1.4.6 - Context of Cultures: High and Low
Context of Cultures: High and Low
Here is another concept that will help you pull together a lot of the material you have read so far about culture. It is called "high context" and "low context" and was created by the same anthropologist who developed the concepts of polychronic and monochronic time. They complement each other and provide a broad framework for looking at culture.
The list below shows the kind of behavior that is generally found in high and low context cultures within five categories: how people relate to each other, how they communicate with each other, how they treat space, how they treat time, and how they learn. One thing to remember is that few cultures, and the people in them, are totally at one end of the spectrum or the other. They usually fall somewhere in between and may have a combination of high and low context characteristics.
HIGH CONTEXT (HC) | LOW CONTEXT (LC) |
Association
| Association
|
Interaction
| Interaction
|
Territoriality
| Territoriality
|
Temporality
| Temporality
|
Learning
| Learning
|
The content here is based on the following works by anthropologist Edward T. Hall, all of which were published in New York by Doubleday: The Silent Language (1959), The Hidden Dimension (1969), Beyond Culture (1976), and The Dance of Life (1983).
Source: The 1993 Annual: Developing Human Resources. Pfeiffer & Company.
Tales from the... | |
Learning from Cultural Encounters !!
To explore where you fit on the low and high context continuum, let's do the following activity...
CULTURAL-CONTEXT INVENTORY Claire B. Halverson | ||||||
Instructions: For each of the following twenty items, check 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to indicate your tendencies and preferences in a work situation. | ||||||
Hardly Ever | Sometimes | Almost Always | ||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
1. | When communicating, I tend to use a lot of facialexpressions, hand gestures, and body movements rather than relying mostly on words. | |||||
2. | I pay more attention to the context of a conversation�who said what and under what circumstances�than I do to the words. | |||||
3. | When communicating, I tend to spell things outquickly and directly rather than talking around and addingto the point. | |||||
4. | In an interpersonal disagreement, I tend to be more emotional than logical and rational. | |||||
5. | I tend to have a small, close circle of friends rather thana large, but less close, circle of friends. | |||||
6. | When working with others, I prefer to get the job donefirst and socialize afterward rather than socialize first andthen tackle the job. | |||||
7. | I would rather work in a group than by myself. | |||||
8. | I believe rewards should be given for individual accomplishment rather than for group accomplishments. | |||||
9. | I describe myself in terms of my accomplishments rather than in terms of my family and relationships. | |||||
10. | I prefer sharing space with others to having my own private space. | |||||
11. | I would rather work for someone who maintains authority and functions for the good of the group than work for someone who allows a lot of autonomy and individual decision making. | |||||
12. | I believe it is more important to be on time than to let other concerns take priority. | |||||
13. | I prefer working on one thing at a time to working on avariety of things at once. | |||||
14. | I generally set a time schedule and keep to it rather than leave things unscheduled and go with the flow. | |||||
15. | I find it easier to work with someone who is fast and wants to see immediate results than to work with someone who is slow and wants to consider all the facts. | |||||
16. | In order to learn about something, I tend to consult many sources of information rather than to go to the one best authority. | |||||
17. | In figuring out problems, I prefer focusing on the whole situation to focusing on specific parts or taking one step at a time. | |||||
18. | When tackling a new task, I would rather figure it out on my own by experimentation than follow someone else's example or demonstration. | |||||
19. | When making decisions, I consider my likes and dislikes, not just the facts. | |||||
20. | I prefer having tasks and procedures explicitly defined tohaving a general idea of what has to be done. |
Your High context score is:
Your Low context score is:
The difference between your scores is :
Compare your High and Low Context Culture scores.
They can provide a pretty clear indication of how you prefer to interact in work and other social settings. All this means is that you are likely to feel more comfortable using one or the other contexts.
Neither one is better or worse than the other. Preferring one style does not mean that you can�t interact effectively in many contexts, but just that you might have to make some adjustments if, for example, your style is predominantly high context and you find yourself functioning in a largely low context culture, or vice-versa. It also indicates that overseas adaptation might be easier if you were intending to live in a culture that generally reflected those cultural values. As useful as it is to know what your "natural" style is, it is even more important to understand how your preferred style might differ from others, and what that means when interacting with those who do not share that preference.If you want to know more about the interpretation of your scores...click here.