Page 61 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

46 Reading Between the Signs

to state personal preferences for a major but are resigned to fol-
lowing their parents’ wishes as passive to the point of being clini-
cally depressed. In the same way, collectivist members of the Deaf
community may label an interpreter with a “9 to 5 attitude,” who
makes money from the community but gives nothing back, as
terminally self-centered.

High Context and Low Context

Suppose you are sitting in a busy cafe, sipping coffee and chatting
with a friend. All around you are others doing the same. Because
you are a curious person, you happen to overhear bits of other
conversations. (All right, admit it—you love to eavesdrop!) On your
right are two women planning a trip to Europe. On your left, a
man is complaining about a coworker. Then your friend notices a
Deaf couple who are chatting too, but of course in sign language.
Your friend says, “Hey, you know sign language, what are they
saying?” So you look and look but you can’t figure out exactly
what they are talking about. Something about a party. Was it in
the past or in the future? It’s hard to tell. And to whom are they
referring? Men? Women? Something is missing here. “So,” pes-
ters your friend, “what are they saying?” You mumble a vague
reply and change the subject. Had you been familiar with the dif-
ference between high-context and low-context cultures, you might
have been able to explain to your friend the ineffectiveness of
your eavesdropping.
The terms high context and low context were coined by Ed-
ward T. Hall in his groundbreaking book, Beyond Culture (1976),
and summarized concisely some years later in Understanding Cul-
tural Differences, coauthored with Mildred Reed Hall (1990). These
terms deal with the question of how much information must be
made explicit in a given culture compared with how much is al-
ready understood implicitly because of shared experience. It helps
to keep in mind that a high-context culture has a high depen-
dence on context; in other words, if you do not share the same
cultural experience as everyone else, you might not understand
what is going on in any given conversation. Low-context cultures
have a low dependence on context, so it is not assumed that you
have as much shared background and experience; therefore, things
will be explained more. Think of the difference between the eco-
nomical conversational style of twins who have grown up together

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