1、课程名称：跨文化交际学生姓名：潘颖学号： 20090162指导老师：雷蕾日期： 2011 年 6 月 14 日High-context and Low-contextWe human are used to living in groups. Communication is a necessary tool for us to transmit information in our everyday life. Culture determines our communicating styles. So in different cultures, the way we communica
2、te can be quite different. And one factor which causes the differences is the different use of context.So, what is context?According to Hall, context is the information that surrounds an event, and bounds up with the meaning of the event. As far as I am concerned, context plays a very important role
3、 in communication. It makes the nature of the conversation more clear so that the listeners can get the information more easily. Just like we can not make a romantic proposal without a good atmosphere, we can not communicate successfully without context.How many types does context include?In general
4、, context is categorized into two typeshigh-context and low-context. And this classification is made based on the degree to which meaning comes from the settings or from the words being exchanged.As its name suggests, high-context means context counts a high percentage of the whole communication or
5、message. In high-context communications, speakers always pay more attention to contexts than contents. They express their thoughts in a euphemistic way. So listeners understanding is guided by their own feelings rather than the words they hear. The information transmitted by this kind of communicati
6、on or message may differ with listeners changing.While low-context is just the opposite. In low-context communications, speakers use little context, they prefer sending their message directly to saying a lot of words no matter whether they are related to the point or not. So the listeners can avoid
7、some misunderstanding caused by too many contexts.Native Americans, Latin Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans all belong to high-context cultures. In these countries, people are accustomed to communicating in a high-context way. They transmit information not only with the help of speech and wo
8、rds, they get the point more from the settings and the environment. That is to say the key point is either in the context or internalized in the person. So in high-context cultures, words are not the main access to getting information, those high-context civilized people are educated to speak euphem
9、istically and avoid direct expressions as much as possible since they are little children, so they are sensitive to the subtle surroundings such as space, gestures, dresses, the style of speaking and even silence， which can offer them information. People from this kind of culture have close relation
10、ships and they have much linguistic information to share with each other. Some abundant and profound meanings are always hidden in the simple information. Living in these societies, people are more willing to be harmony with others than committing conflicts.Germans, Americans, Swiss, Swedes, Canadia
11、ns, Norwegians, Finns and Danes belong to low-context cultures. In these cultures, time is extremely precious and people there attach great importance to detailed plans and accurate schedules. It is their views on time that shapes the way they communicate. They care much more about the words they he
12、ar than the settings around them so that they often show the point they are trying to make without many contexts. The nature of their talk can be clear through the sentences, the pronunciations, the intonation and the body languages. Only little information is implicit. In this way, communicators do
13、 not need to guess what others want to express indeed. Since actual words play most parts of low-context conversations, the contexts and anything about the speakers do not have many influences on messages transmitting.Lets see two typical examples of these countries which have different context cult
14、ure.1. The representative country of high-context culture- China. China is a typical country which has high-context culture. From the five-thousand-year history, we can know that our country has been advocating unification all the time. And we not only emphasize the unification of our territory but
15、also the unification of our thoughts. That is the reason why we Chinese regard collectivism as our common value. In this kind of society, people are very homogeneous and used to depending on collectivity. So, they always think more about others feelings than their own when getting along with others.
16、 When they communicate with people, they would rather say some words that have implicit meanings than point out their purposes directly. They think it a good way to care about others and avoid embarrassments which can be made by direct expressions.2. The representative country of low-context culture
17、- America.As we all know, America is a young country which just has less than 300-year history, there are 125 races and 1200 kinds of religions in this country. When emigrant arrived in North America, in order to survive, they had to make effective communications so that they could get help from eac
18、h other. But different languages and cultural backgrounds make it quite difficult to communicate. So, they could only use some specific words to make them understood. In this background, people must learn how to face problems alone and figure them out by themselves. Then it is no longer strange Amer
19、icans advocate individualism but unification. That is also why Americans are always brave enough to fight for their rights and have no fears to show their personalities. Americans like to work in Monochronic time system which stresses everythings procedure, detailed plans and efficiency. The factors
20、 mentioned all indicate that America has low-context culture.Every kind of culture is the result of the development of societies, it is formed in the process of accumulating experiences. People who live close will gradually have some views on many things in common such as the way of thinking, dealin
21、g with problems and living. After these common views are passed on from generation to generation, a certain type of value and culture is shaped. To some degrees, culture is quite complicated. There may be many implicit parts in it. If you are extraneous for one culture, it can be really hard for you
22、 to totally understand it. In order to know more clearly about high-context culture and low-context culture, lets see a case which can help us understand the differences between these two kinds of culture.Lets assume a situation first: One day, a German and Japanese went to a restaurant and both of
23、them ordered a hamburger, but the cook did not cook the meat well so it tasted bad.What would they say about this hamburger?The result is: The German criticized the bad meat and then directly criticized the cook. The Japanese did not criticize anything, he just said the bread and the salad were quit
24、e OK and said no words about the meat.Obviously, the German is from low-context culture while the Japanese is from high-context culture.From this case, we can easily find that high-context seems more personal than low-context.Although every country has its typical context culture, what we must remem
25、ber is that this categorization is not absolute. What the culture will be depends on the certain situation.The first step of mastering the skills of communicating with different people is getting to know the way they communicate. Learning high-context and low-context is a significant part of learning intercultural communication. It also helps us know more deeply about the cultural differences.References许力生. 2006. 语言研究的跨文化视野. 上海：外语教育出版社张爱琳.2008.跨文化交际.重庆大学出版社
