Course:LLED222/Intercultural Communication/Gestures

Differences in Gestures

In the world, we have various how to show our feelings or communicate with others; talking, writing, drawing, something like that. Then, this page focuses on gesture. How and when do we use gesture? What is the difference between each countries or regions?

The reason I chose this field is related to that I am an exchange student. In Japan, we use gestures in our life unconsciously and most of the gestures used by Japanese are same way. Therefore I had never be conscious about gestures. Since I came to Canada, I felt that everyone's reaction which is how to speak, face expression, or something is much bigger than Japanese one . Then I was interested in the difference of gestures.

The Olympics are very good opportunity to know gestures more specific. Canada has multiculturalism so I can see people from various countries. Actually, I expected to watch various types of gestures. However, people who are born in Canada or live in Canada for a long time used almost same gestures even though their origin countries are different. I thought the gestures might related to country or region.

The kind of context cultures

In High-Context culture such as Japan and most of Asia, the person tends to communicate with high use of nonverbal elements (e.g. voice tone, facial expression, gestures, and eye movement) carry significant parts of conversation. In Low-Context culture such as America and Canada, The person from the low-context culture will place a much higher value on the words spoken than on the non-verbal aspect of communications.