THE TASK AT HAND.- Culture and People.

When we communicate with other people it is not only our words that contain the meaning. According to experts, 50 % of the meaning conveyed in a conversation is through what is called non-verbal communication. By this we mean facial expression, gestures with hands, arms, legs, the way we sit or stand, the way we touch other people, the distance we keep between ourselves and the people we are talking to; our dress and our appearance. All these say something to other people.

Facial expressions and gestures are used by everyone often spontaneously, even unconsciously. Smiling, for example, is found in most cultures as a sign of happiness or pleasure. Gestures such as pointing, waving, shaking or nodding the head are also widely used, although the gestures themselves do not always mean the same in every culture. For example, in Portugal, bank clerks tend to be too dour for foreigners, however in their culture, if they smiled too much they would not seem serious about their work.

Because many non-verbal messages are culture specific, they can cause a lot of misunderstanding between people from different backgrounds. Northern Europeans and Americans, for example, like to keep a certain personal space between themselves and others and feel uncomfortable if people come too close to them. In these same cultures it is considered impolite to stare, but Greeks, it is said, feel ignored if people do not stare at them in public. Europeans usually change their facial expression to show happiness, anger, boredom, sadness. For this reason they call oriental people inscrutable because they change facial expression much less.

In styles of dress we also make important statements about ourselves. Dress codes vary greatly from one culture to another and it is easy to make mistakes about people's status if you don't know the cultural norm. In Mediterranean cultures bank officials and similar employees wear short-sleeved, open-neck shirts and no jackets. This casual dress would not be acceptable in northern Europe, where suits and ties are a sign of seriousness. Ambitious women in western cultures wear classic clothes in sober colours to indicate their dedication to career.

One of the main differences between verbal and non-verbal communication is that we are often not conscious of the expressions and gestures we use and so we are in danger of giving more information than we really want to, or even of giving a conflicting message with our body language to the one expressed in our words.

Kylie Ann Minogue is an Australian pop singer, songwriter and actress. She's famous worldwide and in 2003 she released her ninth studio album "Body Language". Have you ever listened to it?

Have fun by watching and listening to her song "After Dark" included in her album Body Language.