Explicit and implicit communication across languages and cultures
How do people from different cultures convey information? Do they do it mainly through overt expressions or subtle, contextual cues? One well-known approach, introduced by Edward T. Hall in the 1970s, categorizes cultures into “low-context” (like Swiss Germans, Germans, and Scandinavians, who prefer clear, explicit communication) and “high-context” (such as Japanese and Chinese, who often imply more than they say outright). But until now, there hasn’t been much solid evidence to back up these ideas.
Our project is trying to fill that gap by looking at how different languages describe events, focusing on such aspects as the agent, time reference and the source of information. We’re collecting and analyzing corpus data in different languages using a universal annotation schema. We’re also planning to use AI, specifically Large Language Models, to spot patterns of implicit information across languages and cultures.
With this study, we hope to understand how people from different cultures and speaking different languages interpret and communicate information differently.
Participants
- Dr. Natalia Levshina (PI, Radboud University)
- Alice Gazzinelli, Laura Mello, Rafael Morhy (Federal University of Minas Gerais)
- Dr. Nicole Katzir (Radboud University)
- Prof. Dr. Katsuo Tamaoka (Shanghai University, Nagoya University)
- Dr. Jingting Ye (Fudan University)
Student assistants and interns (Radboud University)
- Marco Centola
- Anwar Cruz
- Kyra Kashigin
- Nivedha Narayanaswamy
- Noa Monzón Rodríguez
Funding
The Centre of Language Studies (Radboud University), 2024-2026
Publications
Levshina, N. (2026). Which languages are “hot”, and which are “cool”? Using Universal Dependencies for large-scale comparisons of subject Expression. In Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2026), Palma de Mallorca, May 16, 2026 (pp. 49–53). ELRA [doi] [pdf]
Talks
Levshina, N., Centola, M., Gazzinelli, A. Katzir, N., Mello, L., Mohry, R., Narayanaswamy, N., Ye, J., Tamaoka, K. (2026). A corpus-based typology of implicitness: Agents and time reference. Paper presented at the 16th International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, 1-3 July 2026 Lyon (France).
Levshina, N. (2026). Who Did What to Whom - and Why? Combining evidence from various sources. Paper presented at the 16th International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, 1-3 July 2026 Lyon (France).