Essay On Low Context Culture

Culture is a set of values, beliefs and attitudes which are accepted and shared by a group of people to standardize their behaviors in daily life (Scarborough, 1998). It can be recognized from the definition that there are many various groups of people who think differently because it is not possible to count those groups. Culture is created by human beings (Laroche, 2003);theirdiverse thoughts and behaviors create the cultural differences. It takes a long time for a culture to develop; many forces act upon people to establish their identity, but the strongest is religion. Beliefs are the major reasons for cultural differences (Scarborough, 1998). They have different thinking about life style, relation and respect. For example, it would be very

High Context and Low Context Cultures

Anthropologist Edward Hall (in Moran et al.2007) makes a dynamicdivision between high and low-context cultures, and how this substance of context effects communication. A high-context culture uses high-context communications: that means the words are directed very indirectly, it may not be easy for a listener in a low context culture to understand what is meant. Japan, Saudi Arabia, China, andSpain are cultures which engage in high context communications. On the other hand, a low-context culture “employs low-context communications” which means the conversations are very direct and a listener does not need to think about what a speaker tries to say;The United States and Canadainvolve in low-context communications(Moran et al., 2007).

It can be seen from the definitions how communication is being done among various cultures around the world. This difference is one of the main reasons of confusion and usually it may cause countable troubles. Moran et al. (2007) give the following example to show how sometimes this type of cultural differences may cause very serious misunderstandings:

Question: “Do you think Mr. Sim will be able to come to the course next week as I