High Context Culture and Low Context Culture

High context culture - Culture which avoids direct use of language; meaning is conveyed through context more than words.
Generally low context means the opposite.

Here is what I think is a low context culture example (between 2 talkshow professionals, Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman):

Click here for the video. If it somehow defunct, look up by typing "Oprah" and "Letterman" together in the search box in Youtube.

So as you can see, they both tend to interrupt each other because of too much things to say at once. And the most importantly, even the slightest emotion and compliments were specified to the tiniest detail. With spoken words.People nowadays, asides from America and maybe other countries, I think they are not really high in context when it comes to communication. Above average is better when describing them.

Cultures with higher context would be countries with not many words in their original language. I think especially Japan fits into this criteria, where they have two sets of "alphabets" in their language: One for their own language and the other set is to imitate words that doesn't originate from their own country like "hamburger" or "bread". And on top of that they must use something more than those two sets of alphabets alone to convey what they want to say. Body language, or art, for example. And their fictional work like comics does not really say much in words but they do in faces and emotions. It's so different from low-context culture comics like let's say, American comics.

Here's an extract from a villian, Two-Face from Batman.
And here is something from a Japanese horror comic, Gyo by Ito Junji



Situations filled with emotions are filled with descriptions in the 1st comic extract but not in the second.


High-context leaves a lot of space for imagination while the opposite goes for low-context. Like the picture below which is full of empty spaces, and a poetry of few words with ambiguous meanings. Maybe they had to resort to doing ambiguous art because of limited materials. Is it rain? Is it misty? It is open for your imagination in this ancient work of art.


As for this page from Street Fighters VS King of Fighters (translated from Chinese) it's describing every single scene:



American's comics have gotten better nowadays though, with less description on how you feel and stuff.


In conclusion I think we have to stay balanced- in the middle of high and low contexts. It is not interesting to take out the spice of life by leaving no suspense at all, but yet it is also not a good thing to be too under-informed. Take your pick. I'm staying in the grey region and more towards the low context.


JWCD