Comment by opportune

I think what makes the topic complicated is that the high vs low context dichotomy is actually split across multiple dimensions rather than being an overarching single dimension.

For example, in educated coastal-liberal California asking for favors or for hospitality (eg can I get a glass of water) is low context but certain topics like religion or most politically controversial things are generally off limits. Conversely in the South, hospitality has a decent number of high context expectations, but religion or political discussion are more acceptable for discussion. And of course every culture has common cultural/historical references that are implicitly known and sometimes implicitly referenced without explicitly making the reference or expanding on all the details.

That’s why I think a lot of cultures see themselves as low context compared to others, except perhaps the most pathologically high context ones (Japan), because we all have blind spots about where we’re actually high context.