A business perceptive

n today's business relations, it's a small world after all. As more companies turn towards global markets, professionals are finding themselves in foreign locales, wheeling and dealing like never before. However, the key to effective communication between countries is an understanding of each other's culture, especially a working knowledge of how each society conveys meaning.

First used by author Edward Hall, the expressions "high context" and "low context" are labels denoting inherent cultural differences between societies. High-context and low-context communication refers to how much speakers rely on things other than words to convey meaning. Hall states that in communication, individuals face many more sensory cues than they are able to fully process. In each culture, members have been supplied with specific "filters" that allow them to focus only on what society has deemed important. In general, cultures that favor low-context communication will pay more attention to the literal meanings of words than to the context surrounding them.

It is important to remember that every individual uses both high-context and low context communication; it is not simply a matter of choosing one over the other. Often, the types of relationships we have with others and our circumstances will dictate the extent to which we rely more on literal or implied meanings

NON-VERBAL

Communication in general is process of sending and receiving messages that enables humans to share knowledge, attitudes, and skills. Although we usually identify communication with speech, communication is composed of two dimensions - verbal and nonverbal.

 

Nonverbal communication has been defined as communication without words. It includes apparent behaviors such as facial expressions, eyes, touching, and tone of voice, as well as less obvious messages such as dress, posture and spatial distance between two or more people.

 

Everything communicates, including material objects, physical space, and time systems. Although verbal output can be turned off, nonverbal cannot. Even silence speaks.

 

No matter how one can try, one cannot not communicate. Activity or inactivity, words or silence all have message value: they influence others and these others, in turn, cannot not respond to these communications and are thus themselves communicating.

 

He who has eye to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

 

Commonly, nonverbal communication is learned shortly after birth and practiced and refined throughout a person’s lifetime. Children first learn nonverbal expressions by watching and imitating, much as they learn verbal skills.

Young children know far more than they can verbalize and are generally more adept at reading nonverbal cues than adults are because of their limited verbal skills and their recent reliance on the nonverbal to communicate. As children develop verbal skills, nonverbal channels of communication do not cease to exist although become entwined in the total communication process.

Humans use nonverbal communication because:

 1) Words have limitations: There are numerous areas where nonverbal communication is more effective than verbal (when explain the shape, directions, personalities are expressed nonverbally)

2)    Nonverbal signal are powerful: Nonverbal cues primary express inner feelings (verbal messages deal basically with outside world).

3)    Nonverbal message are likely to be more genuine: because nonverbal behaviors cannot be controlled as easily as spoken words.

4)    Nonverbal signals can express feelings inappropriate to state: Social etiquette limits what can be said, but nonverbal cues can communicate thoughts.

5)    A separate communication channel is necessary to help send complex messages: A speaker can add enormously to the complexity of the verbal message through simple nonverbal signals.

Rhetoriality

The context of a rhetorical act; minimally, made up of a rhetor an issue, and an audience. Put another way, a rhetorical situation occurs when a rhetor, audience, medium; such as a text or speech, and a context converge to create a rhetorical act, such as an act of writing or speaking. Rhetoric is produced. Messages are created or constructed, although not strictly bound by intentionality, and the motive of the speaker or producer is important to making meaning. While the producer of the message—the rhetor if you will—is important to the meaning of rhetoric, the listener, receiver, auditor, audience or whatever term you might prefer or be situationally appropriate is perhaps more important in providing the rhetoric with meaning. The above combine to demonstrate that in rhetoric meaning is negotiated between rhetor,speaker,producer listener and audience.  Discourse communities negotiate the meaning of rhetorical acts. Rhetoric is generally in the domain of persuasion, although not exclusively so. In its most common form, rhetoric is discursive, but it is not necessarily so.  Symbols, particularly visual images, are within the domain of rhetoric. The study of rhetoric entails both rhetorical practice and theory; That is, it includes both training in the production of rhetoric, such as speech making, and it involves analysis, interpretation, and criticism of rhetoric produced by others. Rhetoric is situational and contingent. That is to say that rhetoric is invited in contexts in order to address and respond to problems that are of a contingent nature. There is a content to rhetoric, though it is not of the sort of substance we typically recognize. Rhetoric’s content is located in an implicit ethical or moral component to its study, teaching, and use.  Further, this content is based in reason, attached to rigorous standards of evaluation. Rhetoric is inextricably linked to power.  There is a power inherent in rhetoric while rhetoric also acts upon and creates power. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, rhetoric is a civic art that is produced and studied for the good of society.  Rhetoric, and training in it, is crucial for effective public deliberation and democracy.  

Perceptions Are Determined by Experiences

            Two weeks ago, I traveled back Mumbai. While I was there, I was amazed that the friends I made along my journey seemed to have completely different observations of the state they went to attend college.

            For instance, when I asked what the summers were like in their town, I got completely opposite answers from people, depending on where they originally lived. When I asked my friend from California, he said that if felt like he had landed in Egypt, recounting the unbearable heat and perfidious conditions meant for only the wildest of beasts. When I asked the same question to a friend from London, he painted a beautiful picture of the changing seasons, each more spectacular than the last, and recounted wonderful memories of having the experience of college in London. What’s the difference here? Their perception dictated their experience.

            It’s like the old psychology case where a woman was raped regardless of several residents being aware. The event could take place in broad daylight, with several eyewitnesses, yet each gives a completely different account of what he or she saw happen. It’s like when someone in the hallway talks to you for the first time, and you receive a different message than the person intended. Why does this happen? I believe it’s because our perception are determined by our experiences.

            In my opinion, it works like this. At one time or another we’ve all gone into a grocery store and noticed that everyone seemed happy, helpful, and cheery that day. Even the people in the checkout line were full of good spirits. Yet, when we’ve gone another day, we’ve had a completely different experience. We found people to be grumpy and in a bad mood—every one of them.

            I believe we view our external world the same way we see ourselves in our inside world. Which is why many people continually attract drama into their lives where as others do not, or why some people get into fights continuously and others refuse to let the same situation get the best of them. If this is true, it explains a lot. It could be why, when we feel out of place and chaotic on the inside, we tend to attract more chaos and drama to our outside self. If we feel anger and resentment on the inside, we will, in turn, attract it to our outside world as well.