Anthropologist Edward T Hall codified cultures as either high-context or low-context. His distinction captures an otherwise indefinable set of nuances that can mysteriously rub you the wrong way if you spend substantial time in culture at the other side of the polarity from your own.
In high-context cultures, relationships are vital, and the meaning of much of what is going on is held in the context, rather than being explicitly said. Think of the Japanese tea ceremony, or about doing business in the Middle East, where you drink endless cups of tea and talk together about everything but business for hours, before you get to what a person from a low-context culture would think of as 'the point'. These cultures tend to be emotional and intuitive, valuing long term relationships and trust.
In low-context cultures, little is implicit. My favourite example is the way, when laughing at a joke, Americans will also say, "That's funny," as though laughing didn't already signal that the joke was funny. In low-context cultures, relationships tend to be shorter in duration, life tends to be action and task-oriented, and 'the rules' tend to be codified and made explicit.
Hall's distinction helps me to understand why I--a person from a high-context culture--miss French dinner parties, which go on for hours over carefully prepared food and carefully selected wine. Inviting people for dinner in America doesn't fill the gap of what I miss--for a start because here people tend to expect to eat and then do something: "dinner and a movie." Likewise, I abhor the pot-luck, because for me the careful, loving, planned preparation of the dinner makes it an aesthetic offering from me to my invitees--it's not just food to share.
But it's not just that. It's that here, a dinner invitation doesn't mean what it means to me. So I've found that though people may come to eat if asked, they don't necessarily invite me back, because (for them) my dinner party was not situated within an unfolding and implicitly understood network of back and forth invitations that create and maintain the basic fabric of social relationships. They're not being rude. It's just that we're operating in a different paradigm.
In a high-context culture, inviting someone to dinner is a bid for relationship. Accepting a dinner invitation is a response indicating openness to relationship. It implicates you. It may even imply a certain indebtedness, relationally. These cultures draw a clear distinction between public and private life, so inviting someone into your home implies trust and closeness. The different elements of behaviour--bringing a gift, preparing the food, praising the food, conversing appropriately and lengthily, spending the time--all evoke feelings of connection and belonging.
So what I miss is not the dinner party itself. The dinner party itself is empty. What counts is the depth beneath it, the meaning behind it, the implicit within it--the very aspects almost impossible to describe to a person from a low-context culture. If you're reading this and really don't get what I'm on about, or think it's ridiculous, you're probably from a low-context culture!
Neither type of culture is better than the other. People from a low-context culture can be intensely frustrated by high-context cultures, in which everything happens as a result of who you know, and in which everything takes seemingly endless amounts of time. Everyone is always late. You have to have connections to get anything done. Everything's based on gifts--or are they bribes? These cultures often seem charming and quaint from the outside, but within them you're an outsider, and as such you can feel mystified by the unwritten rules, subtly excluded, and stymied by the lack of clarity.
Edward Hall's distinction explains why the misunderstandings between America and the cultures of the Middle East are endless. The Middle East is seen as full of feuds and nepotism--aka they value long term relationships and are fiercely loyal, with an intense sense of honour. The US is seen as a false friend--aka they feel free to change their allegiances and renew their strategies according to the situation as it unfolds. No interpretation is more correct than the other, but they are very, very different.
Understanding the basis for the differing interpretation at least helps us to avoid getting caught up in our emotional reactions to what feels culturally 'wrong' based on our own norm.
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ReplyDeleteInteresting post. My daughter, Tina, used to comment on the differences between dinner parties with friends in the U.K. and friends in L.A. I remember that in Sweden, having people in for dinner and going to theirs was similarly important, but at the time I thought it was more a function of the climate and the fact that restaurants tended to be much more expensive than in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteThis one got me thinking. I certainly prefer explicit (low context) communication. A lot. I'll often say things in several different ways, until the listener somehow confirms they've understood what I intended. The listener may not know the term "active listening," but they'll do it just the same :)
ReplyDeleteConsidering different aspects of US culture, and different subcultures, there seems to be a lot of variance along the high/low context continuum. Might the variance be simply due to diversity?
When I consider homogeneous subcultures I've experience of, they mostly seem higher context. (Exceptions to that are interesting but I'll avoid the tangent.) When I consider a "melting-pot" situation, for instance a parent group here in the South Bay, I recall explicit (low context) communication... just what was needed to avoid miscommunication, given the wide variation in English fluency and cultural background.
- Conrad
In general I try to communicate clearly and explicitly, in other words "low context." But that varies depending upon my audience. Speaking one on one, I receive lots of subtle feedback to inform me whether the listener is understanding me, is in need of more detail, etc. Speaking to a larger group, or speaking online, I don't get that feedback.
ReplyDelete- Conrad
Hello again! On FB you said "I disagree that the people here do relationship in a high-context way. I think it's very, very low-context here."
ReplyDeleteI wish that were always so. I advocate explicit communication in and about relationship. It is too important a topic to let it suffer from miscommunication.
And there are plenty of people who do communicate thoroughly in and regarding relationship. But mainstream US? Not so much. Our mainstream is Christian, monogamous, and not believers in therapy, workshops, personal growth, etc. If your experience of the US is the Bay area, you're experiencing nothing like a small town in the deep south or the midwest. Just sayin ;)
- Conrad
Hi Conrad.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your interesting comment.
Explicit communication about relationship is LOW CONTEXT behaviour. In a high content culture, such things are understood by the context, and the codes of behaviours that are implicit.
And you're right, my experience of the BA leaves me curious and fascinated about the rest of the US. I have a trip to Florida in the offing, for research purposes....
Rachael
Ah Conrad, I see this topic HAS got you sparking! I agree with your theory that the US is so low-context because of the diversity of people of different backgrounds that have come here, and the necessity of disambiguating when implicit clues would not translate. That's my best explanation too.
ReplyDeleteRandom thoughts:
ReplyDelete- Diversity is higher in urban settings.
- High(er) context subgroups embedded in the low(er) context US culture are likely to be insular, and thus hard to research.
- There ought to be generational differences - for instance those who raised me were higher context than I am.
- I lived in Florida, in St. Petersburg and Palm Beach. Coastal zones in Florida are another melting pot.