Diversity and Gestures

While most cultures share the same basic emotions, the form of communication used throughout different cultures of the world varies enormously. However, what can mean one thing in one country can often mean something completely different in another. For example, in North American and Europe people tend to prefer direct eye contact. However, some Asian cultures, such as Japan, Korea and Thailand, believe eye contact is considered rude. If you are not aware of such differences, you may be perceived as having poor communication skills, or you are rude and offensive.

The definition of a gesture is a movement or position of the hand, arm, body, head or face that is expressive of an idea, opinion, or emotion (Dictionary.com). Although the definition of a gesture is the same through all cultures, respectful gestures differ between cultures. In the article titled ‘The Cultural Basis of Emotions and Gestures’ the author states that a person “cannot safely rely upon his own culturally subjective understandings of emotional expression in his relations with person of another tribe” (Labarre, 1947)

A good example of how a gesture can be offensive from a person of one culture to another person of a different culture is when President George W. Bush greeted a large, impatient crowd of Australians with a gesture he assumed was Churchill’s famous “V” (for victory) gesture. Unfortunately, the President had the gesture backwards (with his palm facing his own face)- this effectively flashed the large crowd with the British Commonwealth equivalent of the American “finger” gesture. These gestural gaffes are not uncommon. Whether its tourists, scholars or business executives, we are likely to commit one of two types of gestural mistakes while traveling to other countries: (1) using a gesture that means something very different abroad than it does at home, or (2) failing to “read” a foreign gesture correctly. (Archer, 1997) A person might think that even though they are not fluent in one language they can still communicate by using gestures. However this is not a good assumption because universal gestures do not exist.

An author by the name of Bart Vandenabeele believes that communication rests on mutually attuning in a large number of judgments. He believes that there will always be more and less successful interpretations and translations, and their success will depend on the success of non-verbal communication at hand. Vandenabeele also believes that there is no need for cognitive of semantic universals: people understand each other because they share a certain form of life. Vandenabeele states "however, it is incorrect to treat forms of life as rigid entities with clear boundaries: it is both impossible and unnecessary to determine them in an exact way. Any appeal to cognitive or cultural essences to explain how people communicate is successfully flawed.” (Vandenabeele, 2002)

Another author, Max S. Kirch,