beyond culture

is an excellent book by Edward T Hall (isbn 0385124740). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages...

The investigation of out-of-awareness culture can be accomplished only by actual observation of real events in normal settings and contexts.

Research with business groups, athletic teams, and even armies around the world has revealed there is an ideal size for a working group. The ideal size is between eight and twelve individuals.

All theoretical models are incomplete. By definition, they are abstractions and therfore leave things out. What they leave out is as important as, if not more important that what they do not, because it is what is left out that gives structure and form to the system.

Paradoxically, studying the models that men create to explain nature tells you more about the men than about the part of nature being studied.

All bureaucracies are oriented inward, but P-type are especially so.

High context actions are by definition rooted in the past, slow to change, and highly stable.

High context communications are frequently used as art forms. They act as a unifying, cohesive force, are long-lived, and are slow to change. Low context communications do not unify; however, they can be changed easily and rapidly.

Nothing happens in the world of human beings that is not deeply affected by linguistic forms.

If there is anything that can change the character of life, it is how time is handled.

M-time emphasizes schedules, segmentation, and promptness. P-time systems are characterized by several things happening at once. They stress involvement of people and completion of transactions rather than adherence to preset schedules.

By scheduling, we compartmentalize; this makes it possible to concentrate on one thing at a time, but it also denies us context.

In many forms, culture designates what we pay attention to and what we ignore.

The natural act of thinking is greatly modified by culture.

Low-context cultures seem to resist self-examination.

Alfred Korzybski and Wendell Johnson, founders of semantics, identified the Extention Transference factor in the use of words and published extensively on the profound effects of mistaking the symbol for the thing symbolized while endowing the symbol with properties it does not possess.

Environments are not behaviorally neutral.

For some reason, people reared in the European tradition feel more comfortable if they have a rule to fall back on, even if it doesn't fit.