An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Fred E. Jandt

      Figure 3.1 Context Effect Illusion

      Note: The moon on the right has been made smaller to simulate the illusion.

      Edward T. Hall, credited with founding the scholarly field of intercultural communication, introduced the concept of high and low context. Hall used these terms to describe how important context is in communication. In this chapter, you’ll compare communication in high- and low-context cultures.

      On the international stage, today’s relationship between China and the United States is critical. As China is considered a high-context culture and the United States is considered a low-context culture, you’ll read how this has contributed to misunderstandings between the two countries over many issues, including territorial sovereignty and human rights.

      Perception

      In this section, you’ll read in depth about perception, or the process whereby we sense, select, organize, and interpret our world. Perception begins with the reception of sensory data followed by selecting to attend to some of those sensations, organizing those sensations in some meaningful way, and then attaching meaning to them.

      Sensing

      Can we really say that there is a world external to our minds—that is, independent of our awareness of it? We do make that assumption. Early 20th-century quantum mechanics posited that on a subatomic level the observer is an active part of the observed. Wexler (2008) wants us to recognize how integrated our minds are with the external world: “The relationship between the individual and the environment is so extensive that it almost overstates the distinction between the two to speak of a relationship at all” (p. 39). Sensory input is a physical interaction; for example, cells in our mouths and noses have receptor molecules that combine with molecules from the environment to initiate electrical impulses. Our perception and thought processes are not independent of the cultural environment.

      If our perception and thought processes are such a part of “what is out there,” what, then, is the relationship between changes in the cultural environment and who we are? Wexler points out that we humans shape our environment and, hence, it can be said that the human brain shapes itself to a human-made environment. Our brain both is shaped by the external world and shapes our perception of the external world.

      Sensation is the neurological process by which we become aware of our environment. Of the human senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, including pain, temperature, and pressure, are the most studied (Gordon, 1971). The world appears quite different to other forms of life with different sensory ranges: A bat, for example, senses the world through ultrasound; a snake does so through infrared light; some fish sense distortions of electrical fields through receptors on the surface of their bodies—none of these are directly sensed by humans. But is there significant variation in sensation among individual humans? You need to remember that sensation is a neurological process. You are directly aware not of what is in the physical world but, rather, of your own internal sensations. When you report “seeing” a tree, what you are aware of is actually an electrochemical event. Much neural processing takes place between the receipt of a stimulus and your awareness of a sensation (Cherry, 1957). Is variation in human sensation attributable to culture? Pioneering psychologist William James explained that sensory data come to us not “ready-made” but in an “unpackaged” state that we assemble into something coherent and meaningful from rules of perception we learn in our culture (see, e.g., James, 1890).

      Focus on Culture 3.1 The Greeks Had Aristotle, and the Chinese Had Confucius

      Much of the research on sensing and perception and most of the examples in this chapter contrast Eastern and Western cultures. Nisbett (2003) and others contend that Eastern and Western cultures literally perceive different worlds. Modern Eastern cultures are inclined to see a world of substances—continuous masses of matter. Modern Westerners see a world of objects—discrete and unconnected things. There is substantial evidence that Easterners have a holistic view, focusing on continuities in substances and relationships in the environment, while Westerners have an analytic view, focusing on objects and their attributes.

      Nisbett (2003) has demonstrated that humans sense and perceive the world in ways unique to their upbringing by contrasting Eastern and Western cultures (see Focus on Culture 3.1). Ancient Greeks had a strong sense of individual identity with a sense of personal agency, the sense that they were in charge of their own destinies. Greeks considered human and nonhuman objects as discrete and separate. And the Greeks made a clear distinction between the external world and our internal worlds. Thus, two individuals could have two different perceptions of the world even though the world itself was static,