High and low context communication is a phenomenon that people comprehend subconsciously without necessarily knowing the impact it has on our communication. Most people in authority of positions of power are taught about these styles of culture and communication so that they not only understand the styles better but also implement them. One such authority is the police personnel. This group of professionals is tasked with interacting with individuals of different social and cultural backgrounds on a daily basis. Communication between the police and the public is key as it can cause a stir or remain peaceful depending on how the police interact with the individuals. In the United States, most policemen have English as their first language. The population that speaks English as its second language is significantly huge and, as such, there are problems that are likely to come up when the two interact.
Policing is a service and there are a lot of barriers that may occur during the process of service delivery when the police interact with low context cultures. People in low context cultures have different preferences on how they want the quality of the service they receive to be as compared to people of high context cultures (Wang, 2009) . For instance, individuals in high-level cultures, such as communities that speak English as a second language, like to avoid problems with the aim of supporting social harmony. Because of this, they tend to hide their dissatisfaction with a service they think is of low quality. However, individuals who speak English as their first language tend to express their dissatisfaction and anger with high motivation and have the tendency to ask for compensation in case of bad quality service. If the police do not recognize this fact and keep treating all individuals equally, then a problem will certainly arise. The police can be trained to handle these different cultures by being made aware of this fact.
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Secondly, high context communication involves a lot of spoken words, facial expressions, gestures, and information that has a little code (Piechota, 2017) . For low context communication, the person talking tends to use a little of these elements of communication to deliver the message. However, low context communicators are great at fully passing the information that they need to pass. The police need to be made aware of this as it will help during their interaction with the public, especially during the interrogation process. A lot of gestures from a high context communication individual would be normal but a lot of it from a low context communication individual would be suspicious. With such knowledge, the police would be able to handle every individual differently based on their culture. Therefore, among the first things that a police officer should do whenever interacting with a member of the public is to identify his/her culture and whether or not English is their first language. This should not be asked directly as it may raise racism concerns. Different skills how to could identify one’s communication context must be taught to police officers on.
Lastly, people from high context culture tend to develop a deep relationship with a party that they interact with (Hooft, 2011) . This means that their bonds tend to be made strong as it is, to a high extent, based on the trust built. The low context culture is different as its individuals like to keep the bonds more formal making the relationship fragile. This is why people who speak English as the first language prefer signing agreements. Not reading the Miranda rights to a person from the low context culture could do more damage that failing to do so to a person from the high context culture. The police need to be trained about this so that they could act accordingly.
References
Hooft, A. (2011). A Comparison of Mexican and US American Students’ Perceptions of High-Low Context Business Communication Style. ITL - International Journal Of Applied Linguistics , 161 , 68-89. doi: 10.1075/itl.161.05hoo
Piechota, G. (2017). Cultural Differences in Network Communication - Analysis on the Basis of Communication Behaviour in a High-Context and Low-Context Culture. Journal Of Media Critiques , 3 (11), 87-95. doi: 10.17349/jmc117307
Wang, J. (2009). A Cross-cultural Study of Daily Communication between Chinese and American-- From the Perspective of High Context and Low Context. Asian Social Science , 4 (10). doi: 10.5539/ass.v4n10p151
