Writing for Business Success/Introduction to Business Communication/Communication contexts

Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn't mean a thing. Knowledge is information in context... connecting the dots.

The meaning of any communication, for both the creator and the receiver of the message, is shaped by its context.

As the quotation above suggests, when an individual processes a piece of information, they do so by connecting it to things they already know or believe. So, one aspect of communication context is the set of pre-existing assumptions which affect a person's understanding of a particular message. These assumptions are created by our:


 * Culture
 * Experiences
 * Beliefs
 * Values

Culture can be described as the patterns of learned and shared behaviour and beliefs of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. Culture has a strong, and often subconscious, influence on our assumptions. Ways in which culture can affect business communications include cultural attitudes to social hierarchy, expectations of formality, humour, and approaches to expressing disagreement.

Experiences that individuals have had in their life can also shape our assumptions. These may be experiences from any aspect of life, including education, family, social relationships, and/or health. Any of these elements can affect someone's interpretation of a message, even in a business setting. For example, if a person has been made to feel inadequate at school, this feeling may carry over into a lack of confidence in the workplace, where they may perceive personal criticism in an email which others, with different experiences, would find acceptable.

Beliefs include the religious or political beliefs that an individual holds. For example, an individual's religion may require that they should not work on a particular day of the week, or that they should only eat certain types of food.

Values are ethical beliefs about the importance of some thing or action. They are often strongly influenced by an individual's culture and/or beliefs. They will affect a person's attitudes to such things as family commitments, animal welfare, or honesty.

For communication to be effective, and to avoid misunderstandings, it is important for both the source of the communication and the receiver to take all these contexts into account.