Cross-Cultural Communication Definition

Cross - Cultural Communication

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, there are various ways people use to communicate. We communicate for various reasons, to persuade, build relationships, give information, entertainment and to present your viewpoints. The most common ways can be broadly categorised as verbal and non-verbal communication. This can be used as a tool to connect people from different places. In this essay, I will explore different behavioural constraints that will potentially lead to variations in verbal and non-verbal communication styles between Thai and native English speakers. The definition of cross-cultural communication can be separated into two parts. Firstly, ‘cross-cultural relates to different cultures or comparison between them

This includes the face expressions, eye contact and body language. Firstly, the facial expressions will be able to portray what your perspective is towards certain topics, as well as portraying the information that you might not want to communicate orally. For example, a smile can indicate your approval towards certain topic, while a frown face can portray disagreement or disapproval. Secondly, by making eye contact with someone is powerful as this is instinctive and it will be able to grab attention from other people towards certain topics. The third example of non-verbal communication is the body language. By understanding and recognising what each body language mean will potentially benefit you in a way that you will be able to learn and read people more easily. All of these examples will likely to be used as a tool to enhance your styles of communication or the way you communicate. This type of communication describes the process of shared cues between people, which goes hand-in-hand with public speaking. By communicating face-to-face or through video communication will also possess different effect in this type of communication. Face-to-face communication, in a sense can have a more powerful impact if compared to communicating through video communication. This is because face-to-face communication can build trust towards the person you are communicating with, creating opportunities, boosting

The behavioural constraints that resulted in different styles of communication is clearly depicted between Thai and native English speakers as these two groups of people have almost a completely different cultures, as well as they way they lived in their daily life. The reasons for having different behavioural constraints include culture and traditions, beliefs and superstition and religions differences. These contribute to structuring your communication either orally or non-verbally and there are various factors to consider such as the word choices, sentence construction, the facial expressions and body language. A quote by Paulo Freire, ‘only through communication can human life hold meaning’. This perfectly defined the importance of communication in our lives as it gives meaning to us, human being and without it, everything would be almost impossible to understand. In the end, it does not matter what our culture is or what our belief is as we will still be able to connect with other people through different means of