Ross Wells - History to Histories

The meaning of History to Histories lies in the transformation of thinking from one "past" to many "pasts" and of history as "stories" which have multiple perspectives. According to Martin and Nakayama (2013) history is relevant to each person involved in communication, therefore understanding other views and perspectives of history is critical for effective intercultural communication. A culture I am unfamiliar with is Vietnamese, and I am interested to learn about the culture after learning about the countries history in my political science class.

I met someone who traveled to Vietnam, and he said that when he was there, the locals didn't seem to have any animosity towards Americans even though the war was only a few decades ago and most who were involved are still alive (he said it probably didn't hurt that they won). When he asked them about it they said they actually liked talking to Americans more than other people, like Europeans, because Americans talk with anyone they meet. In their culture, as with many eastern cultures, they value community highly and the interaction between the locals and the tourists was very valuable to them.

In this example there are three histories involved, the American tourists, the Vietnamese locals, and the European Tourists. Martin and Nakayama reference a French writer Jean Baudrillard who wrote about the difference between American and French view of history, "America was created in the hope of escaping from history, of building a utopia sheltered from history...modernity, conceived precisely as an original break with certain history, will never be ours [France's]" (141, 2013). This is consistent with the person's experience in Vietnam because the French, like other European countries, have governments that evolved from class systems, thus the people from those countries struggle to communicate, or avoid it, with cultures that do not observe classes. In short, the locals viewed Americans as open communicators, and the Europeans as closed.

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill.