The Silent Language Summary

Edward T. Hall thoroughly examines the many situations and their influences that we face every day in our lives in “The Silent Language”. He clearly explains how these influences have strong impact on our development, our relationships in todays’ global economy. Hall mentions how the American business people were inexperienced and unfamiliar with the rest of people of other countries. The author strongly feels that one should cross the cultural gap between two participating countries in order to achieve the success in a global economy. The author tries to describe five aspects that are responsible for disastrous results that lead to any country to fail in international business if a firm is not aware about it. They are:

LANGUAGE OF TIME:

The SENSE OF TIME in doing business in certain circumstances is very subjective For example an executive makes an appointment with their customer at some specific time.

The author tries to say similar to the spoken languages there exists different languages of time. Typical Americans would hate to wait for someone even though the meeting plays a crucial role in their business. Here, American gives priority to the time instead of the meeting. The author clearly explains how time plays a crucial role for Indians, Japanese, and Americans in the communication and their differences.

LANGUAGE OF SPACE:

Both time and space are not interchangeable. The reason behind this is, space not only provides basic sense but it provides virtuosity to everything in our life. Similar to the language of time, language of space is different in various countries depends on their culture, where people follows the hidden rules that exists in their culture even though they are not aware about it. For example, it was violation of hospitality rules for Indians to discuss about the business by inviting the people to homes.

LANGUAGE OF

THINGS:
Here, the author tries to describe about how material things plays a key role in American’s lives. They think that the status of a person depends upon the salaries that they were getting. If salaries are high, they think that a person has the high status and the person with low salaries eventually has low status which was completely different from the rest of the world. For example, in Middle east furnishing of their offices and have spacious rooms for the office is not considered as a symbol of status but in Americans feels that as a status because the public sees them and it’s very important factor in their business.
LANGUAGE OF FRIENDSHIP:
The author tries to define the meaning of friendship is different in different countries depending on their culture, race and religion.

In USA, mostly people often didn’t allow the involvement of their friends in making crucial decision in one’s personal life and also in business. However, the scenario is completely different in Middle-East countries, India and China. In India, people usually sense about the friend’s needs and desires even before he/she express about it which is a very surprising thing for an American.

LANGUAGE OF AGREEMENTS:

In any type of business agreement two countries plays a key role in success rate of an organization. If a firm, wants to start a business globally, it’s very important to learn about the practices, rules and regulations of a country and after that they have made an agreement with them, otherwise it leads to huge loses for a firm. There are mainly three types of principle that a company should be aware:

1. Rules

2. Formal Principles

3. Informal

Customs
Few societies follow some rules and few societies don’t follow the rules. Similarly, Americans wants the concept of agreement in any sort of business in a paper work. Few times, they don’t do any agreement in their business. In Middle East, Paper work doesn’t play crucial role but a man’s word is itself an agreement, because they think that it may violates the Muslim principles and this a very sensitive matter to consider for the countries who tries to business in Middle East. The author clearly explains with the Cab example, how a Cab driver behaves with the customer if negotiation is made prior to the ride and negotiation is not made prior to the ride.
CONCLUSION:
I think even though this article was published about 44 years ago, it has very good business techniques that involves both social, cultural differences which was explained thoroughly. Even though mostly the author criticizes the way of American people doing the business internationally, I think they are doing far better than the rest of the world. However, the cultural gap between the countries still exists even today and the approaches suggested by the author like waiting till we understand the differences exist between the two parties, agreement and so on is quite phenomenal.