Body Language
Referat – Presentaton – Communicaton Techniques
Body Language of Americans
Let’s start with a short classification of body language. As you may know human communication consists of two parts, the verbal and the nonverbal communication. The first one is about what we say and the second one about how we say it. Body language is a part of nonverbal communication.
What do you think… Do we communicate more verbally or more nonverbally? Actually 90% of our body language is nonverbally, which is a very high percentage.
So let’s get started with the actual topic. Let’s just think for one moment about this question: “ When we turn the TV sound off, how do we know we’re watching an American TV series or film?”
Well, what we see first are the actors and their mimic which is a form of body language. What we can observe is that Americans (and of course Austrians as well) look another person in the eyes while talking to them and they expect the same from their communication partner.
We would even interpret it negatively if someone avoids eye-contact, wouldn’t we?
I found out a really interesting thing, which is very common among young men, mostly in the Southwest of America and it’s called mad-dogging. It’s simply staring another person down without blinking. If you do it you lose. I think we all know this kind of game but the difference is that mad-dogging is not a funny game it’s used as a prelude to violence, mostly among gangs.
There is a case, which took place in Albuquerque and the result of this ‘mad-dogging’ was that one of the young men pulled a pistol and shot the other man in the chest killing him on the spot. Which is really shocking, I think.
But let’s leave this topic and move to something more positive, namely smiling in the American Culture. In fact, smiling plays a big part in the American life, just think of any American movie you have seen, there is the waitress who comes to your table and asks you with a smile what she can bring you or the secretary at the student’s registration office also asking with a smile, what she can do for you.
And now think of the same situations in Austria I don’t think it’s very common for us to smile in these situations, for us smiling is something we do rather in a private situation. video: 1:50
Next I would like to talk about another form of body language, which is gesture and I’d like to start with the American way of greeting another person. Greetings in formal situations don’t really differ to us, just like Austrians Americans shake hands, saying “Nice to meet you, how are you”.
But there is a difference in less formal situations. I give you an example, which Mr. Newman explained to me. When Austrians come to a party they greet everybody and shake hands. For Americans this is rather odd because, as I told you they shake hands in more formal situations.
Americans just say hi and wave or they hug each other.
Then I want to show you a rather interesting gesture. So, can anybody tell me what this gesture means in Austria?
Actually I did it when I was working as an au-pair in Spain and a friend looked at me completely shocked because it means that your boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on you.
So, you remember the question I asked at the beginning “How do we know we’re watching an American film or TV series? And I just want to show you a scene of a film, which I think we all know, it’s called Inglorious Basterds, where the actors sit in a bar and one pretends to be German.
Let’s just watch it for a second and then talk about it. …. So how do we know that the actor is American although he’s speaking German? You’re absolutely right… Americans count like this…
video: 00:40
Finally I want to draw your attention to the American clothing. Many things are the same to Austrian clothing, but still there are some differences. As America is a very big country clothing is sometimes different in different parts of the country and of course in different jobs.
It’s also very common to wear shorts, especially in summer. I’ve read that many Americans like to wear sweat pants with a T-shirt and sometimes a baseball cap on the street. I think we can see a clear difference to Austrians here, because hardly any Austrian student would wear such an outfit to go to university.
We would wear it rather at home.
When it comes to clothing for a job people dress differently according to the company’s culture. Some companies allow their employees to wear more informal cloths, which is called the business casual style. This means that men and women may wear casual pants, but no jeans and less formal shirts like polo-shirts or short-sleeved shirts.
But there are a lot of jobs, just like in Austria, which require a suit with a long sleeve shirt and a necktie. There is a custom among American companies, which I didn’t know and it’s called “Casual Friday”. It simply means that employees, who normally have to wear a suite, can come to work in informal cloths, such as jeans and T-shirt.
As you can see in the picture the typical thing for a tuxedo is the silk facing and of course a man has to wear a white long-sleeve shirt and a black tie. Women usually wear gowns in very formal situations which is a long dress in any color or they wear a cocktail dress which is just shorter as a gown.