Page 290 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

268 Peter Franklin

rectness, which are valued as showing honesty and straightforwardness. As far
as the regulation of cooperation in business is concerned, low-context cultures
tend to attach much importance to the written word of laws and regulations and
written business documents such as contracts, minutes, memos and procedure
handbooks.
High context communication is typically characterized by features such as
a low reliance on explicit messages consisting of words, a correspondingly
greater reliance on non-verbal signals, vagueness and tentativeness, a resulting
tendency to interpret the intentions of the other party to the communication and
low self-disclosure and indirectness, which are valued as showing consideration
for the face of the other party. Cooperation in business is likely to be regulated
in high-context cultures through personal and spoken undertakings, which offer
security because they are based on sound interpersonal relationships and are
guaranteed by the need to save face.
According to the assessments of Rösch and Segler (1987), Ferraro (1990)
and others, cultures which typically display low-context communication behav-
iour are, for example, the Netherlands, the USA, the Scandinavian countries
(except Finland) and Germany. Conversely, Japan, China, Arab countries, Latin
America and southern Europe typically display high-context communication
behaviour. Britain would occupy a middle position, somewhat higher than
France but lower than southern European countries.
The difficulties in Anglo-German interaction resulting from these contrast-
ing styles are widely reported in training and consultancy situations: German
managers frequently describe their British colleagues as excessively polite, in-
direct and opaque to the point of lacking in straightforwardness and even hon-
esty. British managers often describe their German colleagues as being direct
and assertive to the point of being rude and aggressive.
The second major difference between Britain and Germany consists in the
extremely low uncertainty avoidance of British management, which contrasts
with the greater need for uncertainty avoidance of German management. Scor-
ing 65 on Hofstede’s (2001: 151) Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) with a
th
ranking of 29 of 53 countries and regions (according to the responses given by
116,000 members of the IBM company to questions on their work-related pref-
erences), Germany is generally regarded as a mid-high uncertainty avoiding
culture and Hofstede himself even refers to Germany as a culture in which un-
certainty avoidance is high (2001: 178). According to the UAI, Britain, on the
other hand, has an extremely low need to avoid uncertainty with a UAI score of
35 and a ranking of 47/48 (Hofstede 2001: 151).
For Hofstede, uncertainty avoidance is “the extent to which the members of
a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations” (Hofstede 2001:
161). He characterizes low UAI cultures as ones in which “the uncertainty in-
herent in life is relatively easily accepted” (Hofstede 2001: 161), there is lower