Hall (1976) claims that those of European heritage believe that what they think is real because they live in a “word world” (p.vii), and anything other than words are considered less important in the communication process. This, to Hall, is a mistake. Words do not convey every meaning in a message. There are underlying subtleties that provide the wholeness, or context, to a “spoken message.” Along the same lines, Hall (1998) adds that “high context communication or message is one in which most of the information is already 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” (p. 61). An illustration of a high-context communication as described by Hall (1976) is in his puzzling experience of staying in a hotel in Japan. Hall found himself moved from one place to another, “like a piece of derelict luggage” (p. 61), but was not told the reason for the move. As someone who sees himself to be from a low- context culture, Hall was upset for not understanding why he was treated in such a way. Finally, the answer came. In Japan, when a person joins a corporation, that person has to “belong” to the corporation; otherwise he or she will have no identity. So now that Hall is in this hotel, the hotel was socializing him and was taking care of him. What is interesting here is that a person need not be told explicitly (low-context) about what is being done to him or her but that person would have to follow the crowd to understand what is going on to be able to be part of the group (a high-context communication style).
In addition to the implicit meaning buried in a behavior, Hall (1976) noted that meaning and context are inextricably bound with each other. He stated that “China, the possessor of a great complex culture, is on the high-context end of the scale. One notices this particularly in the written language of China, which is thirty-five hundred years old and has changed very little in the past three thousand years” (p. 91). This shows that meaning is embedded in the context in which the communication occurs and rarely in the written communication. To illustrate this point, for someone to be literate in Chinese, one has to be conversant with Chinese history and to know the pronunciation of the words to understand the four tones which carry a different meaning for each tone. Knowing the context of a message conveys the meaning intended. Understanding both words and context gives the full picture
Hall (1976) claims that those of European heritage believe that what they think is real because they live in a “word world” (p.vii), and anything other than words are considered less important in the communication process. This, to Hall, is a mistake. Words do not convey every meaning in a message. There are underlying subtleties that provide the wholeness, or context, to a “spoken message.” Along the same lines, Hall (1998) adds that “high context communication or message is one in which most of the information is already 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” (p. 61). An illustration of a high-context communication as described by Hall (1976) is in his puzzling experience of staying in a hotel in Japan. Hall found himself moved from one place to another, “like a piece of derelict luggage” (p. 61), but was not told the reason for the move. As someone who sees himself to be from a low- context culture, Hall was upset for not understanding why he was treated in such a way. Finally, the answer came. In Japan, when a person joins a corporation, that person has to “belong” to the corporation; otherwise he or she will have no identity. So now that Hall is in this hotel, the hotel was socializing him and was taking care of him. What is interesting here is that a person need not be told explicitly (low-context) about what is being done to him or her but that person would have to follow the crowd to understand what is going on to be able to be part of the group (a high-context communication style).In addition to the implicit meaning buried in a behavior, Hall (1976) noted that meaning and context are inextricably bound with each other. He stated that “China, the possessor of a great complex culture, is on the high-context end of the scale. One notices this particularly in the written language of China, which is thirty-five hundred years old and has changed very little in the past three thousand years” (p. 91). This shows that meaning is embedded in the context in which the communication occurs and rarely in the written communication. To illustrate this point, for someone to be literate in Chinese, one has to be conversant with Chinese history and to know the pronunciation of the words to understand the four tones which carry a different meaning for each tone. Knowing the context of a message conveys the meaning intended. Understanding both words and context gives the full picture
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