You’re at a dinner party, and an Iranian student named Amid introduces himself. Amid approaches you very closely—standing so close that his face is only about 12 inches from yours. You think, “Close talker,” and you back up, but he closes the distance again. The two of you end up repeating this little “distance dance” throughout your conversation, with both of you feeling uncertain and uncomfortable.

This “hypothetical” example happened to me when I was in college. Although Amid and I went on to become close friends, our initial conversation was awkward because of our competing cultural views regarding the appropriate amount of distance that should exist during first encounters. North Americans may feel that people from North Africa and the northern and western Middle East intrude on their personal space. Likewise, people from those cultures (such as Amid) may judge North Americans’ desire for larger distance as off-putting (Chen & Starosta, 2005).

As my encounter illustrates, nonverbal communication and culture are inextricably linked. You can wrinkle your brow, use a hand gesture, or speak loudly to make a point, but if people in the culture surrounding you don’t understand your behavior, you haven’t communicated your message. Consider cultural differences in the meaning of eye contact, for example (Chen & Starosta, 2005). In the United States and Canada, it’s considered impolite or even offensive for men to gaze openly at women, but in Italy, people view it as perfectly appropriate. Middle Easterners view gazing as a sign of respect during conversation, but Cambodians see direct eye contact as insulting and an invasion of privacy. Euro-Americans use more eye contact when they’re listening than when they’re talking, but for African Americans, the opposite often is true.

The tight link between culture and nonverbal communication makes cross-cultural communication difficult to master. Sure, the nonverbal symbols used in different cultures are easy enough to learn. But familiarity with the full tapestry of cues—use of personal space, attitudes toward time, perception of touch, appropriateness of gaze, facial expressions—takes much longer. Most people need many years of immersion in a culture before they fully understand the meanings of that culture’s nonverbal communication (Chen & Starosta, 2005).