ENGL 810: Debate Paper #2: Should contexting remain a key communication theory in international business and technical communication?

Cardon, Peter. “A Critique of Hall’s Contexting Model: A Meta-analysis of Literature on Intercultural Business and Technical Communication.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 22.4 (2008): 399-428. Sage Journals. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.

Hall, Edward T. "The Silent Language In Overseas Business." Harvard Business Review 38.3 (1960): 87-96. Business Source Complete. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.

            International business and technical communication (IBTC) is an area of professional and technical communication that is gaining momentum in an increasingly globalized market. It seeks to prepare business men and women for the kinds of challenges that occur when communicating across cultures; however, contexting, one of its main tenets, may be little more than stereotype.

Edward Hall is one of the major figures in IBTC, cited in the field “over 3,300 times for his three major works” (Cardon 400). His publications have come to be an “integral [part] of international communication textbooks and courses,” and “Hall’s contexting model has been identified as the most commonly used cultural model in international communication courses” (Cardon 400). This contexting model labels various cultures according to either high- or low-context communication. High-context (HC) communication is more implicit, utilizing silent cues that are intuitively understood, while low-context (LC) communication is “vested in the explicit code,” and is, therefore, more direct (Cardon 401). Accordingly, Hall generated the following list, from very LC to very HC: “Swiss-Germans,  Germans, Scandinavians, North Americans, French, English, Italians, Latin Americans, Arabs, Chinese, and Japanese” (Cardon 401). His major works illuminate the various communication patterns that characterize these cultures.

            In “The Silent Language in Overseas Business,” Hall describes five communication patterns that vary across cultures, labeled the five silent languages: time, space, material possessions, friendship, and agreement. For example, in the United States, if one is kept waiting prior to a business meeting, it represents a lack of interest, laziness, or rudeness on the part of the tardy individual; however, in certain cultures, particularly in Latin America, it’s a common occurrence with no offense intended (Hall 89). Hall makes generalizations of this sort across the article, providing little to no supporting evidence to qualify his statements. His conclusions appear to come from personal observation and interview, but it isn’t made clear.

            Cardon brings Hall’s methods to task: “Hall provided numerous anecdotes of various cultures, but… never mentioned his method for developing his model,… he did not describe how he conceptualized or measured [his] rankings,” and “he did not mention using methods for qualitative data collection that would be considered rigorous by today’s standards” (Cardon 402). To assess the theory’s validity, Cardon performs a meta-analysis of other studies that have attempted to test Hall’s contexting model.

            Cardon finds that, while contexting may be one of the key theories in IBTC studies, “no known research involving any instrument or measure of contexting validates it” (423). He notes, however, that those attempts at validating it were inadequate, so the theory isn’t necessarily a failure (Cardon 423). Instead, the failure is in the field’s persistent use of the theory without any discussion of its limitations, leading to “generalizations in the IBTC literature that are perhaps unwarranted” (Cardon 423). Cardon closes with recommendations for future scholars and researchers: develop better methods for testing the validity of contexting, add more nations to the study, and broaden the scope of the study to include more uses of HC and LC communication patterns (Cardon 423-424). Ultimately, “this meta-analysis reveals that the contexting model is based on little or no empirical validation,” and we should, therefore, treat it with more caution in future discussions (Cardon 424).

            Cardon’s study raises important questions about the kind of stereotypes and generalizations that underlie a common theoretical model in IBTC studies. Further research may help either validate or overturn this widely held approach.