Interpersonal Exercise

Interpersonal Exercise

Non-verbal communication is a rather important aspect of our everyday lives. People tend to believe and react more to the non-verbal message that one is conveying than to the verbal message. It's important to understand that the non-verbal communication norms are extremely culturally defined; there are no two cultures that share the exact same norms. Being raised in a different culture creates many difficulties while adapting to the U.S. culture. These differences attribute to numerous differences in verbal as well as non-verbal communication norms; both of which can be learned by observation.

The learning process may not require a long time. However, making mistakes and getting into awkward situations while learning is inevitable. Sometimes, these mistakes can be punished severely. For example, do not try going out on the street being dressed the way usually women in U.S. do, or do not walk near your husband, brother, father, friend or any male closer than 1 meter on the streets in Iran, you may be arrested by the local police immediately. Not only the non-verbal communication is cultural bound, it's also religion bound. Consider the two types of Muslim people, Sunnis and Shias. While Shias in Iran are very conservative about clothing and may arrest a woman for not wearing a hijab in public, Sunnis do not put any restrictions on clothing. While there are so many differences in non-verbal communication between cultures there are a lot of similarities too. Innate behaviors, such as facial expressions like smiling, expressions that indicate sadness and shock are universal throughout almost every culture.

I have been raised in an Uzbek culture, which may be considered to be the mixture of Russian, Turkish and Asian cultures. For a long time, Uzbek people were suppressed and ruled by Russians and they have managed to vanish out our culture and our traditions, contemplating them with their own culture and traditions. Nevertheless, Uzbek people stayed to stay true to their culture, religion and most of their religion bound traditions. I was surprised to discover that although there are several differences between our and US culture, overall the norms of non-verbal communications are very similar. Most of the aspects of nonverbal communications such as, gestures, posture, kinesics, olfactics and environment are the same for both Uzbek and US cultures. Some differences may be observed in proxemics, haptics, oculesics, and chronemics.

Proxemics is well defined in every culture. It is usually said that Americans need more personal space than any other culture. As my observations show, Europeans maintain close spatial relations while communicating with each other, which is true about my culture too. However, it's important to remember that non-verbal communication norms are not culture bound. They are also gender bound. While in U.S. the proxemics norms seem to apply similarly to both males and females, in my culture its somewhat different. Same gender people, when communicating may be closer to each other are people from U.S. but, different gender people cannot be close to each other especially when they do not know each other well. People in U.S. are very conservative about their personal space. If the American and Uzbek were to communicate, American would consider the Uzbek intruding his/her personal space.

If in U.S., someone incidentally touches you in a line at a supermarket or somewhere else, it's common to hear apologies from that person like, "Pardon me?or "I'm sorry? In many other cultures that type of behavior would be rather surprising. Compared to U.S. haptics are more developed in Uzbek culture. People bump into each other more frequently and consider it to be normal. Consequently they find the apologies to be unnecessary. In U.S. however,