High-context and low-context communication

Edward T. Hall, an American anthropologist, introduced the concept of high-context (HC) communication and low-context (LC) communication in his book Beyond culture in 1976. His classification has been extensively used and one of the most frequently used concept in intercultural and cross-cultural communication research. Martin and Nakayama (2007: 220) maintain that “A primary way in which cultural groups differ in communication style is in a preference for high- versus low-context communication.”

Hall (ibid.) presented that cultures can be divided into categories of HC cultures and LC cultures based on their tendency to use HC communication or LC communication. Hall presented that most of the eastern cultures use HC communication and most of the western cultures use LC communication. Hall presented that in HC communication, most of the information is in the physical context and words are not so important to deliver and to receive a message. The way people speak is indirect and the hearer has to know how to interpret the message; a message receiver has to rely on the contextual knowledge to interpret the message correctly. Instead, language behavior in LC communication is straightforward, precise and open, and most of the information is coded verbally by explicit words. Thus, in LC communication, a receiver of a message does not have to rely as greatly on the contextual cues.

The following quote by Guirdham (2011) captures the essence of the differences between high-context and low-context communication and the reasons on why misunderstandings easily arise in high- vs. low-context interactions.

When a speaker uses HCC, the problem for LCC receivers is literally to grasp their meaning: so much is left unsaid and they are not attuned to the implicatures and inferences being used, or to the extensive use of non-verbal communication. Indirectness and an emphasis on relationship data compound the problem. When the speaker uses LCC, the problem for HCC receivers is less to grasp their overt meaning than to avoid over-interpreting and seeing inferences that may not be present. They may also be affronted by directness or the 'brutality' of the concentration on hard content: or simply suffer from information overload. (Guirdham 2011: 205)

When engaged inintraculturalcommunication, we share the same "ground rules" which makes the communication easier as we use the same cultural codes to encode and decode the messages and we do not have to concentrate on "reading between the lines"

(Matsumoto 2004: 288). Guirdham’s lines above present well the challenge of

interpreting the intended messages correctly when we do not rely on the same frame of reference when engaged in intercultural communication situation.

Whether intracultural or intercultural communication, a receiver of a message always has to interpret the message; he or she might interpret it as it was intended by a sender, or, the interpretation might be completely different from what the intention of a sender of a message was. Scollon and Scollon (2001: 11) explain that "in order to communicate we must always jump into conclusions about what other people mean.” In order to interpret the message as it was meant to be interpreted, it is important that the receiver understand the sender’s intentions in saying something (Guirdham 2011: 99). In HC communication, much of the intended message is left unsaid and a hearer has to rely greatly on contextual cues and thus, the sent messages in HC communication style can be very ambiguous (Lim 2003: 65). Irwin (1996: 51) maintains that especially members of low-context cultures, whose communication style tends to rely on directness and explicit verbal messages, often experience high-context communication situations as ambiguous and confusing. “The greater the difference between senders’ and receivers’

backgrounds, the greater difference is in the meanings they attach to particular words and behaviors" (Adler 2002: 75). The key in successful high-context communication is the correct inferences on the relevance of how something was said in a relation to what was said, and also, understanding the intensions of a speaker (Gudykunst and Matsumoto 1996: 31). It should go without saying that when participants in an interaction share similar backgrounds, histories, experiences, assumptions and knowledge about the world, the communication is easier as these similarities help the participants to decode the intended meaning (Scollon and Scollon 2001: 21).

Andersen et al. (2003: 84) present that people from low-context cultures are often perceived by high-context members as "excessively talkative, belaboring the obvious and redundant." The authors go on to say that in contrast, people of HC cultures may be seen as "non-disclosing, sneaky, and mysterious" (Andersen et al. 2003: 84). These kinds of attributions easily arise due to differences in communication styles, and as a result of not being aware of the differences. Matsumoto and Juan (2004: 289) explain that when misunderstandings arise and communication does not flow as intended,

people have a tendency to make judgements on other person not knowing how to behave appropriately, of him being rude or not being a good person.

Though cultures can be classified by their tendency to use either HC or LC communication, it is important to take into account that though messages in LC communication tend to be direct and a lot of value is placed on verbal expression, HC messages are also used in LC communication. Also, it should be noted that depending on the relationship with whom we are communicating with, we use both low- and high-context messages (Gudykunst and Matsumoto 1996: 33). For instance, with our close friends and family members with whom we are close with and who we know well, high-context messages are often used as those persons are to grasp the intended meaning since they can “read between the lines” what the other person is trying to say.

Furthermore, it should be taken into account that though interactants would share the same "ground rules" of encoding and decoding, successful communication is by no means guaranteed. Due to many different factors, we do not always know how to interpret the encoded message correctly as we perceive the message ambiguous or we might automatically interpret the encoding incorrectly and thus the message encoded gets distorted (Matsumoto and Juang 2004: 288). Thus, cultural differences in communication styles cannot be automatically used as an explanation why misunderstandings and misattributions occur.

I will now move on to present cultural dimensions of individualism and collectivism.

These cultural dimensions shed light on our understanding on how cultures can be seen to differ from one another, and also, the dimensions offer explanations on why members of different cultures tend to use high-context and low-context communication styles.