High context v. low context cultures: getting your message across is not simply a question of vocabulary and grammar
by Patricia
For an American, communicating successfully with a French audience requires more than mastering la langue de Molière. As in many other language pairs, getting your message across orally or in writing requires putting the target audience’s culture at the forefront of your efforts to seduce, persuade and convince.
The major difference between high and low context cultures is the amount of information that a person can comfortably manage. In a high context culture, background information tends to be implicit. In a low context culture, much of the background information needs to be made explicit in the communication.
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