Edward Hall (1959) was an early scholar of cross-cultural communication,
beginning with his books "The Silent Language" (1959), "The Hidden Dimension"
(1969), and "Beyond Culture" (1976). Hall (1976) was the originator of the popular
cross-cultural terms of high-context and low-context, which were based on his
experiences in the Foreign Service. High- and low-context communication became
known as one of the first broad-brush descriptions to categorize differences in how
societies transmit information or communicate (www.culture-at-work.com/highlow.html,
para. 1).