Anthropologist Edward T. Hall, collector extraordinaire of cultural factors, coined a couple of terms that are proving very useful to me lately. He writes,
“High context transactions feature pre-programmed information that is in the receiver and in the setting, with only minimal information in the transmitted message. Low context transactions are the reverse. Most of the information must be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is missing in the context.”*
Think of the difference between a Japanese ryokan with its placard-free ritualistic communal bathing experience and an American motel with 25 rules posted about how to use the pool. Some cultures operate more generally on high-context transactions than others. It’s why the Japanese know the appropriate way to get naked with strangers and Americans need to be told not to dive into a concrete-cased body of water three-feet-deep.
A classic response from both parties following a mixed high-low context transaction might be “Why did they bother saying that?” Americans read emails from their French or Japanese colleagues and wonder at how their most straightforward requests for information are met with vagaries adrift in polite stock phrases. Their Japanese and French counterparts receive bullet-point instructions from the Americans and wonder at the bluntness and inanity of articulating every minute detail of what is, after all, their job.
My working definition as a navigator of such cultures and transactions is as follows: a high-context culture is one in which the people closest to you communicate their respect for you by not spelling out everything that must be done and when things don’t work out perfect strangers feel free to tell you what you should have done differently; a low-context culture is one in which perfect strangers feel free to tell you exactly what you should do and when things don’t work out the people closest to you communicate their support for you by commiserating about how things should have worked. The principle differences lie in what is spoken and what is unspoken, in what is assumed to be common knowledge and standard operating procedure vs. what expectations must be communicated to be assumed.
Living in France is not my first major experience of moving from a low-context to a high-context culture, but it is possibly the most socially binding one. Japan has a higher context culture by any definition of the term, and I lived there both as a child and as an adult for over five years in total. (It doesn’t get much more high-context than changing the word for “I” to reflect the social status of the person you are addressing.) The Japanese, however, are hyper-conscious of the fact that they live by a unique code that outsiders find incomprehensible and that they find inexplicable and they therefore issue an automatic and comprehensive exemption to foreigners. Exceptions will be made and not taken as a matter of course whenever anyone visibly not Japanese is involved.**
The French are generally considered to have one of the highest context cultures in Western Europe, but they do not seem as self-aware of this particular distinction. It seems to me that the general sense that things ought to be done comme il faut (as things ought to be done) is often stronger and more generally applied for not having been consciously examined. Where the Japanese will politely overlook gaijin gaffes which they would contemplate hara-kiri for committing themselves, the French will consistently correct tourists’ misguided pronunciation, course pairings, and sartorial choices on the assumption that their visitors would rather not be doing things wrong. The customer is not always right, but he or she may be righted.
Of course, no culture is uniformly high or low context any more than any person is uniformly defined by their culture. All societies have pockets that are higher and lower culture. Any group of people who interact with one another regularly becomes higher context. When anyone in my extended family says “That’s how Cousin Catie broke her leg” we know the whole story and exactly what we are being admonished against doing, but you are left to wonder. I think, too, that most of us long for higher or lower context transactions than our prevailing cultures typically afford. We admire people who always seem to know how to comport themselves in any situation and we seek the company of straight-talkers. French people regularly confess to me that they find the French too negative. They often feel trapped and discouraged by their own complex and mysterious bureaucracies and cultural expectations and they are looking forward to some American optimism and free-spiritedness in our conversations. I bounce back from disheartening impasses in trying to decode school enrollment or medical billing systems by getting to know the city itself. I’ll be made to feel utterly ignorant on a regular basis, but I’m always buoyed when giving directions to lost French tourists. Everyone knows something better than the people around them. What Americans often interpret as Gallic arrogance is really just the French holding onto this truth for comfort and dear life. Remember, outside their areas of expertise they are thwarted and treated as ignorant just as much as you are. Letting the experts be expert on your behalf is where high-context cultures shine. Approaching an actual person who seems to be in the know, confessing ignorance, and asking for help is humbling to us rugged individualists, but it’s how things are done here. And, in the end, much less humbling than never getting your utilities set up or finding the Louvre.
Cultural values and interpretations shift over time…
The effects of moving from a decidedly low-context West Coast American culture to a deceptively higher context culture are heightened considerably when one is not fluent in the language. The hardest part of picking up the language in Japan was that you can’t pick up the language in Japan. Reading is the hardest part. But in French, reading is by far my preferred means of getting information. Week one I could get the gist of the articles in the free metro newspapers, and if I don’t get something the first time around I can make another pass or break out the dictionary. Especially after being so conspicuously “other” in Japan, I would much prefer to walk around Paris mute, to “pass” as a local, glean what I can and look up all the explanations for what I’ve seen later online. The Internet is the perfect tool of the low-context culture: great gobs of information passively, generally and impersonally made available to the masses in written form and I can access it independently, in private, as needed, and on my own time. But it doesn’t work here. French websites remind me of Japanese pastries. They look like someone recreated a website from a picture of a website. They may be pleasing to the eye, promising to supply what you crave (the address and opening hours of a store, chocolate, etc.), but when you bite into it, it doesn’t taste like much. You click the buttons and nothing happens. Even if you manage to extract some information you cannot act on it online. In France problems are only solved in collaboration with another person, which means in person or on the phone. Ideally in person because, well, there’s more context – for all involved. I can ask to see what the form they need looks like, I can get a better read on if they are trying to move me toward a solution or just trying to move me along, I can see their lips move and thereby catch one additional word in ten, they can see that I’m trying, and presence alone counts for much.
I don’t particularly like talking on the phone in the best of circumstances, but here.… Let’s just say I change my ringtone quarterly in the hopes that someday I may achieve some confluence of calm and confidence that won’t send my pulse racing whenever I hear it. For me, receiving a phone call is the epitome of no context in a high context culture. The typical French caller gets in about four sentences in the time it takes the average American to say “Hi, this is ___. I’m calling about _____.” – none of which is remotely like “Hi, this is ___. I’m calling about ____.” If they do offer a name or a company, it is inevitably lost in the onrush of excusing oneself ornately for bothering one but would one happen to have a moment because something has come to one’s attention that will require one’s attention and did one receive already anyone’s earlier attempt at communication referring to this? Allo? 
High-context languages can often go on at length without defining a subject.*** The longer one can go without saying directly what one is talking about, the more polite the discourse. Strangers to such languages are, of course, treated more politely, being strangers and all. The better my French gets the more I have the experience of understanding exactly what the person on the other end of the line said, but having no idea what they mean by it, or even who they are or what we’re talking about. My husband still does better on the phone than I do by starting every conversation with the customary “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French well.” I find I say that more now than a year ago, when it was more true and I’m getting a lot more done. It repositions us from the person who does this for a living and the person who doesn’t have a clue to the expert and person in need of help.
Comments? Corrections? Corroborative anecdotes? Post them below!
Notes:
*Hall. Beyond Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1976), 101.
**Nikkeijin find themselves at a distinct disadvantage under this system. Non-Asians who have lived in the country for a decade might find themselves literally applauded for stumbling out “I restaurant to go” and using chopsticks when they get there while an American tourist who never knew his Japanese grandmother will be on the hook for using an overly casual form of the verb or pronoun and not using the proper counting systems for the round vs. flat portions of his order.
***Japanese sentences require only a verb and a level of formality, for example, “rather politely going returning.” Who is going? Where? Why? When will they be back? Well, it’s obvious if you are there when it is said. It means “Well, I’m off to work, then. I’ll be back around six o’clock as usual. And it’s Thursday, so I’ll pick up Junior from soccer practice on my way. Thanks for taking care of the baby and getting the dog to the vet. I can’t imagine what we’d do without you. I’m so looking forward to coming home to my family this evening.” Obviously.
The French make copious use of the pronoun “on” which can mean anything from you and me, i.e. “us,” to some nameless, faceless, benign or dastardly “them,” or some impersonal exemplar in between.
Une flâneuse à l’étranger 