High- and Low-Context Cultures

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Our culture strongly affects how direct we are in our use of language and how much we rely on other, nonverbal ways to communicate. Individuals in high-context cultures (including those of Japan, Korea, China, and many Latin American and African countries) use contextual cues—such as time, place, relationship, and situation—to interpret meaning and send subtle messages (Hall, 1976; Hall & Hall, 1990). A Chinese person who disagrees with someone, for example, may not say anything; the communication partner must look for clues of disagreement in the context. These clues may include the amount of time that passes before a response or the nonverbal behaviors that occur or don’t occur. People from a high-context culture also tend to attribute a communication partner’s behavior to factors related to the situation rather than to an individual’s personality. For instance, instead of assuming that someone who remains silent is rude, they might think that the individual didn’t respond because the situation called for restraint and politeness.

A low-context culture, by contrast, uses very direct language and relies less on situational factors to communicate. The United States, Canada, Australia, and most northern European countries tend to have a low-context style. In the United States, for example, it would seem normal for someone to say, “Alex, I need a list of twenty items for the Allan project from you by five o’clock today.” Someone from a high-context culture would more likely say, “We are starting the project,” and would assume that Alex would have the list ready on time because Alex understands the situation as the speaker does. If Alex did not get the list completed on time, a boss in a low-context culture would blame it on Alex’s laziness or incompetence, whereas a manager in a high-context culture would blame it on situational constraints, such as Alex having too many projects to work on. Table 3.1 compares high- and low-context styles.