Originality, creativity, and conformity to rules are desirable traits in an individualist culture, as is punctuality. 3 Individualist cultures place the needs and desires of the individual above those of the group they also tend to be somewhat consumerist in emphasizing tasks and products more than relationships. They also tend to be individualist-a cultural model developed by anthropologist Geert Hofstede. Low-context cultures value communication that is direct, explicit, and to the point.

1 Although that framework is now considered archaic and simplistic, 2 it’s still a helpful paradigm for understanding communication among different cultures. In the late 1970s, anthropologist Edward T Hall introduced the terms high-context and low-context cultures to describe intrinsic differences in cultural communication. Next, editors and educators share their best practices for communicating effectively with authors. To do that, we’ll begin by discussing how communication practices differ among cultures. One strategy is to become more adept in the author’s cultural context. How, then, to explain a fairly complex topic like plagiarism to authors who have different cultural backgrounds? Even an author who is notified that he or she has plagiarized may have trouble understanding the rationale behind the accusation. It’s how we piece these words together that makes our writing creative and original.īut piecing together words creatively and originally can be daunting for non-native English speakers for whom English is a second (or third or fourth) language, especially those whose cultures do not emphasize authorship and intellectual property. We must use others’ words otherwise, we’d be unable to communicate. If one considers that language consists of shared words with contextual meaning, instructing someone to use his or her own words to communicate seems nonsensical. Of course, the hilarity of this comic is that Calvin followed his teacher’s instructions literally-he invented his own words. Chumble spuzz.” Beaming widely, he says, “I love loopholes.” In one particularly humorous Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Calvin is confronted with the following instruction: “Explain Newton’s First Law of Motion in your own words.” At first dismayed, Calvin brightens and answers with a string of made-up words: “Yakka foob mog.

Cultural contexts