Hall Edward and his concepts

Each culture is rich in its logic and ideas about the world. Those things that are significant in some nations can be useless to others. That's why we should respect representatives of other cultures. Hall Edward in his theories and concepts convinces everyone that all cultures contain a number of basic elements that are defining in the methods of communication and behavior of people.

"The Great Grandfather"

Hall Edward was born in May 1914 in the US, in Missouri. In 1942, Mr .. became a graduate of Columbia University and then began to work in various universities in America.

E. Hall-Jr. is an anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher. In the 1950s he introduced for the first time the notion of intercultural communication, which he created for the adaptation of American employees in other countries.

Hall is considered the creator of such a science as proxemics (the field of social psychology aimed at studying the spatial, temporal communication system), the developer of the concept of group cohesion, and the great progenitor of NLP (neurolinguistic programming).

The great anthropologist in his research comes to the newest understanding of the relationship of people with each other. Each of the individuals has its own territory, which he considers personal. And the distance in communication is determined by a number of factors: origin, personal preferences or cultural identity.

Types of the context of culture

The famous Edward Hall theory of high and low-context cultures tells of the use of certain unspoken and hidden rules, which are crucial for understanding events and communication between individuals. At the same time, the complexity of culture is due to the abundance of contextual information necessary for understanding the social situation. And the more complex a civilization, the more difficult the social situation is understood by outsiders.

Hall Edward divided the cultures into high-context and low-contextual.

A culture of high context implies a successful understanding of all events, since a high density of information is designed for close ties between individuals. It does not matter communicating with friends, colleagues or family members. Highly contextual cultures are homogeneous, practically do not change over time and can easily contact foreign cultures. E. Hall's researches showed that everyday communication of individuals does not require detailed information about events, as they are always aware of what is happening.

To countries with high context, Hall included Russia, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the Middle East.

In turn, low-context cultures differ in the practical absence of an informal information network. Such cultures are heterogeneous, relations between individuals occur within strict limits. At the same time, individuals themselves share personal relationships and working aspects. This feature has led to the fact that representatives of low-context cultures need additional information about what is happening around and for communicating with other cultures. Countries with a low context include the United States, Germany, Switzerland, as well as Scandinavian and other northern European countries.

Main cultural differences according to Hall theory

The main differences in the thinking of peoples can be presented in the form of a table.

Cultural grammar

The concept of the cultural grammar of Edward Hall aims at understanding the differences and developing tolerance for representatives of different cultures. In other words, one must respect one's partner, since he has the right to be different, to think differently. Knowledge of the characteristics of life of other cultures is the determining factor in the communication and behavior of individuals.

Hall Edward believed that the most important cultural category is time. This category is the index of the rhythm of life and activity in general. And just how much time is valuable in culture, the type and form of communication between personalities changes so much. That is why, when dealing with a representative of a particular culture, one must take into account his attitude to this category.

For example, people in the West know the price of time, so being late can be regarded as a tough fault. But in Arab or Asian countries, you will not be surprised by the delay. Moreover, in order to start a normal business dialogue, you first need to talk about anything, that is, to spend time on idle chatter.

In most cases, representatives of different cultures are little guided by the idea of each other's time. This leads to ineffective communication and makes cooperation difficult.

Therefore, every individual should be able to understand the temporal system of another's culture.

Bibliography of E. Hall

Edward Hall, whose books are in great demand among anthropologists, became a popular author. Here is a list of his most famous works.

• 1959 - "The Silent Language".
• 1966 - "Hidden dimensions".
• 1976 - "Outside Culture".
• 1983 - "Dance of life, another dimension of time."
• 1983-1985 - "Hidden differences: research in the field of international communication".
• 1987 - "Hidden differences: doing business with the Japanese".
• 1990 - "Understanding cultural differences: Germans, French and Americans".