Communicating with Community: Adapting Communication Styles to the Community

Joe Watkins ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL EDUCATION CONSULTANTS As archaeologists, we are often called upon to discuss our work with groups that share our interest in the human past, to communicate with those whose heritage we study, or to explain our findings to other ‘stakeholders.’ As communicators, however, we often bore them with jargon, dazzle them with brilliance, or lose their attention all together. And, even when we do not confuse them with acronyms, we take it for granted that the words we choose are understood in our intended manner. Archaeologists are also generally unaware that people communicate at different levels depending on cultural preference and interpersonal relationships. In 1976, Hall differentiated between high- and low-context communication as a means of explaining the role cultural differences play in the ways humans present and accept information. While these are arguably generalizations, high-context communication occurs when most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. Low-context communication occurs when the majority of the information is vested in the explicit code. High-context and low-context communication is used in all cultures, but one form tends to predominate. Coupled with the context of communication is the directness with which information is presented – low-context messages are more explicitly (directly) presented while high-context messages are generally implicitly (indirectly) presented. The following paper explores ways we can better communicate archaeology by recognizing and utilizing the ways communities accept and process information.