High- and low-context cultures

High-context culture and the contrasting low-context culture are terms presented by the anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his 1976 book Beyond Culture. It refers to a culture's tendency to use high-context messages over low-context messages in routine communication. This choice between speaking styles indicates whether a culture will cater to in-groups, an in-group being a group that has similar experiences and expectations, from which inferences are drawn. In a higher-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice become very important in higher-context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (but less effectively outside that group), while in a low-context culture, the communicator needs to be much more explicit and the value of a single word is less important.