Gender Differences on the Use of Nonverbal Behavior: A Sociopragmatic Study

• Main Authors: CHIU, HUI-CHEN, 邱惠臣
• Other Authors: Joseph H. Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/06904062402885094731

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 跨文化研究所語言學碩士班 === 103 === Nonverbal communication is a way of face-to-face communication people use in our daily lives. Like verbal communication, nonverbal communication is affected by social factors such as age, gender, and culture, and therefore varies in meaning. Among all these variables, gender is the most widely analyzed and discussed in detail by scholars. Many studies primarily focus on investigating the perspective of language differences, or the fact that women understand or use body language better than men. Therefore, this study was designed to explore whether gender makes a difference in the use of body language. Besides using gender as a variable, this study also considered the actual situation, expression of emotions, and the formality level of environment. In order to understand complex nonverbal behavior, a questionnaire is mainly used to collect data. Subjects in this study are 215 Taiwanese college students: 97 boys and 118 girls. Based on the collected data, the percentages and Chi-square were used. The following five results are drawn from the study. (1) In overall situation, the results neither reject nor support the assumption that gender is the factor which effects behavioral difference, but there are other factors as well. These findings underscore the importance of recognizing various situations. (2) In different illocutionary act situations, the nonverbal behavior preference is significant between boys and girls. Boys prefer to use more body movement than girls, and girls use facial expressions a lot in both directive situation and commissive situation. (3) Relating to situation of conveying emotions, boys choose eye movements as their expressive tool and girls prefer to use their hands as a sign contrarily. (4) Because of the change of social role, girls would probably do the same behaviors as boys would do. (5) With formality scale of setting, boys and girls behave the same in formal situation, but differently in informal situation. Girls behave variously and they won’t be influenced by these settings, but boys will. Boys only show their truly emotional state when they are in private.