Abstract:

Along with the development of globalization, the communication between people from different countries increases rapidly, nonverbal communication has become an indispensable part in people's daily life. In the field of nonverbal communication, the study of personal space is necessary in the research of cultural differences among different countries. The different concepts and implications of personal space result from different cultures’ history, system of values and culture types. There already are studies of cultural differences in personal space. However, previous studies mainly focus on people's behaviors and attitudes to personal space, which hardly refer to cultural background and systems of values. Previous cases indicate that misunderstanding and confusion towards personal space may arouse conflicts. This thesis analyzes differences of personal space in American and Chinese cultures, and shows clearly causes of these differences are from various aspects: historical background, systems of value, high and low context cultures and other factors. It also indicates people's attitudes towards personal space according to these factors, and significance of personal space in intercultural communication. Therefore, the contrastive study of American and Chinese personal space in this thesis is certainly vital, which also can help people understand more about American and Chinese cultures, thus to promote friendly co-existence between two countries.

Key words: intercultural; nonverbal communication; personal space; Chinese culture; American culture

摘要:

随着全球化进程的进一步加深，不同国家的人交流、接触越来越多，跨文化交际成为人们生活中不可缺少的一部分。在非言语交际中，个人空间的研究对于探索不同国家间文化的差异已成为不可缺少的一部分。个人空间的差异主要由个人的历史背景、价值观和高低语境所决定。然而，先前的一些研究重点关注人们对于个人空间不同的行为和态度，很少涉及到文化背景和价值观的研究。许多先前的案例表明对于个人空间的误解和困惑可能会引起冲突。本文对比分析了中美文化中的个人空间语言差异，指出造成这一差异的原因有多方面:历史背景、价值观念、高低语境等。本文分析了这些因素对中美两国人造成的对个人空间的态度以及个人空间作为非言语交际的重要组成部分在跨文化交际中的重要性。因此，本文对中美个人空间的对比性研究在现实世界中的交流和学术研究方面具有同等的重要性，同时还会帮助人们更加了解中美两国的文化，促进两国人民友好相处。

关键词：跨文化；非言语交际；个人空间；中国文化；美国文化

Introduction
    This paper aims to make a comprehensive analysis of personal space between Chinese and American cultures, explores the differences of personal space in two countries and indicates the importance of personal space in cross-cultural  communication. This paper firstly gives a brief introduction to intercultural communication and nonverbal communication. The topic personal space is a kind of nonverbal communication, so we must know what is nonverbal communication first, and in this paper you will get a basic knowledge about it. Then the author introduces Hall’s theories about space and proxemics.