Nonverbal Communication

We live in a world with abundance of people, which means we have to interact with each other, no matter whether you are willing to do so. The simplest and clearest way either to let others know what you mean and what you want or to understand what others mean and what others want is using language to convey our thoughts and information. However, it is not appropriate, at lease in some specific situation, to use such an explicit and outside method to express our feelings. Therefore, nonverbal communication is necessary. Instead of saying nonverbal communication is another way of expression, it is more reasonably and logically defined it as a complementary method of human communication.

Gestures, eye contact, postures and facial expression are widely known as nonverbal communication. They vary from one culture to another. People from different countries may feel the first culture shock by this nonverbal communication.
For example, in the United State, people tend to use their hands to convey their friendly greet. They would like to hit you on your arm or your fist. When I entered my dorm, the first day my neighbourhood teached me how to greet with each other by using fists. It is not too stranger for me to accept this. It can be easily understood that good friends will stay closely and communicate in a relatively relaxing and casual way.

Eye contact seems to be the same even if it appears in different cultures. A wink between good friends always means that they have secret or something’s kidding, while this exists between man and woman is always considered as flirtation and footsie. However, lovers tend to flirt with each other to show their mutual love.

Gestures and hand signals are not so different in my culture and in the United State as well. I can use my own gesture or hand signals to convey what I mean to American people without any extra explanations and they completely understand what I am “saying”. When I came to the United State, I am poor in English. It is nonverbal communication especially hand signals which help me a lot to communicate with others.

In short, nonverbal communication is a kind of universal communicating tool. We can understand each other even easier than the explicit verbal language. Especially for conveying thoughts and feelings, nonverbal communication shows its advantages far more than language.