Page 17 - Effective Communication Skills by Dalton Kehoe

The Social Context That Shapes Our Talk
Lecture 3

In the previous lecture, we talked about the context that surrounds our
moment of talk and shapes the meanings of our words and gestures.
Now we discuss the biggest context of all: our society’s culture. In our
everyday talk, our cultural learning automatically provides us two
things: a perspective on life and a storehouse of knowledge about the
physical and social worlds we inhabit.

ulture is the way of life that one generation teaches to the next so
the new generation can see the world the “right” way and behave
Cas “normal” members of the group. We call this form of teaching
socialization. Every society communicates such standards of achievement
and appropriate behavior. For life in general they are called values, and for
situations they are called norms.

It is interesting that at the societal level, one of the ways we have come to
understand our key values and our ways of talking has been to compare our
society to others. Let’s look at two of the dimensions along which cultures can
be compared. The ¿rst dimension has to do with values. The United States is

an individualist culture, like Britain and many European countries: We tend
to focus on how events affect individuals or how individual actions change
other individuals. We place a greater emphasis on personal accomplishments
and on standing out from the crowd. Many Asian societies are collectivist
cultures: Talk there focuses more on family and community—and individual
responsibility to them. Success is measured by a person’s contribution to the
achievements of the group as a whole, and people tend to take pride in their
similarity to other members of their group.

The second dimension has to do with the norms of appropriate manner.
Cultures require different degrees of physical or psychological closeness
between people for them to be effective as communicators. In high expressive
cultures (such as South America and southern Europe), talkers immediately
communicate warmth, closeness, and availability, including through physical
contact. In low expressive cultures (including North America and northern

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