필리피노의 비언어적 커뮤니케이션

Abstract

Most people generally tend to consider communication behaviors as using a language that two or more parties involved in a conversation can use. However, communication is more than sending, receiving and understanding messages by spoken or written languages. When there are a sender and a recipient participating in a conversation , a message the sender intends to deliver can be interpreted differently by the recipient due to several reasons despite the fact that the denotative message is not changed at all. Futhermore, the message can be communicated nonverbally without any words being spoken or written. As earlier studies show, communication depends much more on nonverbal behaviors than verbal behaviors. Nonverbal behaviors depends on cultures as much as languages do. These are the reasons why we have to study nonverbal behaviors along with the cultures to which the nonverbal behaviors belong. If we don't do so, we are more likely not to fully understand what a message sender from a different culture or a different part of the world is trying to say whether it is verbal or nonverbal. We live in Asia. In Asia, while there are many countries that can be categorized into being so oriental, there are other countries that can be categorized into a mixed category of being oriental and western. Most of these countries were once colonized by western countries. One of the countries is the Philippines that has the second most population among southeastern Asian immigrants in Korea. What is interesting about the Philippines is that it has the highest percentage of people able to speak English of all the Asian countries and is the third largest English speaking country in the world. Being able to speak English can mean that Filipinos can easily get in contact with English speaking cultures. Languages are correlated with cultures. We can fully understand communication behaviors of particular cultures through understanding their cultures. This thesis here attempted to verify the validity of established theories on Philippine nonverbal behaviors. The Philippines is an English speaking country and was once colonized by the United States longest. As a result, we might guess that Filipinos can show mixed behaviors of western cultures and oriental cultures. So, this thesis also checked the assumption. A questionnaire survey was conducted to examine several nonverbal communication behaviors of Filipinos except gestures and below is the result of it. Firstly, in chronemics, and proxemics, the survey shows that established theories on them are valid. However, In haptics, and eye-contact, it shows that previously studied theories are not completely valid. In the way Filipinos handle time, we can say they are polychronic people. However, The result of one of the asked items, chosen from the monochronic tendency table, shows that while they are polychronic, they could have the time-related behaviors of monochronic people. In sum, they are flexible handling time and polychronic but we cannot affirm they don't have monochronic attributes at all. Secondly, in personal space, the distances they keep between people are shorter than the distances suggested by Hall. In other words, the distances Filipinos keep from strangers in social situations are overlapped with the distances that Hall thought people keep from personally related people. So, it is reasonable to say that their personal space bubbles are smaller than Hall's personal bubbles or their personal space distances are shorter than the personal space distances suggested by Hall. Thirdly, speaking of haptics, generally accepted theories about Philippine touching behaviors are not valid. However, they show those behaviors such as kissing, hugging not much seen between the same genders in most of asian cultures, but western cultures, which doesn't necessarily mean they are touch-oriented. That is because that touching behaviors can happen in many other ways. Lastly, it is a generally known fact that Filipinos try to avoid direct eye-contacts. However, in this questionnaire survey, it didn't turn out to be right. When I interviewed them, the fact was confirmed again that they don't try to avoid eye contacts. In conclusion, in chronemics and proxemics, they are what they are believed to be, but in haptics and eye-contact, they are not. However , although they show the polychronic and touch-oriented tendencies , the numbers of Filipinos showing the opposite tendencies or holding an undecided stance are not too small to ignore. Although there is little doubt that cultural norms can influence nonverbal behaviors, we cannot simply say that they are from a specific culture, so they would act accordingly.