Communicating and Bridging the Gap
HIGH CONTEXT
LOW CONTEXT
Language only gives a partial indicator as to where a culture will fall on the Communicating scale. The gap between the United States and the United Kingdom, both Anglo-Saxon countries, is quite large, as is the gap between Brazil and Peru, both Romance-language countries.
If you’re from a low-context culture, you may perceive a high-context communicator as secretive, lacking transparency, or unable to communicate effectively. On the other hand, if you’re from a high-context culture, you might perceive a low-context communicator as inappropriately stating the obvious (“You didn’t have to say it! We all understood!”), or even as condescending and patronizing (“You talk to us like we are children!”).
Email Communicating between high en Low Context cultures
In most Low Context cultures, if you send someone an email and that person doesn’t have the answer at their fingertips, both common sense and etiquette call for the receiver to respond within 24 hours saying something like, “I got your message and will get back to you on
Wednesday.” In other words, even if you have nothing to say, you should spell out explicitly in a low-context way when you will have something to say. Lack of explicit communication signifies something negative.
Now, if you send an e-mail to a high Context culture even in Europe and say, you also know that that person does high-quality and on-time work and has a very good level of English, you may not hear back from him for three or four days. You might be assuming all sorts of problems that prevent a speedy reply . . . either that or he has fallen ill or they have a massive IT malfunction. And then three days later, you receive an e-mail telling you that he has done exactly as requested and everything is under control. Why couldn’t they have said that in the first place?!
Bridging the Gap
From a Low-Context culture:
• Don’t assume the message is
contained in spoken words
• Pay as much attention to what is not said as to what is said
From a High-Context culture:
• Don’t assume the message extends beyond spoken words
• Be especially careful when working with other high-context
culture, contextual cues differ across cultures