Up till now, the most widely accepted concept of cultural context in
communication, especially, in intercultural communication is Edward T. Hall's
theory of High-context culture and low-context culture.
Meaning and context are inextricably bound up with each other. In
Intercultural communication, cultural context is especially important. Edward T.
Hall's cultural context theory divides culture into two kinds: high-context culture
and low-context culture. High-context culture and low-context culture are two
ends of cultural context continuum. Each specific culture locates at a certain
point in the continuum. Whether it is high or low is in a relative degree. No one
culture is at the very point of either end. For a given culture we say that it is a
high or low context culture, we mean• that it contains more characteristics of the
high-context culture or low context culture. No culture exists exclusively on one
end of the continuum.
"A high-context communication or message is one in which most of the
information is either in the physical context or internalized in the Person, while
very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. A
low-context communication is just the opposite, that is, the mass of the
information is vested in the explicit code.”“Although no culture exists
exclusively at one end of the scale, some are high while others are low.
American culture, not on the bottom, is toward the lower end of the scale.”
“China, the possessor of a great and complex culture, is on the high-context
end of the scale.，，
So, according to Hall, China is of high-context culture and America is of
low-context culture. As to the characteristics of communicators: communicator
from high-context culture of the utterance, to a certain extent, depends on
knowledge of relevant information, such as history, tradition, and some other
elaborated social value systems.}They communicate very economically with rich
meaning involved, and much information is conveyed with little expression,
whereas communicator from low-context culture tends to speak in direct -and
clear-cut way. The information is mainly stated in explicit code. Their speaking
is relatively easier to understand because of the explicitness of expression, and
because the meaning is straightly stated. Therefore, a’high-context
communicator can catch on to what others mean, even when they do not say it
directly; when communicating with others, tends to avoid clear-cut expressions
of feeling, uses silence to avoid upsetting others when communicates. While a
low context communicator openly expresses their feelings and emotions, readily
reveals personal things about himself, likes to be accurate, and tends to be a very
precise communicator,一etc.
不要再给我类似GOOGLE自动翻译了啊！我要人话！！！