I need help with a topic for a presentation in my interpersonal communications class!?

Question

I'm thinking maybe like popular nonverbal gestures within a few other countries... give me some ideas please...

Answer 1

Non verbal gestures is interesting, as is the difference in personal space. There is also the power of connotations.

One nonverbal gesture that confused the hell out of me when I moved to Greece was the way they indicated "no". In Greece, they lift their chin in one quick movement, while raising their eyebrows and making a tse sound with their teeth. This means no. Despite that we usually begin with a downward movement to indicate yes, in the beginning I always understood this gesture to mean "yes." In Bulgaria and Romania, they do the same thing, but they also purse their lips and subtly move their faces from side to side to indicate "yes". It's a slower, less punctuated movement than how we shake our heads "no," but it certainly looks like "no" to the uninitiated.

Other interesting nonverbal gestures in Greece are the shoulder shrug, the insulting hand gesture, and the general way of holding the body when excited. The shoulder shrug is much more extreme than the French shoulder shrug. Both shoulders are lifted quickly, and about as high as they can be, while the arms are stiff at the sides, not loose, and the hands are usually held in stiff, 90 degree angles from the arm, pointing outward, almost like they are pushing the shoulders up. This indicates resignation, a common emotion in Greece. "Ti na kanoume?" "What can we do?" It can also indicate ignorance about an answer.

The hand gesture is very insulting. The hand is thrown toward the person with the fingers splayed, palm side in the face. To double the insult, the other hand is pressed behind the first hand, pushing it toward the person. This is about as insulting as you can get, and if you were to do it to someone, it would be the hieght of rudeness. You had better have been thoroughly offended to do this.

The general way of holding the body when excited is hard to describe. However, Greek people often look to North Americans as though they are about to start swinging punches when in fact they are just talking about a girl they met on Saturday night. It took me about a year before I realized a fight was not about to break out on every street corner and sidewalk cafe.

Here in China, the nonverbal gestures aren't so obvious to me, but one thing that is different from North America is that women hold hands, and men touch each other a lot. This is perfectly acceptable. In the winter, I often see grown men rolling around on the ground together. They are wrestling, I think, but we are talking about men in their 30s wrestling on a street corner.

Most cultures have less personal space than North Americans do. At least those who speak other languages. This is uncomfortable at first until you get used to people standing in your space.

In West Africa, men hold hands and it means nothing, but a woman is not allowed to link her arm with her husbands in public. There are no public displays of affection in West Africa among the majority of the population.

The gesture for come here in Benin, West Africa, has the hand with the palm facing the person you are calling and the fingers closing inward as though you are grabbing something in the air.

These are all I can think of right now.

You might want to research La Guardia. I remember reading about how people could tell which language he was speaking, Yiddish, Spanish, or English, (I think those were the three) by the way he held his body and face, even when they could not hear him or read his lips. This was evidence that the culture of language is not only verbal, but also nonverbal.

Answer 2

Four Principles of Interpersonal Communication
These principles underlie the workings in real life of interpersonal communication. They are basic to communication. We can't ignore them

Interpersonal communication is inescapable
We can't not communicate. The very attempt not to communicate communicates something. Through not only words, but through tone of voice and through gesture, posture, facial expression, etc., we constantly communicate to those around us. Through these channels, we constantly receive communication from others. Even when you sleep, you communicate. Remember a basic principle of communication in general: people are not mind readers. Another way to put this is: people judge you by your behavior, not your intent.

Interpersonal communication is irreversible
You can't really take back something once it has been said. The effect must inevitably remain. Despite the instructions from a judge to a jury to "disregard that last statement the witness made," the lawyer knows that it can't help but make an impression on the jury. A Russian proverb says, "Once a word goes out of your mouth, you can never swallow it again."

Interpersonal communication is complicated
No form of communication is simple. Because of the number of variables involved, even simple requests are extremely complex. Theorists note that whenever we communicate there are really at least six "people" involved: 1) who you think you are; 2) who you think the other person is; 30 who you think the other person thinks you are; 4) who the other person thinks /she is; 5) who the other person thinks you are; and 6) who the other person thinks you think s/he is.
We don't actually swap ideas, we swap symbols that stand for ideas. This also complicates communication. Words (symbols) do not have inherent meaning; we simply use them in certain ways, and no two people use the same word exactly alike.

Osmo Wiio gives us some communication maxims similar to Murphy's law (Osmo Wiio, Wiio's Laws--and Some Others (Espoo, Finland: Welin-Goos, 1978):


If communication can fail, it will.
If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.
There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.
The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.
These tongue-in-cheek maxims are not real principles; they simply humorously remind us of the difficulty of accurate communication. (See also A commentary of Wiio's laws by Jukka Korpela.)

Interpersonal communication is contextual
In other words, communication does not happen in isolation. There is:

Psychological context, which is who you are and what you bring to the interaction. Your needs, desires, values, personality, etc., all form the psychological context. ("You" here refers to both participants in the interaction.)
Relational context, which concerns your reactions to the other person--the "mix."
Situational context deals with the psycho-social "where" you are communicating. An interaction that takes place in a classroom will be very different from one that takes place in a bar.
Environmental context deals with the physical "where" you are communicating. Furniture, location, noise level, temperature, season, time of day, all are examples of factors in the environmental context.
Cultural context includes all the learned behaviors and rules that affect the interaction. If you come from a culture (foreign or within your own country) where it is considered rude to make long, direct eye contact, you will out of politeness avoid eye contact. If the other person comes from a culture where long, direct eye contact signals trustworthiness, then we have in the cultural context a basis for misunderstanding.

In France you stand 6 inches apart for long periods of time and thump the person you are talking to on the chest and look into each others eyes. In America we cannot do that for even 5 seconds without feeling uncomfortable and we avert our eyes.

Perhaps you can have everybody stand up in pairs and try this for 1 minute and ask how everybody felt.
Good luck.

Answer 3

Ebonical Inclination and it's Differentiation from English as a Second Language.

Answer 4

How about something like "Flirting when you don't speak the same language." You'd keep everyone's attention...and it's a legitimate field of study.