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High Context in Cultural Communication

The document discusses high-context and low-context cultures. High-context cultures communicate through underlying context, meaning, and tone rather than just words. Countries like Japan, China, and France are examples. Low-context cultures expect communication to be explicitly stated to avoid confusion. The UK, Australia, and US are examples. While most cultures fall on a spectrum, high-context cultures emphasize similarity through shared education, ethnicity, religion, and history.

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María Camila Álvarez Díaz
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104 views2 pages

High Context in Cultural Communication

The document discusses high-context and low-context cultures. High-context cultures communicate through underlying context, meaning, and tone rather than just words. Countries like Japan, China, and France are examples. Low-context cultures expect communication to be explicitly stated to avoid confusion. The UK, Australia, and US are examples. While most cultures fall on a spectrum, high-context cultures emphasize similarity through shared education, ethnicity, religion, and history.

Uploaded by

María Camila Álvarez Díaz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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INTRO IN MY PART: Hi, in this part of the presentation we are gonna

talk about two types of contexts in CULTURAL COMMUNICATION,


there are high and low context.

We have to know some differences before to start! Basically…

The differentiation between high and low context cultures is meant to


highlight differences in verbal and nonverbal communication. High-
context cultures will use communication that focuses on underlying
context, meaning, and tone in the message, and not just the words
themselves.

Countries that fall into this categorization are Japan, China, France,


Spain, Brazil, and more.

On the flipside, low-context cultures expect communications to be


explicitly stated so that there’s no risk of confusion, and if a message
isn’t clear enough, it will slow down the process of communication. In
the most extreme cases, leaving any sort of wiggle room for
interpretation can be disastrous.

Some of the cultures that fall into low-context communication are


Western cultures like the UK, Australia and the United States.

DEFINICION: Cultures typically can’t be organized strictly into either


high or low context. Most cultures fall between the extremes on the
spectrum and can share characteristics of both high and low context
traits to varying degrees.

Although it can be a complex characteristic whether a culture is high


context or low context, it can determine many other aspects of a
pfparticular culture. For example, in a high-context culture, similarity is
an important characteristic. This is because the majority of the
population in high context cultures typically have the same level of
education, as well as a shared ethnicity, religion, and history.

Through these shared experiences, messages can be contextualized


by assuming an audience will think in the same way and follow the
underlying message implicit in someone’s speech or writing.

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall first discussed high-context culture in


his 1976 book titled Beyond Culture. High-context cultures are those in
which the rules of communication are primarily transmitted through the
use of contextual elements (i.e., body language, a person's status, and
tone of voice) and are not explicitly stated. This is in direct contrast
to low-context cultures, in which information is communicated
primarily through language and rules are explicitly spelled out.
It is important to note that no culture is completely high-context or low-
context, since all societies contain at least some parts that are both
high and low. For example, while the United States is a low-context
culture, family gatherings (which are common in American culture) tend
to be high-context.
Members of high-context cultures usually have close relationships that
last for an extended period of time. As a result of these years of
interacting with one another, the members know what the rules are,
how to think, and how to behave, so the rules do not have to be
explicitly stated. This makes high-context cultures difficult to navigate
for those who do not understand the culture's unwritten rules.

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