Talk:High-context and low-context cultures

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Beyond National / Socio-Linguistic Cultures
It has been my observation that the qualities, factors, behaviors associated to low- & high-context cultures are also visible in other types of cultures besides national / socio-linguistic ones. Specifically, for example, I would say that the "professional" or "endeavor" cultures of such things like engineering, science, medicine, finance, insurance, law and politics can be considered quite "low context" as they demand explicitness, clarity, as little ambiguity as possible, objectivity, specificity, etc. BorisAnthony (talk) 15:32, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

IBM Japan example
Is this really an example of Japan being high context and America being low context? To me it seems like a simple lack of specificity in the wording: "We would accept no more than 3 defects per 10,000." Also, there's no citation and it is even stated to be possibly apocryphal, so I'm removing it unless someone has the source. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 07:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Russia and Africa
Russian and Slavic Type Cultures are clearly low-context, as anybody who has spent time interacting with the people there can attest to. The interaction (both male and female) is *much* more direct, with very little ambiguity, compared to, say, Japan or Thailand, which rely more on indirect context clues.

Also missing from the list are African and Carribean cultures, which are much more direct, unambiguous and open. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.255.122.212 (talk) 00:38, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Merge
if you're going to just cut and paste the same info into low context culture as high context culture, you might as well just merge the two! 24.59.181.41 (talk) 07:09, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * As I read these two articles, and I discover these concepts, I'm a total newbie on them, they seem to me two extremes of a single concept : scaling the level of context a given culture routinely uses for communication. So I think a better explanation could be given in one page, by stating how typical low- and a high-context cultures treat information and classifying some well-known cultures on a scale. Of course, such a scale may not be 100% pertinent and may not even exist, but it would explain in a much clearer way what are high- and low-context cultures and the underlying scaling concept. –MutosFr (talk) 16:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Separate but Compare/Contrast: Each topic (High Context, Low Context) is worthy of a detailed section though it can be helpful to reference the other (as in, for example, the differences or, even, difficulties that somebody from a low-context culture may experience in a high context culture). Using examples to compare/contrast can help to define each both relative to each other and independently.
 * In a sense, this discussion of whether or not to combine could be an example of high-/low-context rationalization.
 * (Summazooma (talk) 00:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC))


 * Both articles claim that there is no absolute sense of high or low culture and that there is only the relative difference and that the terms are used to compare two cultures. 109.144.25.42 (talk) 12:14, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge: The two articles are currently partly redundant and incomplete without each other. They cover the same single subject (a scale context in communication) from each end. As such I also feel they should be merged into one article. —MJBurrage(T•C) 21:59, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The High Context Culture page has everything and more that the Low Context Culture page has. I think it would be easier to just remove the Low page and rename the High page to fit the entire subject.69.180.168.197 (talk) 05:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

High Context Culture: wondering/question(s)
To the author(s),

I enjoyed reading this artcile very much. The topic was mentioned in a blog and a link was stated to this page. The blog is completely focused on living in the Philippines (a high context culture country). I happen to visit the Philippines twice on 2 different occassions. I like to think I know a lot of the Filipino-culture but still I dont understand everything of their culture maybe even nothing. The problem seems to be that nobody is able to explain it to me.

To understand the difference between high and low better I would like to read some real life examples if possible. I wonder how a new born baby acquires the high context culture? Is it innate, will it acquire during the bringing up or will it be "picked up" from the street (street-cred)? If it is innate then what about the Tabula Rasa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa? It is stated in this article that high context cultures only "change little over time". Can someone explain why? Are they afraid of progress, improvement, evolving? There is a lot of modern technology available in the Philippines, like the latest cell phones, modern cars, great malls, fashionable clothing.

Traits/behaviors I observed while being in the Philippines are/were: - delaying (no time-management) - hypocrisy (a lot of) - funeral processions disturbing all other traffic - no efficiency whatsoever - there seems to be that nothing can be planned - no one seems to have an active hobby - no time-schedules at jeepney-stops/bus-stops - no fixed jeepney-stops/bus-stops - I am very in doubt about the quality of all their education-levels (including university) - drivers do blow their car/jeepney/bus/tri-cycle horns all the time even when there is no danger ahead.

To me it seems people in the Philippines are stuck in the lowest level of the Maslow Piramyd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

I address/label their culture/behavior as primitive.

Haighton 16:25, 22 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Haighton (talk • contribs)

Gradient/spectrum from High to Low and Low to High
Context is comparative, as opposed to a binary. Hall does not categorize certain cultures as "high context" and others as "low context", he argues that certain cultures are comparatively higher/(lower) in context than others. Accordingly, merely listing cultures under one of the respective labels misrepresents the concepts. There should be a table or chart displaying the spectrum, with cultures positioned on it. -96.26.108.183 (talk) 16:53, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. For purposes of the display limitation of WikiPedia, and a desire to keep it a text based list, we agree that the current list format remain, with the top half being "more low context" and the bottom "more high context"? This is how I read it as it is anyways. This begs the question of what factors make a culture either high or low, and what historical trends may affect those factors. For example: a large population migration of low-contextual culture people into a high-context one at a certain period of history. The adoption of a low-contextual endeavor culture (like a financial system or technology engineering, the adoption of a scientific perspective, etc) BorisAnthony (talk) 15:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

synonym: direct/indirect communication style
graduate lectures on international business practices included discussion of direct (low-context) versus indirect (high-context) communication styles of different cultures. The equivalence of these terms could be noted, perhaps as a see-also. 204.8.27.140 (talk) 18:19, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Please define?
Please provide some concrete examples of what are meant by “low-context messages” versus “high-context messages.” You provide an abstract definition and then proceed with specific examples of low-context and high-context cultures, but I would like concrete examples of low-context versus high-context messages please, since these seem to be the core concept in question. 108.56.238.217 (talk) 05:57, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I would like to endorse this, but also to ask for a better explanation of the terminology. The phrases "high context" and "low context" are used as if they had some clear, intrinsic meaning, which to me they do not. A plausible interpretation of the phrase "high context message" is one which includes a lot of information to establish the context for the core of the message. From reading the article I infer that the reverse is true, and that what is being refered to is context dependence, but I did not think that the introduction made this clear.

Chrisbaarry (talk) 04:23, 9 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I came to this article because I encountered the "high-context/low-context" terms in a discussion of linguistics. Having read the entire article (though not its sources), I'm thoroughly confused as to what high-context and low-context messages actually **mean**. Nor do I have any sense of whether this distinction is widely accepted by sociologists or anthropologists. —Moxfyre (ǝɹʎℲxoɯ &#124; contrib) 00:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

These are fair comments. The terminology was originally proposed by Hall (as mentioned in the intro). Perhaps out of a necessity to let the concept get some traction, the terminology hasn't yet been more "intrinsically" described. I'd think that's a job for some lucky PhD candidate to do in their research and dissertation and then come enlighten us. :) BorisAnthony (talk) 15:18, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Marketing
The article says that higher-context people respond better to direct words, but that seems to me to be backwards. A high-context person from the US wants everything spelled out "in black and white" whereas a low-context person from Japan will understand "vague" things from the context. Am I misunderstanding something or has the text got it wrong?211.225.33.104 (talk) 05:59, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * First of all, you have it backwards: US is low-context, Japan is high-context. To answer your question, I think they may have just worded it badly. Maybe they meant "direct" as in short, i.e. few words. High-context cultures prefer fewer words.--2605:E000:6392:7300:3480:B5E6:499:7DE3 (talk) 10:59, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Recommendation
Given that this article has far too much verbiage for its references to support, and that much of what we have is pretty much incomprehensible and might by WP:OR, would it not make sense to cut this down to two or three well referenced paragraphs carefully written so as to actually make sense to a general reader? It's not like it is a speedy deletion candidate as "patent nonsense" but, as it stands, if it was up for AfD I'd be !voting delete. --DanielRigal (talk) 19:02, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Crass gender generalisation
The main image in the article contains the unverified claim "men are typically more low context" and "women are typically more high context". This claim is not returned to at any point in the article. Without any citations to support this claim, or any discussion of this claim, it reads as a crass generalisation made off the cuff, and should probably be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:19B:B00:87A0:D033:57FC:9305:292F (talk) 15:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Finland high or low context?
Currently the article first lists Finland as a low-context culture and immediately after refers to it as a high-context one. This seems like a confusing contradiction. -2001:14BA:1FF3:F400:8556:4BE9:2ED3:C1A1 (talk) 11:29, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

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