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Body language referring to the physical nonverbal symbol, includes not only language but expressions of another important means of communication (Hu Wenzhong, 1999: 29).
Then, we need to know what international business negotiation is. Negotiation means the exchange of views involving the personal rights and interests that both sides completely solve problems, and finally reach an agreement in cooperative process. The two sides have their own needs. International business negotiations are cross-border business negotiation, which has two characters: communication and internationalism (Mitchell, 2001: 122). Communication achieved by two or more opinions, especially verbal language and body language. Language communication, through words to express thoughts, is the basic method of negotiation, while body language is also called posture language or non-verbal language, conveying meaning by nonverbal symbols. With the development of internationalism, cross-cultural business negotiation is indispensable in the process of the global economy.
A study of the 20th century shows that, on the negotiation table, 60% ~ 80% of the decisions of business talks are made under the influence of body language. (Kuang Xinhua& Zeng Jianping, 2004: 11) Many studies have showed that the main functions of body language are the complement of language and the vital factor of forming impressions. To achieve effective negotiation, negotiators are requires the to be able to accurately read each other's body language, combining language information, exploring each other's psychological and ideological changes, then to make proper decisions. So before dealing with body language appropriately, we need to have a systematic view of it. In this thesis, there is a summary of different kinds of body language used in business negotiation and analysis of the communicative functions of human body language.
2. Literature Review
Early in the 19th century, Charles Wen has begun his research on body language. In the middle of the 20th century, a pioneer of body language, Albert Michael Rabin made a discovery that a letter generated 7% of the influence from language (text only), while 38% from the sound (including voice, tone, and other sound), and the remaining 55% are all from the silent body language. Anthropologist Ray bo west (Ray Birdwhistell) found that in a face-to-face communication, only35% of information was transferred in the total amount of information, and the rest of the more than 65% information is conveyed by body language.
Nowadays，with the rapid development of international business，similar courses have been set in Chinese universities，which are named international business negotiation, aiming to cultivate students with skills in international business communication. Due to the fact the majority of our teaching books focus only on verbal language, many non-verbal languages are neglected. However, non-verbal language means a lot, and here what I will come to is body language. Up to now, many studies have been done in intercultural communication. In this thesis, I would like to have a light analysis of different body languages and a summary will be presented on their communicative functions.
3. The Classification and Application of Body Language
3.1 The definition of body language源'自:优尔]'论-文'网"]www.youerw.com
The earliest research on body language can be traced back to ancient Greece, and body language being a separate branch was built in 1950s. In a book of An Introduction to Kinesics by American anthropologist Birdwhistell, body language was raised and caught people’s attention. Another American anthropologist Edward T. Hall also published a book tittled The Silent Language in 1959 after many years of study, revealing the use of body language in communication. Julius Fast, a famous behaviorist in the United States published many books successively in 1970s, especially Body Languages in which they were introduced and laid a solid foundation of application research in intercultural communication.