chopsueyyour actions speak louder

2021年1月19日发(作者：execute)
Your Actions Speak Louder
A Peace Corps staff member is hurriedly called to a town in Ethiopia to deal with reports that
one
of
the
volunteers
is
treating
Ethiopians
like
dogs.
What
could
the
volunteer
be
doing
to
communicate that?





A volunteer in Nigeria has great trouble getting any discipline in his class, and it is known
that the students have no respect for him because he has shown no self-respect. How has he shown
that?





Neither
volunteer
offended
his
hosts
with
words.
But
both
of
them
were
unaware
of
what
they had communicated through their nonverbal behavior.





In the first case, the volunteer working at a health center would go into the waiting room and
call for the next patient. She did this as she would in America
－

by pointing with her finger to
the next patient and beckoning him to come. Acceptable in the States, but in Ethiopia her pointing
gesture is for children and her beckoning signal is for dogs. In Ethiopia one points to a person by
extending
the
arm
and
hand
and
beckons
by
holding
the
hand
out,
palm
down,
and
closing
it
repeatedly.





In
the
second
case,
the
volunteer
insisted
that
students
look
him
in
the
eye
to
show
attentiveness, in a country where prolonged eye contact is considered disrespectful.




While the most innocent American- English gesture may have insulting, embarrassing, or at
least confusing connotations in another culture, the converse is also true. If foreign visitors were to
bang
on
the
table
and
hiss
at
the
waiter
for
service
in
a
New
York
restaurant,
they
would
be
fortunate if they were only thrown out. Americans might find foreign students overly polite if they
bow.





It seems easier to accept the arbitrariness of language
－

that dog is chien in French or aja in
Yoruba
－

than the differences in the emotionally laden behavior of nonverbal communication,
which in many ways is just as arbitrary as language.





We assume that our way of talking and gesturing is
differently
are
somehow
playing
with
nature.
This
assumption
leads
to
a
blindness
about
intercultural behavior. And individuals are likely
to remain blind and unaware of what they are
communicating nonverbally, because the hosts will seldom tell them that they have committed a
social
blunder.
It
is
true
to
tell
people
they
are
rude;
thus
the
hosts
grant
visitors
a

license,
which ones prove disastrous.





An additional handicap is that
the visitors have not entered the new setting as free agents,
able to detect and adopt new ways of communicating without words. They are prisoners of their
own
culture
and
interact
within
their
own
framework.
Yet
the
fact
remains
that
for
maximum
understanding the visitor using the words of another language also must learn to use the tools of
nonverbal communication of that culture.





Nonverbal
communication
－

teaching
it
and
measuring
effect
－

is
more
difficult
than
formal language instruction. But now that language has achieved its proper recognition as being
essential for success, the area of nonverbal behavior should be taught to people who will live in
another
country
in
a
systematic
way,
giving
them
actual
experiences,
awareness,
sensitivity.
Indeed, it is the rise in linguistic fluency which now makes nonverbal fluency even more critical.
A linguistically fluent visitor may tend to offend even more than those who don't speak as well if
that
visitor
shows
ignorance
about
interface
etiquette;
the
national
may
perceive
this
disparity

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