hey there welcome back alex lyon here and today we're talking about high context and low context cultures we will be working out of bb and masterson's book on communicating in small group so this is an introduction to these kinds of materials not a comprehensive source for your research studies we're just going to learn the basics for beginners so let's get into the details so first this area of study of culture comes from the field of anthropology and when we say high or low context we're not talking about an either or situation where you can put
a country once and for all in a box really this is better understood as a relative scale so is this country or culture high or low context compared to another one so there are not boxes it's a continuum nevertheless high context cultures tend to have certain things in common for example they're associated with collectivistic cultures rather than individualistic so people tend to see themselves as a part of a larger group there's an emphasis and sensitivity to unspoken verbal messages communicators mood shapes how messages should be interpreted and the physical context and environment help communicators make
sense of those messages in fact i have a pretty good friend who grew up in japan and she moved to the united states and one of the things she says about japan which is generally considered to be a high context culture says that when you're interacting with other people she said quote you have to read the atmosphere that was the expression that is a japanese expression read the atmosphere in other words it's not so much about what people are saying you have to notice what's happening in the context the environment around those people and what
they're doing and saying so collectivistic culture allows individuals to understand the meaning of subtle behaviors because there's a strong culture there verbal messages are fewer they may be indirect and may imply much more than what is directly being said so in japan for example you might hear someone say if to a request that will require the utmost consideration but if you know how to read between the lines it means they're trying to say no to you but they also don't want to embarrass you so there's more going on than what is actually said and in
high context situations individuals may not see low context individuals as particularly trustworthy so they may need time to get to know people so let's now turn to low context cultures these are associated typically as individualistic cultures so people tend to see themselves as individuals not automatically part of the larger group they rely on spoken messages and direct verbal expression it places a greater emphasis on the importance of speech the requests for information are much more direct you might hear someone literally say tell it like it is or give it to me straight they use expressions
like that there's less reliance on the context of communication to understand its meaning so you're listening to the actual message you're not noticing all the other contextual features of it there's less sensitivity to nonverbal cues people might not be picking up at all on the non-verbal situation compared to a high context culture and individuals here might have fewer skills at interpreting those nonverbal moments and and signals that people are giving off now there there's a continuum that researchers have developed that show relatively speaking where these kinds of countries line up and this is certainly not
a comprehensive list there are a lot more countries in this but these are the ones that tend to stand out and that is all the way up at the top we have high context cultures like japan and china tend to have very high context cultures where they they read that atmosphere as i mentioned somewhere in the middle you have like the british culture french culture and then a little bit below that you have the united states which which is where i'm from and we have what we would tend to have compared to others a low
context cultures where we will want people to speak directly give us the bottom line tell it like it is we want things spelled out a little bit more and then all the way down toward the bottom is germany and switzerland they tend to have very low context cultures and i have never had much exposure to those cultures myself but that's that's what the research says things need to be said very directly and very explicitly there's not a lot of reading between the lines you spell it out directly so question of the day what has been
your experience in any of these high context or low context cultures have you ever gone to another place and not really realized all that was going on in terms of whether it was higher or lower context compared to where you are from so i would love to hear about your experiences in that section below the video and i look forward to reading those so thanks and i will see you soon
