Octogenarians: The Final Saga

So we have come to the end of our class research, blogs and video presentations on these topics. And I'm a little sad about it. I've come to learn a lot about this culture and I know that I will continue to study in my own way what it means to age in all stages of life, including the later stages of life. In a way, I think we all do this on some level. So I would like to begin by including my video presentation from class, it says a lot about this culture:

Here is the link just in case the quality is sketchy on the above video http://www.youtube.com/user/comm211student?feature=mhee


I would like to expand on the various histories and explore the different definitions. As some of you may know from my first class presentation on cultural space and also my first blog entry, I really like studying the definitions of concept words. It really helps me to break them down, understand them and then build them back up. These are not just groups of words, but rather tools that can aid intergenerational and other intercultural communication.

• political histories: written histories that focus on political events. 

• intellectual histories: written histories that focus on the development of ideas. 

• social histories: written histories that focus on everyday life experiences of various groups in the past. 

• family histories: histories of individual families that are typically passed down through oral stories. 

• national history: a body of knowledge based on past events that influenced a country's development. 

• cultural-group histories: the history of each cultural group within a nation that includes, for example, the history of where the group originated, why the people migrated, and how they came to develop and maintain their cultural traits.

These are just the ones that I chose to include in my video, there are many more:

• absent histories
• colonial histories
• diasporic histories
• ethnic histories
• gender histories
• hidden histories
• racial histories
• sexual orientation histories

That is a lot of different types of history! This shows that when you are interacting with someone in intergenerational communication, you are interacting with a multitude of factors that shaped that individual's perspective, values and opinions.This can also help when interacting with someone to focus on the histories that most interest you in order to find common ground for conversation and other interaction.

One of the most important pieces of advice for intergenerational communication is that no one perspective is superior or the "right" perspective. Martin and Nakayama (2010) summarize it well that "people bring four elements of personal history to intercultural interactions: childhood experience, historical myths, language competence and memories of recent political events" (pg 155). This really helps me approach an intergenerational interaction with fewer assumptions and a broader perspective. When young and old interact, both bring something to the table. We learn from each other and are shaped in the process. The more I think about the Past/History-Present/Future dialectic, the more I realize that it is a cyclical process. I made a graphic to illustrate this concept:

This way it is more than learning from the past and applying it to the present and the future. Yes that is part of it. But it is also the present giving us perspective on the past and our hopes for the future. They all feed and need each other in order to create a multi-faceted sense of understanding. An analogy is someone in their thirties looking back on their twenties and having a new understanding of the previous events. This is an example of how the past gives us perspective on the past. I am excited about this concept and hope to continue to develop it further. It is a model that reflects the importance of both the young and the old in intergenerational communication.

I think I have figured out how to include an audio interview in here, so this is my interview with my grandma. Although it is a little long she offers a lot of wisdom worth listening to. The first half and the last few minutes are especially applicable to this class if anyone is short on time. Also, as a side note, I would recommend that everyone with beloved grandparents and other elders in their lives to record them while they are here. I did not know how much having my grandma's voice would affect me so much. Please listen respectfully:

I would like to close with a photo of one of my many affirmation cards. This blog and video are dedicated to everyone everywhere who has ever grown a day older, may we all age gracefully in body, mind and spirit.

 

References

Hay, L. L. (2002). Meditations to heal your life. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Intercultural communication in contexts. New York:

            McGraw Hill Companies, Inc.

Rose, A. (Interviewer) & Dodge, V. (Interviewee). (2011). Personal interview. Retrieved 14 Oct 2011.