Body Language: Cultural Differences

 Body language messages are demonstrated by every human being whether transmitted as an intentional message or sent subconsciously with no intended communication attempted.  The use of ones body is a common means by which individuals communicate nonverbally with one another.  But depending upon the culture of the individual, the communicator will often exhibit her or his own specific breed of body based lingo.  Even as some cultures will communicate their messages mainly through their speech as in the low context American culture, other cultures depend on high context communication by clarifying their messages by other non verbal means such as body language.  Of course this is just a general rule of thumb and not one which certain culture members will deviate from, but it is typically true that most members of a culture will adhere to the communication traditions of her or his culture.

 While people from the United States typically possess individualistic characteristics, those from Asian countries are usually considered to be collectivistic and the characteristics indicative of each type of culture shows through in the body language use.  For instance, U.S. Americans have typical standards for social distances that are a little more flexible than Asians.  Asians, on the other hand, adhere to social distance rules that are a bit more stringent.  So if a U.S. American saddles up to you in order to have a conversation and it seems oh so close, this still doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that this is her or his usual communicative distance.  Asian individuals, though, will often follow the rules of their culture which suggests a standard distance that is much further apart than a U.S. American will usually follow.