Abstract

Business negotiation is becoming a necessary part of modern society with the rapid development of economic activities and the increasingly close trade and business. In essence, business negotiation is intercultural business communication activity. As the necessary complement of verbal communication, nonverbal communication plays an extremely vital role in business negotiation. Nonverbal communication even functions more than verbal communication in some cases. With more and more cross-cultural business negotiations failing, people gradually realize that the main reason is ignoring each other’s cultural background and cultural differences.

Communication can be divided into two categories: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. However, the ignorance of nonverbal communication usually results in the incomplete process of communication. It mainly includes body language, paralanguage, object language and environmental language. This paper aims to discuss the concept and classification of nonverbal communication, and focuses on the analysis of Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds in huge differences when the nonverbal behavior demonstrates information in Business English negotiations. The purpose of this paper is to help people understand the application of nonverbal communication and achieve the purpose of increasing the negotiating efficiency in business negotiation.

Key words: nonverbal communication; business negotiation; cultural differences

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

2 Basic Contents of Nonverbal Communication and Business Negotiation-2

2.1 Nonverbal Communication-2

2.1.1 Definition-2

2.1.2 Importance and Functions-4

2.1.3 Classification and Process-5

2.2 Business Negotiation-6

2.2.1 Definition-6

2.2.2 Business Negotiation Process-6

3 Analysis of Nonverbal Communication in Business Negotiation-7

3.1 Body Language-7

3.1.1 Eye contact-8

3.1.2 Facial expression-8

3.1.3 Gesture-9

3.1.4 Posture-9

3.2 Paralanguage-10

3.2.1 Silence-10

3.2.2 Turn-taking-10

3.3 Object Language-11

3.4 Environmental Language-11

3.4.1 Space-12

3.4.2 Time-12

4 Cultural Causes for Differences in Nonverbal Communication-14

5 Conclusion-14

References-16