A Comparative Study On The Verbal Communication Styles Between Chinese And Ameriscans From The Perspective Of High/Low-Context Culture

Culture and communication are closely related. The Chinese culture is the representative of Eastern Culture while the American culture is the typical occidental culture. There are great differences between the two cultures, and miscommunications frequently occur in the interactions between Chinese and Americans. Hall (1976) firstly proposed the notion of high-context (HC) and low-context (LC) culture communications, which provides a useful cultural dimension for the study of intercultural communication. According to him, culture can be categorized as being either of high context or low context, depending on the degree to which meaning comes from the words being exchanged. The Chinese culture belongs to HC culture while the American culture is termed as a low-context one. Therefore, the thesis makes an inquiry to compare the verbal communication styles between Chinese and Americans and the root causes for these styles from the perspective of HC and LC cultures.Firstly, the thesis tries to make a comparative study on the divergent verbal styles of Chinese and Americans under the influence of HC/LC cultures. According to the comparison, Americans value highly of the function of language while Chinese pay much attention to the contexts. The verbal styles of Americans are generally characterized of directness & explicitness, self-enhancement and talk-oriented communication, whereas the verbal styles of Chinese are featured by indirectness & implicitness, self-enffacement and silence-oriented communication. In addition, several episodes from films are selected to further illustrate the different styles mentioned above, and four more Sino-U.S. miscommunication cases are also given to enhance our understanding of these differences. Secondly, the thesis probes into the root causes for the divergent styles in Chinese HC and American LC cultures from three aspects, namely, social and historical roots, religious and philosophical roots and thinking patterns. The study is significant for the communicators to reinforce their cultural context awareness and improve their intercultural communicative abilities in intercultural communication.