The Importance Of Body Language In Intercultural Communication

Communication is generally defined as the transferring of messages from sender to receiver. Samovar et al (2012) explained that every communication is an attempt to persuade, inform and entertain. People communicates via various channels, signs, symbols and languages, and generate meanings from it. The meanings generated comes from specific and unique cultural context (DeVito, 2009). Different people who comes from different cultures may have different meanings generated, therefore intercultural communication happens when people from different cultural beliefs, values or ways of behaving starts to transmit messages among each other (DeVito, 2009).

DeVito (2009) mentioned that intercultural communication studies the components of perception,

Body languages are useful to express true emotions and attitudes of a person. Although the body languages are presented differently with diverse meanings in between cultures, but it is functionally important in intercultural communications. Shi and Fan (2010) showed that the body languages were effective for the English learners to acquire information and communicate with people from different cultures. This showed that non-verbal behaviors are the alternative for people to express their ideas with each other. Non-verbal behaviors assist to transmit the messages through the shared meanings in between communicators. However, people from different cultures may not necessary to have a similar shared meanings. This resulted in the misunderstandings created if the meanings do not being shared in between different cultures. For instance, the OK signs that showed by using the fingers is not a universal sign, but it means zero for France, and money in Japan (De Mooij, 2005). Hence, the utilization of non-verbal signs and symbols needs to be careful in the intercultural communication as people need to well aware of its meanings that generated by different