The Comparative Study Of Time Conception Between High And Low Contexts Groups

With the development of globalization and high technologies, communication between countries is increasingly frequent. So cross culture communication as a independent subject to study the difference of cultures come into being and taking its theories influence many other subjects. In order to conclude the systematical method to study difference, linguists have been developing culture models to qualify differences. Generally speaking, the differences of main stream culture exist between east and west with their culture models and communication principles.Human events occurring in daily life are closely related to time. Time is fundamental bases on cultures and human activities. Time is so wide conception that contains time orientation, time organization, time horizon, view to age, time units and so on. In academic fields, different cultures shape different time conception, and time conception is an important mirror to reflect culture. Since Edward t. Hall raised the theory of context according to the information coded as covert or overt, people pay more attention on context culture study, and divided cultures into high context culture and low context culture.The paper aims to find the reasons to the differences of time conception between high context culture and low context culture, and study the way to solve the culture conflicts that raised by time conceptions. The paper takes research data from Hall’s study, the understandings of time by Buddhism, Taoism, Confucius, Christian, traditional Chinese time conception to analysis culture differences. The first three chapters are introduction of time conception and context culture, relative conceptions and present studies in China and abroad. In chapter four the author will have a systematical statement about every aspect of time conception and typically Chinese time conception. The last part is conflicts from different time conception and corresponding solutions of conflicts.