An 11 page comparison of the specific ways in which Japanese and American communication styles differ. The author examines this difference in terms of low and high context cultures and in terms of five
specific taxonomies: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, and time orientation. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: AM2_PPjapAmr.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Introduction Communication between people is probably the most important activity that human beings engage themselves in. The way that we express
ourselves, both verbally and non-verbally, however, differs according to our culture and sometimes even our race. Author Edward T. Hall (1977) has proposed that that communication can differ in
accordance with whether we are dealing with a "high context" culture or a "low context" culture. Hall (1977, p 101) clarifies that high context communication features:
"pre-programmed information that is in the receiver and in the setting, with only minimal information in the transmitted
message" Low context communication, on the other hand, features the conveyance of a significant
amount of information and little in terms of the context in which that information is transmitted (Hall, 1977). A comparison between the communication styles of the Japanese and American
cultures can be quite interesting in this regard. The Japanese are a high-context culture, that is their communication style is one in which:
"most of the meaning is either implied by the physical setting or presumed to be part of the individuals internalized beliefs,
values, and norms (Lusting and Koester, 2002, pg 111) As opposed to a low-context culture
like the American culture, very little information is actually provided in the "coded, explicit, part of the message" (Lusting and Koester, 2002, pg 111). Lusting and Koester (2002) note