How Your Body Can Communicate

Body language can range from a variety of types, with some involving a single body part gesture, and with others involving the entire body parts for the meaning to be understood clearly.

It should however be considered that similar gestures might have totally differing meanings, depending on where one grew up from, the culture they are accustomed to, to mention a few.

Factors that may affect one’s body language

• Geographical location
• Country
• Religion
• Ethnicity
• Family
• Group
• Culture

Why Body Language Is Important For Effective Communication?

Body language and gestures help stress a point at times. When one verbally communicates with the help of gestures and body movements while explaining something, it further helps to stress the issue at hand.

 

Probably president Obama's facial expressions mean that he perfectly understood what his counterpart Putin of Russia was saying

There are matters that cannot be effectively explained without one pointing to directions or to objects. Well, one may argue that one for example can understand directions by reading a site map or by listening to the directions giver. This is true but will probably take way longer than it would take if one merely used the hands to point to the direction and describe scenes.

For the hearing impaired, sign language, which is also part of body language is very crucial. This is because their mode of communication majorly depends on body language in form of sign language. The deaf use body gestures that are known in a particular country or community for effective communication.

That is why it is crucial that if getting sign language interpreters, one should first research about what type of sign language is used in a particular country or place that the communication is to be made. This is because sign language, just like all other world languages differs.

Situations where the body language/gestures might not work

In case blind or partially blind people are involved, then using gestures might as well be deemed useless. Obviously because the other party is not able to see the movements and will therefore not to get understand what the other party is communicating.

If the person addressing the blind is verbally communicating, then the latter will understand but not as effectively as it would have been if they happened to see the body movements.

Another case is if the people communicating are from extremely different parts of the world, thus different cultures and might have similar gestures that have differing means, or have gestures that do not match at all.

Common body gestures include;

Thumbs up means can mean good, and thumbs down can mean bad

•  Thumbs up – Good/Okay
• Thumbs down – Bad/Not Okay
• Nodding head - yes/affirmation
• Shaking of head- No, India non inclusive
• Winking
• Frowning
• Shaking of hands horizontally while raids – No
• Jumping – Joy/scared
• Dancing
• Putting the palms of both hands together – Prayer/Asking/Begging
• pointing finger - Accusing

By Angela Kyolaba

Are Racially Mixed People More Advantaged On The International Job Market?

Among the so many benefits of being a product of an interracial relationship, is being considered first in the job market, especially the international job market.

The world has changed so much regarding its perception of the racially mixed people. Now days they are considered best for most international job opportunities because their mid tone skin complexion and multiracial background are perceived as neutral.

Employers on the international scene share a belief that racially mixed fellows help strike a balance between the world’s extremes when it comes to clients.

International businesses expect and serve clients from all over the world and therefore feel that by using racially mixed employees to attend to their diverse clientele will make the latter more comfortable and relatable with.

Advantages Of Being Racially Mixed

An example is, if someone from Canada goes to a Dubai based business for certain services and is attended to by an employee that can address him in Canadian French, a language that is the client’s first language. This client will in most cases be over joyed to be able to describe how and what they want to be served with and make inquiries in the language they understand best.

The Canadian French speaking employee in this case might have come to know Canadian French as a result of being racially mixed, and therefore having Canadian roots. Therefore, employers will always search for racially mixed employees.

Scholars refer to the English language as the most influential language in the world today because it used almost everywhere in the world. Some might not speak it fluently or speak it at all but will at least understand the basics when addressed in English. It is this same language that is associated with racially mixed people.

Yes, it is. This is proved by the fact that most racially mixed people are addressed to in English. Or if they happen to live in a country where English is not common, they are persistently bothered by their colleagues to teach them phrases in ‘this very much coveted’ language or interpret a situation on a telenovela that casts in English.

Examples of Racially Mixed Celebrities

Below is of Bob Marley, who was a Jamaican singer and songwriter and whose music has impacted many of today's musicians. One of his parents white and the other black.

Barack Obama, president of the U.S.A is a product of a black Kenyan father and white mother who made history by becoming U.S.A's first black president ever.

Alicia Keys is an American singer with Italian, Irish and Jamaican blood who has made it big in the music and entertainment world. 

Bruce Lee is a common face in the martial arts entertainment world, appearing in dozens of movies. He is as a result of Chinese and German mixture.

Racially mixed people are perceived as neutral and relatable and therefore have high chances of landing jobs on the international scene, as they can also at times communicate in many languages and therefore can work in translations agencies too.

By Angela Kyolaba

Interracial Relationships and Multilingualism

There is a new trend of interracial relationships worldwide where one dates or gets married to another of a different racial background. This is so common today that it’s deemed as so normal, especially by the younger free generation.

 

What hindered interracial relationships in the past?

 However this wasn’t always the case, especially in the history, of not only America, but this goes for all continents worldwide.

Some of the reasons why there were no interracial relationships back then might be because of the following reasons;

Slave trade especially is the western countries that carried is one of the main reasons as to why there were no intermarriages. This is because there was no way one could be allowed to have a relationship with a slave who was deemed as a lesser human. In fact if this was rumored, the unfortunate slave would either be killed, punished or sold off.

In relation to the above, there was the blown up issue of castes and social classes. Here some races were more advantaged than others when it came to wealth, inheritance and material possessions in general. So there was no way one would marry outside their social class, let alone their race.

Geographical distance too made interracial relationships impossible, this is because a particular race was found in a specific geographical location at that time. The advanced technology and sophisticated transport systems were not in place and therefore mobility to other racial locations was limited.

Multilingualism 

However, today thanks to the world becoming a global village, interracial relationships have become the in thing. This therefore means more languages spoken by the off springs of such relationships.

“I speak English, a little bit of Hawaiian and Japanese”, stresses Ann Marie Yuri who is what is referred to as the mixed race today. Yes, she is as a result of a mixture of Japanese, Hawaiian and African American.

She is just an example  of millions of mixed racial off springs around the world, who might not necessarily speak all their parents’ languages perfectly but might know some of them and know the basics in the others.

Therefore interracial relationships are an important factor when it comes to fostering the global village element because their products have a foot in various races and speak more than two different languages.

This is a sense also fosters international business relationships because of the various languages spoken by interracial persons. This makes communication with business partners from different regions easier and more effective because someone interracial might speak the business partner’s language well.

For more details visit www.kltranslations.com

By Angela Kyolaba