Cultural Identity In Cross-Cultural Communication

This novel reveals that culture and language has a lot to do with forming one's identity. The type of culture and language a person has been surrounded with affects their sense of identity,

Dalandra Goodwin 11/3/17 Embedded Assessment 1:1 What is cultural identity? Cultural Identity is the way of life you live everyday. They way you dress, the food you eat, religion, ethnicity, language, clothing, etc.

A Sense of Belonging Culture itself can be described as a detailed, lifestyle a person lives by, generally coming from family traditions. “What Is Cultural Identity” once stated “The system of understanding culture includes values, beliefs, notions about acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and other socially constructed ideas that members of the society are taught “‘true’” (Trumbull and Pacheco 9). To understand one’s identity, one should attest to getting to know all of their cultural backgrounds that make up who they are. According to Trumbull and Pacheco, “Cultural identity is a broader term: people from multiple ethnic backgrounds may identify as belonging to the same culture” (9).

Goodbye, Columbus is a novella which was written by the American author Philip Roth and was published in 1959. It tells the story of Neil Klugman, a young, Jewish, lower-middle-class man, who meets and falls in love with Brenda Patimkin, a young, Jewish, upper-middle-class woman (France 83). The social differences between them are an essential theme in the novella which, as a result, examines the development of identity, in particular, Neil’s “struggle to develop and preserve an identity of his own amid different environments and conflicting impulses within himself” (Nilsen 97). An analysis of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus illustrates the construction of cultural identity.

Cultural identity is the sense of identification with or belonging to a particular group established in diverse cultural categories, including nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, and religion. Many individuals experience confusion about cultural identity when leaving their home country or visiting after not being surrounded by culture for a long time. In the video, "losing sight of your cultural identity.” Author, Ph.D. Kasia Suarez explains her struggle with cultural identity after coming to America, and how she embraces her own culture.

Identity speaks of who we are as individuals but it also comes from two different groups: social and cultural. These groups are connected to power, values and ideology. Social identities are related to how we interact with people and how we present ourselves. Meanwhile cultural identities relate to society in whole such as religion, values, etc. In this paper I will talk about the dominant and subordinate identities.

This can be done through a steady set of norms and values, which ultimately influence your identity formation (Klimstra, 2012). Furthermore, Sigelman and Rider (2015), suggest that to achieve a sense of identity, the adolescent needs to incorporate multiple perceptions

Throughout an individual’s life, he/she focuses on developing an idiosyncratic set of values in order to develop a suitable sense of identity. There are countless factors that contribute towards the formation of one’s character. Generally, identity formation is shaped by the factor society which includes media, friends, family, and one’s surroundings. However, due to the complexity of the identity concept, people do not realize how some factors like society can alternate

Cultural influences people on how to communicate with one another and its methods of communication from one culture to another. Culture plays a significant role in intercultural communication. Cultural identity is an element in a person’s life when one understands their own culture, leading to an understanding and appreciation of other cultures as well. It promotes a vital part of communication between people who come from different cultures. This paper will examine my Mexican American cultural background and how it affects my way of communicating with others.

Later, the cultural critic Stuart Hall has opined about the changing nature of identity. He says that there is no fixed identity that can be attributed to an individual for his life period; it evolves through several changes in each phase of life. So it can be understood that formation of identity involves several steps: construction, reconstruction and deconstruction. The politics behind this formation may depend on the nature of identity that an individual tries to hold. Indeed, the cultural critic Kobena Mercer reminds us: “One thing at least is clear - identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something

Introduction The concept of identity has been a notion of significant interest not just to sociologists and psychologists, but also to individuals found in a social context of perpetually trying to define themselves. Often times, identities are given to individuals based on their social status within a certain community, after the assessment of predominant characteristics that said individual has. However, within the context of an ethnicity, the concept identity is most probably applied to all members of the ethnical group, and not just one individual. When there is one identity designated for the entire group, often times the factor of “individuality” loses its significance, especially when referring to the relationship between the ethnic

Each individual has their own different social identity. One’s social identity is constructed based on the different influences around them. The development of social identity is influenced by various factors such as the historical, cultural and religious beliefs of the society, community or family where one is brought up. It is influenced by the behaviours and attitudes of authority figures such as parents, teachers and community leaders around them, it is also influenced by external factors such as the media, one’s peers and the overall exposure one has (Carrim, 2006, p56).

We share the same cultural identity as we consume those cultural artifacts of narratives, memories, stories and fantasies to incorporate their cultural representations in similar or different ways into our everyday rituals and practices of daily life. Besides, the social and cultural construction of identity is highly influenced by media communication in the modern age. Technologies have empowered the media to communicate their meaning to a variety of people; (Hall, 1997) Social and cultural identity are linked to issues of power, value systems, and ideology. The media uses representations, such as images, words, and characters or personae, to convey specific ideas and values related to culture and identity in a society.

Identity is social construct that many have mistaken for something an individual is born with. There are many aspects of identity that one can inherit like genes that can drive a certain type of character and certain aspects of identity a person can adopt and build for themselves. However the most part of one’s identity is consistent of what the person wants and adopts for themselves and what the society/the people around him/her choose to give him/her. Identity is a said to not remain unchanged once established.

Due to challenges as well as issues confronted by adolescents they may have identity confusion which is comprised of identity foreclosure, negative identity and diffusion. Identity foreclosure alludes to the identity crisis being resolved by making a series of premature decisions about one’s identity, based on other’s expectations of what and who one should be. Negative identity alludes to adolescents who form an identity contrary to the cultural values and expectations and diffusion refers to a kind of apathy in which the youth lacks any kind of passion or commitment (Louw&Louw, 2007). However, this challenge could be overcome by positive role identity or identity achievement which is “the sense of really knowing who one is and in general, where one is headed in life” (Fleming, 2004: 9).Erikson’s theory states that, throughout life, individuals go through various stages during which one will meet ever changing psychosocial challenges.