across Cultural Barriers.” 1991. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. . Beaupre, Martin G., and Hess, Ursula. “In my mind, we all smile: A case of in-group favoritism.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 39 (2003): 371-377. Schmidt, Patrick L. In Search of Intercultural Understanding. Austria: Meridian World Press, 2007. Print. Read More