Nonverbal expressions surely played an indispensable role in everyday communication. Facial expressions and gestures are the two major elements of nonverbal communication. Since human-beings are incredibly evolved to have 98 muscles in face, we are granted with the ability of making tons of different facial expressions. This ability enabled us to understand each other even more precise, considering we are not only hearing but also seeing others' emotion let-out.
Because the skills of making and comprehending facial expression come along with birth, and barely vary after birth. The facial expressions used by people from all around the world scarcely differ. Unlike facial expressions, gestures differ quite a bit from culture to culture.
Some of my American high school classmates really enjoy using the quotation mark gesture. It is kind of funny when they do the trigger pulling move with forefinger and middle finger of both hands. I have never seen any Chinese people doing that while talking, although Chinese people love to play with irony.
Another example for gesture difference between cultures is hand gesture for numerals. Once during my AP Chemistry class, I tried to tell one of my classmates my answer to the example problem by using hand gestures. However I failed. And it came out to be the hand gesture that I have been using starting from elementary school is seemingly only used by Chinese. All my Nigerian, Korean, and American classmates are confused and also amazed by how we Chinese can express six through ten using only one single hand.
Nonverbal expressions are not hard to comprehend. Therefore, if we pay more attention about puny details about people around us. There is a huge chance that we are going to figure out something that we will usually ignore. How interesting is that!
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