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body language Introduction We may often be curious about how a person knows what you think after the first meeting and instantly understand your behavior style. In negotiation, an experienced person can anticipate your thinking before talking. That’s because your body is doing the talking— social cues, different stances and various poses give off important non-verbal communication information, and you are unknowingly sending “signals” that your opponent can read. From this, insights into non-verbal behaviors will add to your negotiating strength. Everyone knows someone who can walk into a room full of people and within several minutes give an accurate description of the relationship between those people and what they are feeling. The ability to read a person's attitudes and thoughts by their behavior is the original communication system used by humans before spoken language evolved. If we want to succeed in a job interview, we should take note of any gestures that may inadvertently expose unintentional meaning. If you give a speech in public, you can usually tell whether what you are saying is attractive to the audience through their body language. If you sense that your audience is unreceptive to your message, it’s possible to quickly adjust in an attempt to win them back. Someone once said that body is a canvas for expressing feelings and emotions; those who can read it know our soul. On the other hand, a mistaken interpretation of a gesture can arouse quite unexpected reactions, and in order to communicate effectively in a foreign language, one should learn both the spoken and unspoken vocabulary— the gestures, body movements, etc. There are many cultures in the world, and generally, a simile is usually taken as a way of showing friendliness, joy, approval to others. However, some body gestures have similar physical movement yet have different meanings in different cultures. For example, the “O.K.” gesture in France means zero. In Japan it means money or coins. In Brazil, Germany, and the former USSR, it is an obscene gesture. Sometimes, using different body movements from different cultures express the same meaning. Take greetings as an example. In China, shaking hands is a customary form of greeting. Sometimes, nodding can also show this meaning, whereas in Japan and Korea, bowing is a traditional form of greeting. In European countries, hugging or kissing is also a way to show an affectionate greeting. Body movements can be especially bothersome, as a little difference in making the movement itself may be interpreted as something quite different from the original idea. It is true that, in certain circumstances, body language contradicts what is being said verbally, as the spoken words may mean one thing, but the body language may show something else, which makes it difficult for the listener to know exactly what the speaker wishes to explain. When this occurs, one must try to get the further information, or figure out the true meaning from the context. Ignoring the overall context could be misleading. To understand well the body language, one must understand the rules of body language, so that he can make full use of body language.