By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
When it comes to communicating across different cultures, understanding the language may be just the beginning.
A leading intercultural communications expert said that the ability to ``read between the lines" and understanding non-spoken expressions in various cultural contexts is also an important part of communication, one that's often overlooked when studying foreign languages.
According to Park Myung-seok, professor emeritus at Dankook University, the English-education curriculum in Korean schools does not reflect this fact nearly enough. Park has written several books on the topic of intercultural communications. Most recently he co-edited a book, titled ``Communicating Nonverbally: An Introduction to Nonverbal Communication."
Professor Park told The Korea Times that ``successful communication between people across cultures requires not only an understanding of language but also of the nonverbal aspects of communication that are part of any speech community."
Citing research data from the late American anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell, Park observed that in ordinary two-person, face-to-face conversation, verbal components carry only about 35 percent of the social meaning of the situation. Nonverbal communications, on the other hand, make up more than 65 percent of the conversation, he said.
And in a cross-cultural situation, Park added, ``When people are not from the same speech community, nonverbal cues will be even more heavily depended on."
The professor said that the importance of non-spoken communications has not always been appreciated in the past.
``Before the 1960s-1970s," Park said, `it was popularly thought that if only all people spoke the same language we would have no misunderstanding across cultures."
He noted, ``obviously, problems are not that simple: language and language behaviors, dictionaries can be helpful within limits, but we have no dictionaries for nonverbal behavior, values, or culturally different patterns of reasoning."