Literature Review.doc

Body Language Difference in Meaning in Cross-cultural CommunicationLiterature ReviewThe scientific study of body language can be traced back to the time of ancient Greece. The famous philosopher Aristotle first made an analysis on humans actions by which humans expressed their ideas and wishes. As time goes on, body language has developed into an interdisciplinary subject concerning biology, linguistics, sociology, pedagogy, political science and the most important of all, anthropology and communicative science. Since the 1950s, many works on body language have appeared in the area of sociology and anthropology. Many anthropologists, such as American scholars Ray L. Birdwhistell and Julius Fast, basically focused their studies on the relationship between body languages and communication. The term Kinesics was initiated by Birdwhistell in his Introduction to Kinesics in 1952. It refers to the science studying the body language, and its task is to form and code humans actions and body behaviors in order to study systematically the relationship between nonverbal body movements and communication. Another American anthropologist Fast in his Body Language in 1970 thoroughly discussed the communicative meanings and functions of body language.In USA in 1959, Edward T. Hall published his book The Silent Language, which is taken as the first and foundational book of a new discipline Intercultural Communication. Then from 1960s to 1970s, with the rapid development of intercultural studies, a lot of works in this research area were published, such as A Selected Reader by David Hoopes, Intercultural Communication: A Reader by Larry Samovar & Richard Porter and An Introduction to Intercultural Communication by John Condon & Fathi Yousef (Hu Wenzhong, 1999:10-11). The study of body language has become an important component of the discipline Intercultural Communication because of the significant roles it plays in communication and its cultural variations.On the one hand, the further sociological studies have proved that body language, as the basic component of nonverbal behaviors, plays an important role in humans communication. It is said that in conversation the communicative messages conveyed by verbal behaviors only consist 30% of the whole, and the other messages are all conveyed by nonverbal means (basically body language). Psychologist Albert Mehrabian even proposed a formula: “the total effect of a piece of conveyed message7% of words38% of voice55% of facial expressions” (Yang Zi jian, 1990:577). Although we do not know whether these figures are accurate, at least they let us see the significant roles which body language plays in communication. On the other hand, scholars have found that body language is also a part of culture and is characterized by nationality. Its cultural variations already become a chief barrier to intercultural communication. From 1970s the former Soviet linguists also began their studies on cultural connotations of language and body language. They named the new discipline (the similar name in English may be Language & Culture). Among the works the representative ones are Language & Culture by I. M. Vereshchagin & V. G. Kostomarov who were the founder-members of , Theoretical Foundations of by G. D. Tomashin and so on. In contrast to the studies of Western scholars, the former Soviet and now Russian linguists study body language with a literary approach, that is to say, they try to analyze meanings and functions of body language with examples from classic literary works, a good attempt at combining body language study with language or literary teaching.Scholars at home have also contributed a lot. In China the scientific study of body language only began at the end of 1980s. The representative works are Introduction to Body Language by Geng Erling (1988), Language and Culture by Deng Yanchang and Liu Runqing (Chapter XIV) (1989), Practical Body Language edited by Fan Yunhua and Li Jiequn (1991), Language and Culture: Introduction to Russian by Gu Yijin and Wu Guohua (Volume II) (1991), Intercultural Communication by Jia Yuxin (1997), Intercultural Nonverbal Communication by Bi Jiwan (1999), and the series of books on intercultural communication edited and translated by Hu Wenzhong such as Introduction to Intercultural Communication (1999), etc. The author of this article has also made a survey on China's academic periodical network . The result is: in the sections of “Arts Science” and “General Education and Social Science” from 1994 to 2002, the author has hit 79 papers altogether by typing “体态语” or “身势语” as keywords and 7 papers altogether by typing “体态语  文化差异” or “身势语  文化差异” as keywords.Generally speaking, the Chinese scholars studies on body languages consist of two parts: communicative functions and cultural differences. On the basis of foreign scholars researches Chinese scholars have added more specific and convincing examples from Chinese culture.Judging from what is mentioned above; we can see that cultural differences of body language, as barriers to intercultural communication, have already drawn an increasing attention from scholars