6. The Principles of Reducing Barriers in Communication
As idiom goes “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” It is the main principle in communication. This principle refers that communicators should respect and understand the culture of the other nations and eliminate the interference of their own cultures. According to this principle, we should know the differences of their customs, believes and their connotations of body language. For example,
(25) In China, people will give chrysanthemum to the patient. But French people never do this. Because they think chrysanthemum is used in funerals.
But we should pay attention to two points, when we apply this principle. On the one hand, we should not worship and imitate the whole body language blindly. On the other hand, we should not be trapped in the fixed mode of cultures. For example,
(26) People think Americans behave informally in any situation and Englishmen are always conservative. In fact, all communicative modes change with the differences of time, situation and contents.
The other principle indicates that we should conclude the rules by comparison and contrasts of different cultures and exclude the interferences of cultures to avoid cultural confliction. In the application of this principle, we should keep a tolerant attitude towards the differences of cultures, believes, customs and so on to avoid prejudice and superiority.
So in the communication, we can make full use of these principles, exclude fixed mode of culture and keep open and understanding attitude towards cultural differences.
7. Conclusion
We have discussed the differences and similarities on body language and principles of reducing barriers in communication above. Being a branch of the means of nonverbal communication, body language can help us solve a lot of problems we meet. The study of body language makes us understand others very well and behave in proper ways without making too many mistakes. It is difficult to master body language because of its complexity, but we can improve our communicative abilities if we try to the utmost of our efforts to learn what we should know and follow the principles mentioned above. What we should do is to remember how people from different cultures act and to keep an understanding and tolerant attitude towards the differences. Only when we make a clear understanding on body language, can we use body language of English speaking countries to make an efficient communication and avoid misunderstanding.
Bibliography
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[4]同[1]
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