Cultural Reporter Blog Part 2

Vietnamese culture is one of the East Asia cultures, cultures largely influenced by China, which also inhabit Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and parts of Mongolia, but it is important to understand that these cultures existed previous to the nations that they currently inhabit (columbia.edu). This blog will investigate evidence to decide if these cultures have created co-cultural groups within Vietnam according to the co-cultural communication theory.

The co-cultural communication theory is about groups that share language; it examines how those in a dominant group shape language, and how the shape of the language effects the perception of the non-dominant group (Martin and Nakayama 241). The evidence being investigated is writings that detail the history of “literary Chinese” also known as “classical Chinese.”

Classical Chinese was the dominant language among East Asian cultures as a facilitator of language, scholarship, and governance; scholars compare it to the role of Latin in western cultures as both influenced a variety of languages over time (kornicki 66). One key difference is that although the Chinese could speak, read, and write the language, other cultures could only read and write the language, meaning that intercultural communication was silent and written (Kornicki 67).

Understanding this idea is similar to understanding sign language, both parties are able to see the communication, connect what they see to ideas in their mind, understand the meaning of the sequence of the ideas, and consider what they understand in order to make decisions, all without speaking. Due to the separation between oral and written language throughout the history of the East Asia cultures, it is unlikely that the language created any noticeable cultural impact, or created any co-cultural groups.

"Asia for Educators" http://afe.easia.columbia.edu

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill

P.F. Kornicki et al. Edited by Swapan Chakravorty & Abhijit Gupta. New Word Order: Transnational Themes in Book History. Worldview Publications. 2011. http://books.google.com/books?id=bjJBrKfCKIYC&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false