Abstract

Privacy is a kind of freedom which is free from interference or public attention. Nonverbal privacy, as a part of privacy, is embodied in some aspects like space and distance. In this paper the concept of nonverbal privacy of American and Chinese is compared from these four aspects: "primary territories", "secondary territories", "public territories" and the distance. And the reasons for the differences are analyzed. By comparison and analysis, the paper gives suggestions on promoting more successful and effective intercultural communication.

Keywords: Nonverbal privacy, intercultural communication, primary territories, secondary territories, public territories, distance

摘要
 
隐私是不受干扰或不受公众注意的自由。非言语隐私，作为隐私的一部分，主要是通过空间和距离这几个方面来体现的。本文从主要领域、次要领域、公共领域以及距离这四个方面入手，将中美两国人的非言语隐私观进行对比，并从历史文化和价值观等方面分析了原因。最后为促进更成功更有效地跨文化交流提出一些建议。

关键词： 非言语隐私；跨文化交际；主要领域；次要领域；公共领域；距离

1.Introduction
     Highly developed science and technology, especially the modern mass media, bring people into a multicultural era. Living in a multicultural society, people have to directly or indirectly confront cross-cultural communication. With the development of globalization, cross-cultural communication has become increasingly frequent and wide. It occurs when a member of one culture produces a message for consumption by a member of another culture. Intercultural communication involves interaction between people whose cultural perception and symbolic system are distinct enough to alter the communication event. With stark contrast, American culture is characterized by individualism while Chinese culture is characterized by collectivism. In America, the individual is supreme and individualism is the primary value. But in China, under the influence of traditional culture values, collectivism is formed as the core of principles. As a direct product of individualism, privacy is seen as legitimate, reasonable and the highest demand in America, but in China privacy concept is relatively weak and less attention is paid to individual privacy and more on collective privacy.