74 Module 3 Sociocultural Forces culture. We hope you check it out. In addition, Vas Taras has assembled a “Catalogue of Instruments for Measuring Culture” which has 157 entries (http://www.vtaras.com/Culture_ Survey_Catalogue. pdf). As you can see, there is plenty to look at, to investigate these ideas further. HALL’S HIGH AND LOW CONTEXT Edward Hall, a U.S. anthropologist whose career included training people in the U.S. State Department, offers a great place to begin our selected framework review because his work is simple and yet powerful. Hall classifies cultures based upon their communication styles and, specifically, on the role that context plays in the culture’s communication patterns. Think of a communication’s context as the total relevant environment beyond the words, including, for instance, the participants’ body language, their places in the room, and the order in which they speak. In a high-context (HC) culture, much communication is conveyed by the context. HC cultures include Japan, China, many other Asian cultures, and Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African cultures. Here the participants have social ties that are long-standing and close, so they know to a great degree what the communication will be, based on their shared experience and the communication signals they read from the context. Communication tends to be implicit and indirect. In low-context (LC) cultures, the words contain most of the communication, and the context is relatively less significant. Anglo and northern cultures such as the UK and former British colonies—Canada, the United States, Australia—Germany, and the Scandinavian cultures are among the LC cultures. Relationships are of shorter duration with minimal shared history, so more of the communication has to be explicit for meaning to be conveyed. To get a feeling for the influence of context, think about your family, which will be relatively higher context than your relationships outside your family. See Figure 3.4 for a view of some of the HC–LC contrasts. context The relevant environment FIGURE 3.4 High- and Low-Context Attributes High Context • Less verbally explicit communication; less written/formal information • More internalized understandings of what is communicated • Multiple cross-cutting ties and intersections with others • Long-term relationships • Strong boundaries—insider/outsider • Knowledge is situational, relational • Decisions and activities focus around personal face-to-face relationships, often around a central authority person • Rule oriented, people play by external rules • More knowledge is codi ed, public, external, and accessible • Sequencing, separation—of time, of space, of activities, of relationships • More interpersonal connections of shorter duration • Knowledge is more often transferable • Task-centered; decisions and activities focus around what needs to be done; division of responsibilities Low Context
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