The difference between "story" and "history"

The difference between "story" and "history"

By Dr. Gilberto Hernández Quirós

UNA Nicoya 

TEFL Academic Professor

 

Oftentimes, my EFL students rather constantly commit the same mistake and confuse the words "story" and "history" thinking they have the same meaning as in their native Spanish.  Indeed, in the Spanish language there is only word to refer to both story and history and that is "historia" regardless of its definition.  

Interestingly enough, these words may overlap to the point of having exactly the same meaning which adds even more confusion to tell them apart and employ them appropriately.  Such examples of overlapping include anecdotes, traditions, local customs and habits, biographies, documentaties and historical movies such as Titanic.

In views of attempting to clarify when to employ these words, it is worth analyzing and bearing in mind the information below in order to be guided by these general linguistic frequency of occurence,

Story refers to imaginary narrative which does not adhere to reality.  It is full of uncountable fiction whose main goal is to entertain ourselves.  Historically story telling has served to preschool language development in children who begin school and need to extend their language skills, including reading and writing.  Thus, telling and listening to stories provides a bridge between the oral language skills of early childhood conducive towards printed language.  Children, teenagers, adults and elderly all enjoy listening to stories and even eavesdrop on someone else's conversation and turn it into gossip.

Story telling is a great source of creatively passing information from one generation to another with its characteristic cultural and linguistic features such as pitch, rhythm, lexicon and intonation.  Some example of story are: 

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is such a fascinating story.  
• Eveyone has a story to tell, and we all like to hear stories.  
• Stories many be true, sad, happy or extremely exaggerated. 
• So, what's your story now?
• Listen up!  I have a story to tell you!
  

History relates to actual events that happened in the past as per factual data and documentation with evidence.  It is likewise academic and non-fiction.  Some examples are the history of slavery, historical linguistics, the history of a country and the history of humanity.  It should be noted that history is a subject at school and, which in Latin America, we call "Social Studies" or "Estudios Sociales." 

The key to employ these words correctly is thinking about the events and linguistic intentions behind them in terms of whether they throw us back to such despicable, unacceptable and horrific events as the Nazi Germany and World War II or if our intention is to shoot the breeze with pals and remember the good old days with colorful language that makes our eyes pop with enthusiasm and a desire to hear more and more while killing time.

Nicoya is indeed full of both history and stories with traditions such as Pica Leña. Story and history do overlap with they refer to "traditions" since both have historical data as well as local and folkloric story telling.