Cultural Differences

As this story from the Ball State Daily News says, in conversation we convey only a portion of our intended meaning with words. The rest depends on gesture and facial expression. If words have individual meanings for each person, how much more so with gesture? A knowledge of grammar and dictionaries helps improve our awareness of the verbal abstractions we make, but few such resources exist for gestural meaning. Furthermore, we know we face a challenge when learning a foreign language, but how many of us remember that we need to learn the gestural component of that language in order to successfully communicate?

Read the story here: The Ball State Daily News - Body language can cause confusion