摘  要

21世纪以来，全球化趋势愈演愈烈，高低语境国家之间的贸易往来日益频繁。然而，作为东西方文化的典型代表，中美文化之间存在着巨大的差异，常常给中美文化成员间的贸易交流带来一定的困扰。霍尔提出文化可以被分成两个部分，即高语境文化和低语境文化。中国和美国分别属于高语境文化国家和低语境文化国家。在交际中，美国人注重语言信息，趋向于直接明确，自我提高。而中国人更加注重语境方面的内容，喜欢间接含蓄，自我贬抑。这一概念的提出为人们研究跨文化交流提供了一个很好的文化根据。因此，本文从高低语境文化的角度出发，通过对比研究他们之间的差异，来探析他们对中美贸易谈判的影响。这一研究有利于培养交际者的跨文化意识，增强跨文化交际能力，对跨文化交际有实际指导意义。

关键词：高语境文化；低语境文化；中美贸易谈判

Abstract

Since the 21st century, globalization is getting more and more intensifying, which makes the trade contacts between the high and low context culture countries become frequent. However, 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 countries, and miscommunications frequently occur in the interactions between Chinese and American. Hall (1976) thought culture can be categorized as being either of high context or low context. Chinese culture belongs to the high context culture and the American culture is termed as a low context culture. During the Sino-US business negotiations, 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-enfacement and silence-oriented communication. This concept provides a useful cultural dimension for the study of intercultural communication. Therefore, this paper, from the perspective of high and low context culture, analyzes their effects on Sino-US trade negotiations through the comparative study of their differences. The study is significant for the communicators to reinforce their cultural context awareness and improve their intercultural communicative abilities in intercultural communication.

Key words: high context culture; low context culture; Sino-US trade negotiation