Nonverbal communication is so crucial that it determines whether human interaction can be achieved successfully or not. Mehrabian, observing how feeling is transmitted in messages, found that as much as 93 percent of emotional meaning is transmitted nonverbally (Mehrabian 1971: 03). The statistics can reflect the high impact of nonverbal communication obviously. Whereas, the viewpoint most people take is opposite to the fact that nonverbal communication is a sticking point of success in international business negotiations. They haven’t recognized that nonverbal communication is one of the most important strategies that can be taken in these occasions. Actually, it has high value in human communication, because most of human beings’ nonverbal communication can not be easily controlled consciously. This means that they are relatively free of distortions and deception and they are much more authentic and precise. However, in our country, researches on nonverbal communication from the perspective of international business negotiations are still not so mature. Therefore, this thesis will focus on analyzing the nonverbal communication in international business by cases deeply from four aspects: body language, paralanguage, environmental language. Besides, it will also put forward some countermeasures to avoid the breakdown of international business negotiations on account of nonverbal details. Hope this research can help the readers attach importance to nonverbal communication avoid some lapses on account of nonverbal behaviors in international business negotiations.
2. Literature Review
For the moment, the research of nonverbal communication is not a virgin land, but if extending it to the extraordinary circumstance of international business negotiations, the fact is contrary. The importance of nonverbal communication for business negotiations can reflect when we send and receive nonverbal messages in the presence of other people during the business negotiations.
The negotiation is at heart of every transaction, and for the most part, it comes down to the interaction between two sides with a common goal but pergent methods. These methods must be negotiated to the satisfaction of both parties. In fact, business negotiations depend on the delivery of information, so anything interfering with the communication process, the way in which people transmit and control information, can ultimately cripple any transaction. The transmission of business information between different countries is threatened by different behavioral signals as well as by different languages.