Julia Reaves
Professor Tina Crafton
MLA 1
17 February 2014
Communication in an Assumptive World In relation to politics, religion, social class or any number of categories, humanity has been compartmentalizing and in some cases exiling each other based on numerous cultural differences and classifications. For millennia, millions of humans lived and died seeing and interacting with only those geographically nearby. Mankind was, as a whole, a species organized by relatively low-population “tribes,” each with their own language, culture and societal mores. Clashes between societies based on cultural differences became evident as nations stretched further in the pursuit of conquest, with far-traveling conquerors arriving on the shores of the “savage” natives, and the misunderstandings that disrupted native life in the interest of the expansion of more “civilized” establishments. Planned or not, connected people living in the world today are going to have to face the issues Dean Barlund and Amy Tan chronicled due to the world-wide nature of the internet and the inherent differences of the connected cultures.
Dean Barnlund explains in his essay the assumptive world in which we live today. He foretold the cultural difficulties that he saw to be an issue in communication; globally and locally. He described the presumptive perceptions humans have toward each other. Each culture is subject to their own way of living. He explains, “It is the differences in meaning, far more than mere differences in vocabulary, that isolate cultures, and that cause them to regard each other as strange or even barbaric (Barnlund, 7).” Barnlund explains that ones own perception of another culture is skewed by his or her own non-linguistic worldview. He gives an example showing the pivotal differences in cultural diversity that cause the estrangement: “Although staring is an acceptable