摘要

交际方式主要分为两种：语言交际和非语言交际。在日常生活中，人们往往只注重语言交际，而忽略了非语言交际的重要性。随着跨文化交际的日益频繁，非语言交际发挥着不可忽视的作用。身体语言作为非语言交际的主要部分，包括体距，眼神交流，面部表情，手势，姿势等。本文主要从跨文化交际的角度研究身体语言，通过分析不同身体语言的特征和功能，我们发现身体语言在跨文化交际中起到了十分重要的作用，因而在跨文化交际中进行口头交际的同时要注重身体语言的运用并避免因不同文化影响而产生的误会。

关键词：身体语言，跨文化交际，文化

Abstract

      There are two kinds of human communication: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. In daily life, people only pay attention to verbal communication while neglect the importance of nonverbal one. With increasingly frequent intercultural communication, nonverbal communication plays an indispensable and inseparable part in human communication. Body language, as a main part of nonverbal communication, includes distance, eye contact, facial expression, gesture, posture and so on. This thesis is a study on body language from the perspective of intercultural communication. From analyzing the features and functions of body language, we learn that body language plays an essential role in intercultural communication. Thus in intercultural communication, at the same time of using oral language, we should attach importance on the application of body language and avoid the misunderstanding caused by the influence of different cultures.

Key words: body language, intercultural communication, culture

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of economic globalization, it is becoming increasingly necessary to communicate with people from cultural background that are different from one’s own. People therefore, study intercultural communication. Referring to communication, people are bound to think of language, which is verbal language. However, in practice, there are many difficulties in communicating with others by verbal behavior only. Then, nonverbal language is taken into effect. As a consequence, when communicating, foreigners tend to use nonverbal communication to make up for the weakness of verbal communication so as to get across the meaning of their words.
In nonverbal communication, body language takes up a great part of it, which plays an essential role in intercultural communication. A research conducted in 1952 by Ray Birdwhistel, professor in University of Louisville, has shown that the most of human communication is proceeded by posture, position, distance and so on. However, as culture shapes the ways people use language, people from different cultures label different meanings to body language. Besides, apart from the difference, body language, no matter in what cultures, has some common features, functions and types. Only by comparing the body language in both Chinese and Western countries can we figure out the influence of culture divergence on body language so as to escape some embarrassment and misunderstanding in intercultural communication.