CAPs #3- Weiting Yue

High-Context Communication

According to Martin & Nakayama (2009), high-context communication is “a style of communication in which much of the information in contained in the contexts and nonverbal cues rather than expressed explicitly in words”. This style of communication emphasizes understanding messages without direct verbal communication (Martin & Nakayama, 2009).

I read an article which analyses the differences between high-context and low- context culture when those marketers create advertisement or website to appeal different regions consumers. The article presents a set of preliminary results describing the tendencies by which communication through websites is adapted to various cultures (Würtz, 2005). The article mainly emphasizes that when customizing a website to appeal to a different culture it is not enough merely to translate the text because of the high and low context cultures. They also need to be applied overall communication strategy to the audience. The study in the article identifies whether and how variables that characterize High- and Low-Context cultures are reflected on websites. Würtz also attempts to draw parallels between “face-to-face communication and communication on the web by looking at communication rules and patterns in High-Context cultures and comparing and contrasting them to the communication style of websites in Low-Context cultures”.

Personally I was born in a classical high-context country- China. It is very different in many ways that people talk or behave in daily life. We usually use lots of high-context information in a business world. Chinese think business world have its own potential roles and everyone need to keep it. For example, we have our own rule to sit in a round table in a room when businessmen have dinner together. The people who invite others and pay the bill will sit in the center of table and the position is on the opposite of the door if they are dinning in a private room. The major guests will sit on the left and right side of the inviter. Also, the people sit on the opposite of the inviter is with him/her and he/she will in charge of drink with guests. Businessmen usually do not talk business when they begin to eat and the major deal will be done around the time in the middle or in the end of the dinner.

References:

Maritn, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (Fifth ed., pp. 185-187). New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill.

Würtz, E. (2005). A cross-cultural analysis of websites from high-context cultures and low-context cultures. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 13.