Barnlund

Dean Barnlund's article "Communication in a Global Village," brings to light how much smaller our world is getting and presents the idea of global assimilation; cultures coming together, patiently explaining their belief systems and foundations and listening to others, associating similarities and accepting differences to rise above both predictability and obscurity that human kind cannot be stuck fruitlessly in. He talks of the similarities people share and how they act on those similarities, coming together with the familiar and how much easier it is to communicate with something like you. He states that technology has brought us as a world just a little closer than it already is, which can be seen everywhere; videos can be broadcast over YouTube from Japan to the U.S. to Europe, cell phones allow communication from long distances, mp3s bring us music cheaper and faster, just look at the Internet's capability to get us information in a matter of seconds from halfway across the world. However, Barnlund has quite the fanciful idea. He states, "We need, more specifically, to identify what might be called the 'rulebooks of meaning' that distinguish one culture from another" (Barnlund 52). While the concept is quite interesting, Barnlund admits there are already plenty of books about world culture out there, on "history, religion, political thought, music, sculpture, and industry of many nations" (Barnlund 50). He is looking for the behaviors and the differences between cultures, which I believe have already been looked for. Perhaps they are not all complied into a single handbook/manual for our reading pleasure, but something tells me that there could possibly be books on other cultures and behaviors that are already published and just need to be searched for. It's also quite the peculiar notion that our cultures will all eventually assimilate into one, and the past can confirm that this may not happen. Look at the United States, when the boom of immigrants back in the early 1900's brought numerous foreigners over in large numbers. They came from all over Europe, like Italy, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Russia, and did they all assimilate into a singular culture? Hardly. Like Barnlund later illustrates, they stuck together with the things they knew, people similar to themselves, people who spoke their languages and came from the same part of the world. The "Melting Pot" is what they wanted to call America, however it did not become as such. It could be called a salad bowl, where people were in one society but kept their culture and their languages and shared the idea that they were to live together. Barnlund does not seem to wish to exactly make us all one race and one language, however I do think that the idea of such assimilation he desires is quite easier said than done. Like Barnlund later states, "Cultural myopia persists not merely because of inertia and habit, but chiefly because it is so difficult to overcome" (Barnlund 60). He is honest in examining the difficulty to understand others, in both same and different cultures, and lightly touches on a possible language barrier, but does not seem to illustrate a solution other than his rulebooks of meaning. I believe he is on the right track with his ideas and his article is both very articulate and has valid ideas, but a tangible or even possible solution seems to be the issue that left me a little confused at the end. Maybe I just missed it.

Works Cited;

Barnlund, Dean. "Communication in a Global Village." Literacies. 2^nd
ed. Ed. Terence Brunk et al. New York: Norton, 2000. 47-61.