In the central highlands of Madagascar, Rakotonarivo Henri is dancing with the bones of his grandfather. Accompanied by five brass bands, Henri and others on this island in the Indian Ocean emerge from family crypts with cheerful emotion. Amid joyful singing and dancing, they openly express their feelings to one another—and the dead—in a ritualistic ceremony called the famadihana, or the “turning of the bones.” The ritual is meant to celebrate their ancestors, pass on the rituals and stories to the next generation, and publicly show how they love one another (Bearak, 2010).

One thing that people from all cultures share is the ability to experience emotion. But expressing emotions (including which emotions under which circumstances) varies greatly. In some cultures, emotional expression is associated with strength, whereas in others it is associated with weakness. Sometimes emotional expression is seen as chaos and other times as an identification of and processing of problems (Lutz, 1996).

Many collectivistic cultures (for example, Arab cultures) often use hyperbole—vivid, colorful language with great emotional intensity (and often exaggeration). Individualistic cultures (particularly English-speaking) tend toward understatement, language that downplays the emotional intensity or importance of events (often with euphemisms) (Wierzbicka, 2006). Consider, for example, the difference between describing a military battle by saying “the river ran red with the blood of the slaughtered” versus “there were a number of casualties.” A particularly striking example of understatement comes from the United Kingdom and Ireland—three decades of bombings and violence by paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland is a period referred to simply as “the Troubles” (Allan, 2004).

We’ve seen that communication in different cultures varies along continuums in seven key ways. Yet within these broadly defined cultures, we all vary our communication in more specific ways based on the many groups to which we belong or with which we identify, as we see in the next section on group affiliation.