Culture and

Communication:
Celebrating a
Centennial of E. T.
Hall’s Contributions
By Steve J. Kulich and John Condon

The man considered as the founder of “Intercultural Communication” Studies, Edward T.

Hall, was honored on the SISU campus Saturday, April 12, 2014, near the 100th
anniversary of his birth. This was the first such public centennial celebration of the
internationally known pioneer in the study of intercultural communication. As part of a two
day forum that drew scholars from across China and from abroad, Prof. John Condon, a
former colleague and decades-long friend of Prof. Hall, spoke of his groundbreaking book
55 years ago, The Silent Language, published in 1959, which eventually sold more than five
million copies internationally. It was the book that both inspired scholars and practitioners
throughout the world to consider culture in research and training, and led to the birth of the
intercultural discipline in the 1970s, which this meeting discussed and assessed, especially
in its Chinese expression.

Anthropologist Hall was the first person to use the term “intercultural
communication.” He also famously equated the concepts of “culture”
and “communication.” Hall’s assertion that, “Culture is
communication,” was grew out of formulations by his mentor at
Columbia University, Franz Boas, considered the father of modern
anthropology in the U.S.A. Organizer of this conference and Director
of the SISU Intercultural Institute, Prof. Steve Kulich, noted, “Hall had
an intellectual and conceptual influence on nearly all aspects of IC
theory, research, training, or practice, and they continue, especially his
formulations for considering context, space and proxemics, time and chronemics,
synchronicity and other salient aspects of communication styles across cultures.”

Hall was born in Webster Groves, Missouri (US) on May 16, 1914, but as a child moved
with his mother to Santa Fe, New Mexico (US) where he grew up and did some of his early
research. He taught and trained at a variety of institutions, including Bennington College,
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the Washington School of Psychiatry, followed by a
position as Professor of Anthropology first at Illinois Institute of Technology, and then for
ten years at Northwestern University in Chicago. After retiring from Northwestern in 1977,
he returned to Santa Fe where he continued to write and do research until a series of strokes
incapacitated him in his final years, until his death on July 20, 2009, at age 95.

In addition to The Silent Language, his other major works include The Hidden Dimension
(1966), an important work about how human beings express and respond to interpersonal
spatial relationships and to their
built environments, and The
Dance of Life (1983), which
similarly explores the cultural
appropriation of time, timing, and
the synchrony of speech and
movement as part of everyday
communication. Hall regarded the
ways that human beings utilize
space and time in each context as
central to understanding culture
and communication.

Many important constructs from E. T Hall’s work became influential in later comparative
work, affecting developments in social linguistics (e.g., in Dell Hymes’ linguistic
ethnography of communication or Gerry Philipsen’s studies of communicative conduct in
speech communities, speech codes theory, and the constructivist Language and Social
Interaction or LSI school), psycho- or cognitive-linguistics, cultural anthropology, and
architectural studies of space.

As “Jack” Condon (pictured below in his address at SISU) noted that, in Beyond Culture
(1976), Hall introduced the concept of “context” as conveying implicit meanings in
communication, contrasting messages
where meanings are implicit in mutual
trust or experience from a long term
relationship, or in the occasion or
institution. In most cultures, for
example, when a couple repeats their
marriage vows in a wedding ceremony,
the significance of the event is not
expressed explicitly in words, but rather
in the event itself, including the
presence of family and friends. Hall
termed this “high context”
communication. If, however, a couple
wishes to have a detailed contract
making clear what is expected and the
consequences if these expectations are not met, they may hire a lawyer to prepare a contract
(a “pre-nuptial agreement”), as is sometimes reported in the marriages of famous or very
wealthy individuals. This would constitute a “low context” message. Within any country
one sees many examples of a range of higher and lower context messages or communication
exchanges, but generally Asian societies have been characterized as placing less trust in
words (higher on the value of “context”), while English speaking, and northern European
nations are identified as placing more trust in specific words and details in everyday
communication.

E. T. Hall is credited with the introduction and explanation of many such concepts and
terms (high and low context, proxemics, monochronic and polychronic time orientations)
which today are used all over the world by those who study interpersonal communication as
well as by managers and other professionals working in the public and corporate sectors.
Just as other scholars before him contributed to our vocabulary by coining words, such as
“ethnocentrism” (introduced by sociologist William Graham Sumner in 1906), Hall’s works
and terms have influenced how we think and talk about social interaction in different
cultural contexts and in a variety of intercultural relations today.

His other books include The Handbook for Proxemic Research (1974), followed by two
books co-authored with his wife, Mildred Reed Hall, The Fourth Dimension In
Architecture: The Impact of Building on Behavior (1975) and Hidden Differences: Doing
Business with the Japanese (1987). He and she later
wrote several short guides contrasting the cultural
orientations and behavior of US Americans, Germans,
and French (in those languages!), which were later
published together in English as Understanding
Cultural Differences (1990). Two more
autobiographical works later followed: An
Anthropology of Everyday Life (1992), and West of the
Thirties (1994). In addition Hall wrote more than one
hundred scholarly papers and articles. He was a
mutual influence on and friend of other prominent
scholars of his day including Buckminster Fuller
(architecture and design), Marshall McLuhan (media
and globalization), and Eric Fromm (neo-Freudian
personality, personal needs, and social psychology).

To develop the careful observation skills and competencies that would guide his academic
life, during World War II, Hall intentionally enlisted in the army (to understand bureaucratic
culture), became an officer, and volunteered to direct an African American regiment during
the then-racially segregated US military. He saw action in Europe, including the invasion of
Normandy, and later served in the Philippines and in Micronesia. After the war he was
asked to head the Point IV (Four) Program of the U.S. Department of State’s Technical
Cooperation Authority (TCA), to develop ways of preparing U.S. diplomats to be more
sensitive to intercultural situations when posted
abroad (to overcome The Ugly American
phenomenon, illustrated in a best-selling 1958
novel). It was though this experience (1951-
55) at what was called the Foreign Service
Institute (FSI) that he and his team of
descriptive linguists developed the foundations
of what became intercultural communication
training (with emphasis on cultural variation,
interactive situations, proxemics, kinesics,
paralanguage). His rich childhood, early adult,
and later experiences among Native Americans and “Hispanic” neighbors in New Mexico
where he grew up also continued to shape his sensitivity to affective aspects of culture and
contributions to intercultural understanding in the years to come.

Thus, with SISU leaders, the SISU Intercultural Institute team, and over 130 participants of
the 2nd Intercultural Disciplinary Development High-Level Forum (April 11-13 at SISU in
Shanghai), we were honored to acknowledge the legacy of E.T. “Ned” Hall via Professor
John “Jack” Condon’s recollections. As a pioneer for all aspects of cultural comparison and
contrast, a promoter for understanding the affective domains of cultural systems, enhancing
thoughtful communication, and showing mutual respect across cultures, we are pleased to

be among those celebrating this centennial of Edward T. Hall’s birth year, and the
continuation of his quest to understand culture and communication world wide

Kulich, S. J. & Condon, J. C. (2015). Culture and communication: Celebrating a centennial of E. T. Hall’s contributions. The
FutureLearn Intercultural Communication Course. Shanghai, China: Shanghai International Studies University.