LESSONS FROM A MARTIAL ARTS DOJO: A PROLONGED PROCESS MODEL OF HIGH-CONTEXT COMMUNICATION

Rather than treat the context of communication as an exogenously determined factor, I investigate the extent to which communicators actively utilize context as a vehicle of communication. Focusing on three cases of "physicality norm" violations observed during a five-year ethnographic study of a Japanese martial arts dojo, I document the use of specific context management and content management practices on the part of the instructors to reconcile the situations in which they found themselves. The prolonged process model of high-context communication that I develop shows how communicators manipulate the two key dimensions of the contexting model of communication-the message content (via continuum staggering and continuum straddling), and the shared understandings that constitute the context in which messages are being delivered and interpreted (via context reliance, i.e., time giving, and context nonreliance, i.e., tearing and reprogramming)-often over extended periods of time.