(Inter)cultural Communication & Nonverbal Communication (general concept)

CULTURE & LANGUAGE · LESSON 08

A Reflection on
(Inter)cultural Communication
& Nonverbal Communication

JUNE 2026  ·

When I first arrived in Japan from France, I thought communication was mostly about language. Speak the words, get the message across. Simple enough. But Japan challenged that assumption almost immediately because here, so much is said without a single word.

(Inter)cultural communication, as scholars like Edward T. Hall have explored, is not just about verbal exchange. In The Silent Language (1959), Hall argues that culture itself is a form of communication, operating through space, time, gestures, and silence. In France, we tend to be expressive... raised eyebrows, open hands, dramatic sighs are all part of the conversation. In Japan, I noticed that the same emotional range is conveyed through subtler signals: a slight bow, a pause, a carefully neutral face.

間
MA — JAPANESE CONCEPTThe meaningful use of empty space and silence. It has no real equivalent in French culture, and yet it shapes every interaction here.
HOFSTEDE (1991)Cultures differ deeply in how directly or indirectly people express disagreement — Japan sits firmly on the indirect end of that spectrum.

On the question of adaptation versus authenticity, I've landed somewhere in between. I don't pretend to be someone I'm not, but I've learned to read the room differently. My French sarcasm, for instance, gets carefully filtered depending on who I'm talking to because what reads as wit in Lyon can land as rudeness in Osaka. As Geert Hofstede noted in Cultures and Organizations (1991), cultures differ deeply in how directly or indirectly people express disagreement or emotion.

Neither system is wrong they're just different solutions to the same human need: to be understood.— PERSONAL REFLECTION

Living between both has made me a more careful communicator, one who now pays as much attention to what isn't said as to what is.

REFERENCES

  • Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language (1959)
  • Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991)
WRITTEN FROM higashiOSAKA, JAPAN

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