Social framework: characteristics of high-and low-context cultures

Unit 3 Lecture High-Context and Law-Context Cultures

Plan

3.1 Characteristics of high-context cultures. Implicit communication, emphasizing nonverbal communication, collective initiative and decision making, relying on intuition or trust rather than facts and statistics, indirect style in writing and speaking, subordinating tasks to relationships, etc.

3.2 Characteristics of low-context cultures. Explicit (literal) communication, emphasizing verbal communication, separating job tasks from relationships, individual initiative and decision making, relying on facts and statistics direct style in writing and speaking, etc.

3.3 Guidelines for communication with representatives of high-context and low-context cultures.

Chapter Objectives:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. Identify some cultures that are high context and some that are low context.

2. Compare and contrast high- and low-context cultures.

3. Compare value orientations among high- and low-context cultures.

4. Identify own position where you fit on the low and high context continuum.

5. Develop trainees’ skills of effective communication with the representatives of high- and low-context cultures.

Learning outcomes:

Upon completion of this chapter students will have critical awareness of:

· a range of peculiarities of high- and low-context cultures;

· a range of rules in communication, intercultural and business factors that affect relations among representatives of high- and low-context cultures;

· specific cultural customs and traditions needed to be learnt for successful business relations;

· special rules to avoid misunderstanding in high- and low-context cultures.

Introduction

In an increasingly connected and interdependent world effective communication not only becomes more important but also much more difficult. Ironically, it is often not dissimilar languages that cause the greatest problems but rather much more mundane and harder to detect cultural differences. One such difference is that of a high context (HC) culture versus a low context (LC) culture.

The context gives additional information, which is necessary to encode the whole situation / background of given information. The picture demonstrates intercultural differences between high- and low-context cultures. Let’s analyze these differences according to the information given here.

☺(discussion of this table may encourage the trainees to involve into the problem giving them the opportunity to guess in general some features of two cultures)

(retrieved 10.05.2014 at http://my.ilstu.edu/~jrbaldw/372/Values.htm)

The next chart summarizes major differences between high- and low-context cultures. There are 9 criteria on which these cultures are defined. Here they are:

☺ (this table can be used as a hand-out to make the lecture easily understandable)

SOCIAL FRAMEWORK: CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH-AND LOW-CONTEXT CULTURES

High-Context Culture	Low-Context Culture
• Relies on implicit communication	• Relies on explicit communication
• Emphasizes nonverbal communication	• Emphasizes verbal communication
• Subordinates tasks to relationships	• Separates tasks from relationships
• Emphasizes collective initiative and decision making	• Emphasizes individual initiative and decision making
• Views employer/employee relationship as humanistic	• Views employer/employee relationship as mechanistic
• Relies on intuition or trust	• Relies on facts and statistics
• Uses indirect style in writing and speaking	• Uses direct style in writing and speaking
• Prefers circular or indirect reasoning	• Prefers linear reasoning
• Adheres to the spirit of the law	• Adheres to the letter of the law

Adopted from Edward Hall

Defining High-Context Culture

Let’s have a closer look at high-context culture.

High context refers to societies or groups where people have close connections over a long period of time. Many aspects of cultural behavior are not made explicit because most members know what to do and what to think from years of interaction with each other. Your family is probably an example of a high context environment.

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. In short we can characterized HC Culture as the culture with less verbally explicit communication, less written/formal information, more internalized understandings of what is communicated, with multiple cross-cutting ties and intersections with others, long term relationships, strong boundaries that means who is accepted as belonging vs who is considered an "outsider", knowledge is situational, relational. Decisions and activities focus around personal face-to-face relationships, often around a central person who has authority.

(quoted from Culture at Work http://www.culture-at-work.com/highlow.html)

(retrieved 12.09.2013 at http://www.culture-at-work.com/highlow.html)

http://www.culture-at-work.com/CAWgraphics/highcontext.gif

☺ (in the context of this picture it is easy to explain the links among people and groups they belong to in HC cultures)

This picture demonstrates the relations among different groups of people in HC cultures.

Examples: Small religious congregations, a party with friends, family gatherings, expensive gourmet restaurants and neighborhood restaurants with a regular clientele, undergraduate on-campus friendships, regular pick-up games, hosting a friend in your home overnight.

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.

Hall argues that the environmental, socio-relational, and perceptual contexts have an immense impact on communication. High-context cultures generally have restricted code systems. Users of a restricted code system rely more on the contextual elements of the communication setting for information than on the actual language code. In restricted code cultures, communication is not general across individuals in content, but is specific to particular people, places, and times.

Within a high-context transaction, the interactant will look to the physical, socio-relational, and perceptual environment for information. Of particular importance is the social relationship between the interactants, especially their status. As Hall notes, twins who have grown up together can and do communicate more economically (HC) than two lawyers in a courtroom during a trial (LC), a mathematician programming a computer, two politicians drafting legislation, two administrators writing a regulation, or a child trying to explain to his mother why he got into a fight.

Because interactants in a high-context culture know and understand each other and their appropriate role, words are not necessary to convey meaning. One acts according to one’s role. Words and sentences may be collapsed and shortened. In this sense, restricted codes are not unlike local dialects, vernacular, or even jargon used by a well-defined group. Users of restricted codes interpret messages based on their accumulation of shared experiences and expectations.

Hall contends that persons communicating in high-context cultures understand that information from the physical, socio-relational, and perceptual environment already exists and need not be codified verbally. Therefore, high-context communication is fast, proficient, and gratifying. Unlike low-context communication, the burden of understanding in high-context communication rests with each interactant. The rules for communication are implicit, and communicators are expected to know and understand unspoken communication. high-context communication involves using and interpreting messages that are not explicit, minimizing the content of verbal messages, and being sensitive to the social roles of others. Although there are exceptions, many high-context cultures are collectivistic, including China, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, and many Arab and African cultures.

☺ [In order to make the comparison of 2 cultures easier use ФОРМАТ2_SOCIAL FRAMEWORK.docx]

And now let’s discuss peculiarities of "high-context" cultures. We'll examine nine aspects of the social framework of "high-context" cultures. A person from a high-context culture generally:

Relies on implicit communication;

Emphasizes nonverbal communication;

Subordinates tasks to relationships; Emphasizes collective initiative and decision making;

Views employer/employee relationship as humanistic;

Relies on intuition or trust rather than facts and statistics;

Prefers indirect style in writing and speaking;

Favors indirect style in writing and speaking;