Greenstorm's Journal

Awhile ago the concept of "ask" and "guess" culture started to make the rounds: the idea that some groups of people tended to communicate in explicit verbal language about something ("can I come visit/do you want the last cupcake/will you rub my back?") and other groups of people tended to use suggestion or cueing to avoid an explit ask/yes or no situation ("I'm free this weekend/I'd hate to throw this away/my shoulders are sore after that workout"). There was a bit of a sense originally that explicit or "ask culture" was better in some way, but also that it's hard to communicate across that gap. Someone from "guess culture" might be communicating their no in a way that's missed by someone from "ask culture" and someone from "ask culture" might not understand when they're being requested to do something by someone in "guess culture", etc.

Well, the poly podcast I listen to has started referring to these as "high context" and "low context" communication cultures. The idea is that if folks have a homogenous cultural background they have context to correctly interpret unspoken exchanges, whereas if there's a heterogenous group they tend to do better if they fall back on explicit verbal statements because folks don't have the context to pick up on subtext.

I appreciate these terms a lot better than the somewhat fraught ask and "guess" cultures. It also places the communication schemes in - ha - context, rather than straight up implying that one is better or worse than the other.