Communication is defined as interpersonal acts that exchange meaning and information” (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2013, p. 126). The process of communication is fairly simple. An idea is produced and then molded into a message by an individual known as the sender. The person receiving the message is known as the receiver who then decodes it. This process has been labeled as Encoding-Decoding. Subsequently, if the receiver decides to pass on the message, his role will change into that of the sender. One thing that is important to note about the process of communication is that it always occurs in a context.
Moran (2013) expands on this concept of culture occurring in a context and endorses the importance of taking context and culture into consideration for both the sender and the receiver. For instance I visited Saudi Arabia a few years ago. While visiting a jewelry store, the call to prayer came on the loud speaker. Suddenly, all the store clerks just put down the jewelry and walked outside without a word. I was perplexed, I tried to stop one of them and ask if we were the reason they were leaving but they just got annoyed. Later, I realized that majority of the transactions stop for a while when the ‘azaan’ call to prayer starts. Me stopping the clerk to ask was a gaffe. When the azaan comes on you are not supposed to communicate during it, just listen politely. Hence you have to be very cautious about when and how you communicate.
Edward Hall, a prominent anthropologist differentiates between two types of context-cultures: High or low context cultures. High-context culture utilizes more ambiguous methods of communication. Messages are in either physical context or internalized in the person with little communicated in the explicit words. Japan, Saudi Arabia & Spain are cultures that are occupied in high-context communications. In such cultures, the listener is already ‘in the loop’, already ‘contexted’ and thus do not need to updated. While in low-context cultures such as Canada or the United States, the listener knows very little and has to be filled in about everything from the start. Thus it is crucial that people acknowledge what kind of culture they come from and what kind of culture they are dealing with in their everyday life to avoid any kind of communication misunderstandings. A person coming from a high context culture would get annoyed when dealing with some one from a low context culture person because they would have to explain every little detail to them. Thus individuals should not take communication lightly and should pay more heed to how they are conducting it, especially taking body language into consideration. For example Hand gestures: Moran gives the example of a Canadian patting a child on the head being an affectionate gesture while in Malaysia the head is considered the source of one’s intellect and should not be touched. One should always remember that communication is irreversible. You cannot take it back. For example once you send a text message it’s done, you can’t erase it!
References:
Moran, R.T, Harris, P.R, Moran, S.V. (2011) Managing Cultural Differences Leadership Skills and Strategies for Working in a Global World. Oxford: Routledge
Picture retrieved from:
http://beaconnews.ca/calgary/2011/11/how-culture-controls-communication/
Redmond, Brian (2014) Lesson 4, Global Communication. The Pennsylvania State University: World Campus
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2013). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: Sage.
Matthew Scott Leibensperger says
It must have been very exciting to visit Saudi Arabia, and experience the Middle East first hand. I always wanted to travel somewhere completely diverse and experience a different culture such as you have. I’m sure you were quite astonished during the Azaan prayer, as I believe any outsider would have questioned what was going on in the same manner you had. I agree with your high and low culture examples. When researching the topic I mainly saw high-context in areas such as Asia and places of low racial diversity. Countries with fewer varieties of backgrounds will be able to transmit and translate the context of their speech without as many errors, because it is like second nature and won’t require an explanation. A lower-context may be related to countries similar to the United States because of the wide variety of backgrounds and diversity, which will require further explanation.
You and Tom both present great points with the way communication is being used today. Communication has already changed, evolved and adapted to new technology. In my opinion, technology has made society somewhat less impersonal. I mainly communicate thought text or email these days. Communicating digitally can result in errors, because it is no longer face to face, or even ear to ear. As a result, it’s difficult to tell when a person is serious or sarcastic. For instance, the other day on my way home from the airport I get a text message from my brother saying, “Thanks for your help today”. I forgot I had to travel and was defensive in my response stating, “I had other obligations”. He was only being sarcastic but I thought he was actually angry, jumping down my throat. Miscommunications like this could show how something so minute could possibly cause big problems when not interpreted correctly.
Tom Decker says
I couldn’t help but think about how communication is changing and your text message example at the end made me think of this. I used to train new hires and during my time as part of the learning organization we began to develop more virtual learning and it slowly became a substitute to live learning. One thing that I noticed was that communication became one dimensional. Communication became more about what you read and how you interpreted it. Do you think that with today’s technology and how easy it is to reach different cultures, we all may be forced into one context? I may be out on a limb here but I feel as though technology will force us to communicate differently than we did years ago or even now. That’s already happened, but does that form of communication become a global standard and at what point are our communication differences nonexistent?