Questões de Inglês - Grammar

Low-Context Versus High-Context Cultures

    If you have traveled much, perhaps you have noticed that people in various parts of the world differ in how direct and explicit their language is. You may have spent time in both low- and high-context cultures in your travels, with context here referring to the broad range of factors surrounding every act of communication.

    In a low-context culture, people are expected to be direct and to say what they mean. Individuals in lowcontext cultures prefer precise, concrete language for sending and receiving messages, and are unlikely to rely on the context of a message to determine its meaning. The United States is an example of a low-context society, as are Canada, Israel, and most northern European countries.

     In contrast, people in a high-context culture — such as Korea and the cultures of Native Americans and the Maori of New Zealand — are taught to speak in a much less direct way. In such cultures, maintaining harmony and avoiding offense are more important than expressing true feelings. Speech is more ambiguous and people convey much more of their meaning through subtle behaviors and contextual cues, such as their facial expressions and tone of voice.

    The difference between low-context and high-context cultures is evident in the ways in which people handle criticism and disagreement. In a low-context culture, a supervisor might reprimand an irresponsible employee openly, to make an example of the individual. The supervisor would probably be direct and explicit about the employee’s shortcomings, the company’s expectations for improvement, and the consequences of the employee’s failing to meet those expectations.

    In a high-context culture, however, the supervisor probably wouldn’t reprimand the employee publicly for fear that it would put the employee to shame and cause the worker to “lose face.” Criticism in high-context cultures is more likely to take place in private. The supervisor would also likely use more ambiguous language to convey what the employee was doing wrong, “talking around” the issue instead of confronting it directly. To reprimand an employee for repeated absences, for example, a supervisor might point out that responsibility to coworkers is important and that letting down the team would be cause for shame. The supervisor may never actually say that the employee needs to improve his or her attendance record. Instead, the employee would be expected to understand that message by listening to what the supervisor says and paying attention to the supervisor’s body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions.

    When people from low- and high-context cultures communicate with one another, the potential for misunderstanding is great. To appreciate that point, imagine that you’ve asked two of your friends to meet you tomorrow evening for a coffee tasting at a popular bookstore cafe. Tina, an American, says, “No, I’ve got a lot of studying to do, but thanks anyway.” Lee, who grew up in South Korea, nods his head and says, “That sounds like fun.” Thus, you’re surprised later when Lee doesn’t show up.

    How can you account for those different behaviors? The answer is that people raised in a high-context culture (such as that of South Korea) are often reluctant to say no—even when they mean no—for fear of causing offense. Another person raised in the South Korean culture might have understood from Lee’s facial expression or tone of voice that he didn’t intend to go to the coffee tasting. If you, like Tina, grew up in a low-context society, however, then you probably interpreted his answer and his nods to mean he was accepting your invitation.

Referência Bibliográfica FLOYD, KORY. Communication Matters. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. 2018.

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Brazilian Poet Manoel de Barros Dies Aged 97
11/14/2014 8h56
From São Paulo Contribution for Folha from
Campo Grande

     The author who wrote verses from the "depths of the trifling", as it features in a poem and one of his books, poet Manoel de Barros died on Thursday morning, November 13th, aged 97, in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul - MS.

     Manoel de Barros was born in Cuiabá and throughout his life he wrote 18 poetry books, in addition to children's books and autobiographical accounts.

      He received a number of literary prizes, two of which were Jabuti prizes (Tortoise prizes) - one in 1989 for "O Guardador de Águas" and in 2002 for "O Fazedor do Amanhecer".

     Manoel de Barros used to say that "poetry is not supposed to be understood, it is supposed to be incorporated. Understanding it creates a wall. One ought to try to be a tree"

(Texto adaptado. Fonte: Disponível em: . Acesso em: 24 out. 2021)

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What Does It Mean to Tear Down a Statue?

Protesters throwing the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into a harbour.

    Statues of historical figures, including slave traders and Christopher Columbus, are being toppled throughout the U.S. and around the world. This follows years of debate about public display of Confederate symbols. We interviewed the art historian Erin L. Thompson about the topic. Read the excerpt from the interview.

    Q. What are some of the issues that arise when we talk about statues being torn down?

    A. We have as humans been making monuments to glorify people and ideas since we started making art, and since we started making statues, other people have torn them down. So it’s not surprising that we are seeing people rebelling against ideas that are represented by these statues today.

    Q. What do the recent attacks on statues tell us about the protests themselves?

    A. The current attacks on statues are a sign that what’s in question is not just our future but our past, as a nation, as a society. These attacks show that we need to question the way we understand the world, even the past, in order to get to a better future.

    Q. What’s a statue?

    A. I think a statue is a bid for immortality. It’s a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people. It’s not the statues themselves but the point of view that they represent. And these [the ones being destroyed] are statues in public places, right? So these are statues claiming that this version of history is the public version of history.

    Also, many Confederate statues are made out of bronze, a metal that you can melt down. The ancient Greeks made their major monuments out of bronze. Hardly any of these survived because as soon as regimes changed, as soon as there was war, it got melted down and made into money or a statue of somebody else.

    We have been in a period of peace and prosperity — not peace for everybody, but the U.S. hasn’t been invaded, we’ve had enough money to maintain statues. So our generation thinks of public art as something that will always be around. But this is a very ahistorical point of view. I wish that what is happening now with statues being torn down didn’t have to happen this way. But there have been peaceful protests against many of these statues which have come to nothing. So if people lose hope in the possibility of a peaceful resolution, they’re going to find other means.

(www.nytimes.com, 11.06.2020. Adaptado.)