With the fast development of globalization, many countries across the globe have become highly related to each other in many fields majorly in culture. In this competitive world every body have many chances to communicate with others irrespective of different countries and cultures thus we can see intercultural communication frequently and in very common. Context and Cultures are the main components, which we can see often in these days. Many countries been divided into high-context cultures and low-context cultures (Hall cited in Singh, Zhao and Hu 2005:135). As Jandt (2004:61) mentioned, when different people from high-context cultures and low-context cultures meet, they will encounter with many problems since different cultures may affect understandings of communication in different ways. The main aim of this work is to compare the differences between high-context cultures with low-context cultures and to observe how different type of cultures react in different situations including language, time, personal space, and interpersonal relationships. It will also examine the problems occurring in the communication process between two cultures and try to provide recommendations and the ways of overcoming the difficulties.
Definition of Context
Context can be defined as “The environment in which the communication takes places and which helps to define the communication” (Jandt 2004). Dr. Edward Hall firstly put the theory of high-context and low-context cultures forward in 1976 (Jandt 2004). A culture can be either high context or low context, which is related to the way people communicating with each other. Jandt defined high-context cultures, as a culture where the meaning of message lies in physical environment or its already shared by people thus people do not need to say or write it more. In low-context cultures, people have to say or write more because there is little shared meaning of message in communication. As Hall (1976 cited in Jandt 2004) stated in Beyond Culture, more information is needed in the transmitted message in low-context cultures in order to make up for what is missing in the context. The most typical countries of high-context cultures are Asian countries including China, Japan and Korea. The low-context cultures can be found in Switzerland, Germany, and North America including the United States.
Difference between the Context Cultures
There are several key differences between these two types of cultures, among which the way a message transmitted is the most obvious one. People from low-context cultures prefer direct way of oral communication and they always emphasize the efficiency of communication so people seem goal-orientated and tend to use short sentences and brief answers to convey their meanings obviously (Kennedy and Everest 1996, Rinner 2005). For people from high-context cultures, this is not a good way of communication. They believe that people should consider various factors in the context such as feelings of their interlocutors by which they can establish harmonious and pleasant relationships (Kennedy and Everest 1996). Their meanings and goals are often conveyed in an explicit way and sometimes reflected by some signals in the environment. In addition, high-context cultures lay great stress on adjustments of contents and ways during conversations and try to make languages be in accord with the context. Therefore, when two cultures meet, people may easily misunderstand each other. Low-context individuals may feel very confused with what their interlocutors said, and people from high-context cultures are likely to regard their conversational partners as impolite and rude, which may cease the conversation or even lead to breaking of relationships. Lastly, body language is more important in high-context cultures rather than that of low-context cultures (Mitchell 2000). Since the same gesture may carry different meanings in different countries, the frequent use of body language of one culture could easily lead to misunderstanding or embarrassment for people from another culture.
Conclusion
When Low-context cultures interact with high context cultures, there could be a number of problems in many aspects including language, attitudes toward time and personal space, and interpersonal relationships. These problems may not only cause misunderstanding and disappointment of both sides, but also may lead to failure of business, so effective solutions are necessarily needed. The essential way is to understand and respect different cultures. Language use needs to be paid much attention. Despite the cultural differences, people should follow local cultures or make a compromise if they cannot accept another culture. Multinational education cannot be neglected for its major role in companies and organizations. Since the globalization has been an inevitable trend in many fields today, intercultural communications will be increasingly frequent and common. It would be of great importance for people to master skills of intercultural communication. Many people have realized this importance, but they have not found effective ways to overcome the difficulties in communications. Therefore, for creating good cross-cultural communications, there is still a long way to go.
Subject: High Context Culture Vs Low Context Culture 
Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:35 pm
