luences we face each day -- influences that are silent in that they are not verbal but that are quite loud in terms of the effects they have on our development, our relationships, and so on. Hall finds that many of these influences are cultural, attitudes and behaviors we inherit from our surroundings and that decide out behavior even when we may not consciously see the source of the prescription or even that there is one. Hall further makes the observation that formal training in language, history, government, and customs is only the beginning of an understanding of how culture shapes us and how we shape culture, and he points out that the silent language, the nonverbal language of the country, is a major influence that needs to be analyzed, studied, and understood. This is a language we use every day, and yet we have only a dim awareness of it. Indeed, Hall sees the silent language in many situations as more real and more truthful than verbal language, as he notes when he writes: "In addition to our verbal language, we are constantly communicating our real feelings in the language of behavior" (Hall, 1959, xiii).
John K. Noynahan (1986) notes how culture shock can develop within an industry or a business when changes are instituted, and a sales force can find itself facing a conflict of values because of such changes. One division in a company may have a certain corporate culture which clashes with that of another division. Consider how magnified such differences can become when traveling to a foreign country and you have some idea of the degree of culture shock to which you may find yourself exposed.
Americans experience culture shock when they travel to foreign climes and try to do business without having a full understanding of the methods of the given society. They may also experience culture shock when faced with foreign-born employees or with the desire on the part of management to adapt foreign concepts to the...