As the world continues to shrink into a smaller global village with many colliding cultures, it is important that people become more observant, aware and sensitive to the verbal languages, gestures, myriad motions and the body language which surround people every day. As people continue to cross cultural borders, it would fit for them to learn, respect and understand more about the powerful and effective verbal languages by different cultures. While conducting business with people of different cultural backgrounds, it is important to understand and learn their business languages before engaging in serious interaction with them. For example, in Middle Eastern cultures, crossing an ankle over a knee and displaying shoe sole while communicating with another person is considered an insult and is, therefore, not recommended when making business deals (Matsumoto, 2006).
There are several ways in which different cultures say yes. The most common ways which different cultures agree include using the thumb up a sign, nodding head, and handshake accompanied by verbal languages from different cultures. The Thumb –Up sign is used in places with strong British influence such as Australia, United States, South Africa, New Zealand and Singapore (Scherer et al., 2001). The thumb up gesture has different meanings. It is an OK signal commonly used by hitchhikers. However, when the thumb is sharply jerked upwards, then it becomes an insult. In countries such as Greece, the thumb up signal means ‘get stuffed.’
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Lastly, another way to agree is through shaking hands. In most of the African cultures, people who are presumed to have disagreed for a long time would shake hands when they reconcile and come back together. Asian, Indian and Arabic cultures continue to hold hands even after handshake. It is hilarious to observe how different cultures do handshakes at international conferences. Most European cultures shake hands at different times of the day. When it comes to international businesses, excellent references, sharp dressing as well as good proposal can be become unstuck by the most innocent, smallest gesture which can end up sinking the whole deal.
References
Scherer, K. R., Banse, R., & Wallbott, H. G. (2001). Emotion inferences from vocal expression correlate across languages and cultures. Journal of Cross-cultural psychology , 32 (1), 76-92.
Matsumoto, D. (2006). Culture and cultural worldviews: Do verbal descriptions about culture reflect anything other than verbal descriptions of culture?. Culture & Psychology , 12 (1), 33-62.
