跨文化交际48857.docVIP

课程名称：跨文化交际 学生姓名：潘颖 学号： 指导老师：雷蕾 日期： 2011年6月14日 High-context and Low-context We human are used to living in groups. Communication is a necessary tool for us to transmit information in our everyday life. Culture determines our communicating styles. So in different cultures, the way we communicate can be quite different. And one factor which causes the differences is the different use of context. So, what is context? According to Hall, context is the information that surrounds an event, and bounds up with the meaning of the event. As far as I am concerned, context plays a very important role in communication. It makes the nature of the conversation more clear so that the listeners can get the information more easily. Just like we can not make a romantic proposal without a good atmosphere, we can not communicate successfully without context. How many types does context include? In general, context is categorized into two types—high-context and low-context. And this classification is made based on the degree to which meaning comes from the settings or from the words being exchanged. As its name suggests, high-context means context counts a high percentage of the whole communication or message. In high-context communications, speakers always pay more attention to contexts than contents. They express their thoughts in a euphemistic way. So listeners’ understanding is guided by their own feelings rather than the words they hear. The information transmitted by this kind of communication or message may differ with listeners changing. While low-context is just the opposite. In low-context communications, speakers use little context, they prefer sending their message directly to saying a lot of words no matter whether they are related to the point or not. So the listeners can avoid some misunderstanding caused by too many contexts. Native Americans, Latin Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans all belong to high-context cultures. In these countries, people are