Book notes
He came to the field of cross-cultural analysis from the discipline of anthropology. He argued that all peoples interpret and create messages in reference to shared values. This information includes values in the culture, which link members of the culture group and influence how they refer to their contexts when maintaining relationships. Members` experiences of context will influence how they communicate. And different culture groups respond to their contexts differently. Hall model distinguished between high-context and low-context cultures. Members of HIGH-context cultures depend heavily on their shared experience and interpretation of their cultural environment in creating and interpreting communications. Members of the culture group lead from birth to interpret the covert clues given in these contexts when they communicate and so much meaning is conveyed indirectly. In languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese indirect styles of communication and the capacity to interpret non-verbal signals and indirect illusions are prized. But in LOW-context cultures the environment is less important and non-verbal behaviour is often ignored and so communicators have to provide more explicit information.
HIGH-CONTEXT CULTURES CHARACTERISTICS
• Relationships (positive and negative) are relatively LONG lasting and individuals feel deep personal involvement with each other.
• Because so much is communicated by SHARED CODE, communication is economical fast and efficient – in a routine situation. High context cultures fully exploit the communicative context: example The Japanese talk around the point. They think intelligent human begins should be able to discover the point of discourse from the context, which they are careful to provide.
• Communication in high-context cultures employes a far wider range of expression than is usual in ANGLO cultures. The Japanese can communicate widely using non-verbal signalling and non-language utterances known