Guest Post - Xiao Fu

Xiao is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about communication.

The Cultural Difference of Oral Communication between America and China      

As a Chinese living in America, it is common for me to find that sometimes even though you can express yourself in English accurately, many misunderstandings still happen. The reason is that, for people who have different cultures, the same word or the same expression may have a totally different meaning. That’s why an American professor in Carnegie Mellon University may find that nobody laughs when he said a joke.

Language is part of the culture, and culture plays an important role. Some sociologists believe that language is the cornerstone of culture - no language, no culture; from another aspect, the language reflects the culture.  It can be said that language reflects the characteristics of a nation because it not only contains the nation's historical and cultural background but also expresses the nation's view on life and the way of thinking. Language and culture influence each other. Since we might meet different people of different cultures in our future life and work, it’s better to have some understanding of other cultures.

Listed below are some cultural differences of oral communication between Americans and Chinese:

Hello and Goodbye.          

“Have you eaten yet?” is a common way to say hello to your friends when it’s around the dinner time for Chinese. While in America, people may think this is way to invite them to have a dinner together.  During other time, Chinese might say hello saying “where are you going?” even to some people they are not so familiar with. Of course, in America, “It’s none of your business”. Let’s talk about saying goodbye. Chinese might say to their friends “Stay here!” and wave their hand to say goodbye at the same time. Most Americans will get confused about this. Should you stay or leave, Americans have no answer.

Appellation.

In America, people will call the name of their family members and the professors they are familiar with. While in China, all those will be considered as serious offenses. In China, people will call a person using his surname plus the position the person served to show the respect. American never does this. There is another interesting phenomenon. English doesn’t have an appellation for the strangers while Chinese has. We call a stranger “comrade”…

Congratulations and praise

This difference is well known all around the world. Americans generally accepted the praise and congratulations, while the Chinese people are generally express that they do not deserve it. The praise objects also reflect the cultural difference. American will praise others’ husband or wife while Chinese praise others’ children. Praising a wife in China sometimes may be considered as an indecent behavior.

Above show the most common difference between the oral communications of these two countries. It’s very difficult to list all of them because one can never illustrate a language in one blog rather than two. I think knowing the difference and possible situation that might causes misunderstandings is really important for those who want to make friends or have business with Chinese. And study the oral communication of a foreign country also gives us a chance to better understand of a different culture. You never know that, maybe sometimes in the future, what you have learned might give you a huge help. And oral communication skills with people from foreign countries are always skills you should acquire.