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Conclusion 17
Acknowledgements 18
Bibiography 19
1. Introduction
1.1 The Definition of Context
Context, as a linguistic important concept, now gains more and more attention. When people communicate, context will form and come into effect. Since Hall(1976) put forward the concept of high-context culture and low-context culture, it has been adopted in many situations such as international corporation or intercultural communication. According to Hall’s point, people have formed close relationship in high-context culture since long time ago. They don’t need to make their words clear and even a simple eye-contact can convey their intention. However, in low-context culture, things are quite opposite. Most information in low-context culture is conveyed in external way. Communicators in high-context pay attention to comprehension which means what the speaker means is more than what he says while in low-context culture, what the speaker means is what he says”.
Actually, M.W.Lustig(1996) and some other scholars have drawn the conclusion showed bleow.
High-context culture carries following features:
(1)connotation
(2)secret-code information
(3)more non-language code
(4)close relationship
(5)flexible time-handling;
Low-context culture caeeies followings features:
(1)explicit
(2)public code information
(3)more language code
(4) loose relationship
(5)highly-organized time handing.
1.2 Theoretical Research of High Context and Low-Context Culture
When we focus on culture, the most normal circumstance is that we will find out that people from different cultures differ much in a great deal of aspects. Behavior of communicative code should be placed into the first position. It’s true that people from different cultures gain different assumptions about the world, which was put forward by Edward Hall(1973), an anthropologist who spared all his efforts studying American Indians’ culture and language. Especially, he paid much attention to how culture interacts and he made a conclusion that cultures can be roughly classified into so-called high-context and low-context, which is considered as the origin of context theory.
In high-context culture, when people communicate with others, the high context will be full of messages. The speaker’s or receiver’s action and the events happening will all convey a great deal of meanings and significance. To be simplified, more attention is paid to what’s happening around the message or word than to the message itself in high-context culture.
To gain a better understanding of the high-context culture, this essay is going to carry out an analysis and come to a conclusion from two perspectives. One is personal space and the other is time. People in high-context culture prefer group thinking, which means closeness to other people will make them comfortable. So they have less respect for privacy. During your communicative activities, people will stand closer when they speak, even touch you on shoulder or back. This is the most time to show their kindness and friendship. When these addition acts happen, it’s high time high-context theory functioned: body language rather than certain words, will tell you what you want to know. The other point that will be pointed out is the time. People in high-context culture do not have a standard on time, so punctuality gets the least attention. Since long time ago, ancestors have emphasized the unity of human-beings and the heaven. So ever, things will gradually happen if its time comes.
When we move to low-context culture, things will come out all opposite. As is mentioned before, a low-context culture is the one in which the message, the action or the event is a separate entity and has unique meaning itself. Surroundings and context affect little. So the message itself matters and people will ignore surroundings and context. We’ll also take time and space into consideration. People in low-context culture cherish privacy so the concept of inpiduality is of great importance. If you continue your behavior such as touching others casually, people will feel violated and what you have done will be seen as some kind of invasion of privacy. Body language is nearly nothing for message is all. Their simple, accurate ample messages don’t need additional body language or context to compensate.