Where do you stand?- Lisa Davis

 Where do you stand?- Lisa Davis

          In this essay the writer is trying to show how the body position can have non- verbal communication. Through the position of the body, the people also communicated their cultural differences not only between the countries but also within the same country.

          The people from Middle East make physical intimacy where the Americans maintain a distance. When a businessman of Middle East steps forward, the American steps backward as far as possible.

          The difference of personal space is within access. The male and the female of the same location show different physical intimacy. The female would like to come quite closer than the males.

          The cultural differences can be seen in classroom environment. The American culture teaches the students to make a direct eye contact with the teacher whereas the Asian student feels it as disrespect to the teachers. On the other hand an American teacher feels it as insult if the students break the eye contact. Similarly, a Japanese unless feel quite uncomfortable when his American partner deals with him informal manner.

Key points.

a)      Americans use more eye contact than do the Japanese.

b)    South Americans conjure at a close distance then do the northern Europeans.

c)     Saudi Arabians show more physical contact than the Americans. They show intimacy by holding hands walk in the street joining the hands but the American hate it.

d)    Men keep greater distance than the women and women tend to make more eye contact than the man.

e)     The Asian try to understand a person through sense perception and they go quite close to a person but the Americans try to understand through gestures.

f)      The Asian students show respect to the teacher by breaking the direct eye contact with the teacher there as the western students maintains it through direct eye contact.

Main theme

          Where do you stand? Is an essay by Lisa Davis in which she is focusing on the importance of intercultural studies, specially the location of the body. It is obvious the meaning of the body differs from culture to culture group to group within a country even between the gender and so on, there is a greater chance at misunderstanding about body position and consequently there is a disaster in order to prevent the misunderstanding at the detail It is necessary to study inter-cultural practices.

          In the present time the entire world has became a global village and the people have earn inter-cultural practices to avoid the possible misunderstanding, specially the people of business world are prone to each misunderstanding. They have to deal with people from different world and might be showing the sense of intimacy but the same manner might be unnatural for the others.For example holding hands is a sign of showing affection to the other in the eastern culture but they look really unnatural in American culture , similarly making on eye contact with the teacher or concern person is a sign of respect in American cultural Whereas it is a sign of disrespect in eastern culture. If a Nepalese student those to Americans classes he finds the classroom environment really strange unless he is given the version of intercultural studies.

          Therefore the unlike justifies the need for inter-culture studies has became essential part in the modern situation especially with globalization. It would be much easier for the people of alliance culture to appreciate the culture of the other people of they know that keeping physical intimacy and despair differs from people to people.