High Context Societies

Ronald Simkins has distinguished between “high context” and “low context” societies. In the former, the members of the society share many cultural assumptions and meanings; in the latter, the shared meanings are much thinner and more sporadic. Of course, the distinction is not absolute, since within a relatively “low context” society there may be groups that are “high context” – Amish within modern America, for instance. But the distinction, rough as it is, is useful.

Simkins helpfully suggests that these two social types have typical literary conventions. In a high context society, little needs to be said to set off a range of associations in a reader; a great deal is thus invested in every detail of a text and a writer will not need to explain a great deal. In a low context society, the opposite is the case; the literature must be discursive and very descriptive because the author cannot have any confidence that his readers will share his outlook on things.

Again, it’s a rough distinction, but highlights the differences between the literary conventions of the Bible (coming out of a high context society) and the modern novel. At the same time, Simkins’s comments are a caution to literary readers of the Bible. Our literary instincts (eg, character motivations) have been formed by the literature of our relatively low context society, but these were not the literary instincts of the biblical writers or readers.