Abstract

    Silence, as an important part in the communication, has a distinct cultural identity, in different cultures, containing different meanings which will affect the attitudes towards its usages and understandings. Therefore, in order to establish better conversations between two countries, we must realize the different meanings of silence influenced by cultures and clearly the culture differences with its possible consequence.
The motivation of this thesis through dealing with problem about different meanings of silence compared between China and the United States, on behalf of nonverbal language during the cross-culture communication, analyzing the deep-seated reasons for the differences resulted from comparison, help people understand the function and meanings of silence in different cultures in order to improve people's intercultural communicative in the cross-culture communication.

Keywords: silence; different culture; context

摘要

沉默是人们交流中的一个重要组成部分，它具有鲜明的文化特征：它在不同的文化中具有不同的意义，影响人们对其使用的选择和理解。因此，为了在两种文化背景下能够更好的进行交流，我们必须认识到受文化差异影响的沉默所包含的不同语境意义及其可能带来的影响。
沉默作为跨文化交际中的非言语语言主要表现形式。本篇论文的主要通过对语境中不同含义的沉默的比较分析，研究中国和美国的文化差异，通过分析语境中沉默差异的深层原因并对其进行比较，帮助人们了解在不同文化中沉默的不同含义，以此来提高人们的跨文化交际能力。

关键词：沉默；文化差异；语境

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
With the growth of globalization, China as one of the leading roles on the international arena deepens its communication and cooperation with America. Cross-cultural communication requires both verbal and nonverbal skills; Silence has a distinct cultural identity, in different cultures, containing different meanings which affect the attitudes towards the usages and understandings of the silence. Therefore, in order to establish better conversations between two countries, we must realize the different meanings of silence influenced by cultures and clear the cultural differences with its possible consequence. However, people in significant numbers are becoming ignorant to the nonverbal ones, which actually are inevitable in interpersonal communication.