Word.ws English Dictionary

low-context culture

low-context culture noun: a culture in which communication tends to be explicit, with little reliance on context or shared understandings to convey meaning.

Noun

low-context culture (plural low-context cultures)

  1. A culture in which communication tends to be explicit, with little reliance on context or shared understandings to convey meaning.
    • The style in a high-context culture may appear to be indirect or inappropriate to someone from a low-context culture, and vice versa.2005, Yunxia Zhu, Written Communication Across Cultures, →ISBN, page 15
    • Persons socialized in low-context cultures (Americans, many Europeans) are more open and expressive and may find it difficult to take the perspective of their team members from high-context cultures2008, John F. Cragan, David W. Wright, Chris R. Kasch, Communication in Small Groups, →ISBN, page 145

Forms of low-context culture

plurallow-context cultures
alternative formlow context culture

Origin of low-context culture

Coined by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his 1976 book Beyond Culture

Questions about low-context culture

What does low-context culture mean?
Low-context culture means a culture in which communication tends to be explicit, with little reliance on context or shared understandings to convey meaning.
What part of speech is low-context culture?
Low-context culture is a noun.
What is the plural of low-context culture?
The plural of low-context culture is low-context cultures.

Words near low-context culture in the dictionary

  1. low-carber
  2. low-carbers
  3. low-church
  4. low-class
  5. low-code
  6. low-context culture
  7. low-context cultures
  8. low-cost
  9. low-cost carrier
  10. low-cost carriers
  11. low-crowned seahorse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: low-context culture (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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