Cultural identity,characteristics,culture formation,nature of culture

ST PAUL'S UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND COMMUNICATION

 UNIT TITLE: INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

UNIT CODE: COM 210

STUDENTS NUMBERS: BACS/NRB/1591/17

                                            BACS/NRB/3075/17

LECTURES NAME: MS. LOISE

TASK: Cultural Identity, Characteristics, Cultural formation, Nature of Culture

INTRODUCTION

Cultural Identity

According to Shah “Culture has been defined as the shared features which encapsulate people together in a community”.

Culture is a set of control mechanisms, plans, rules and instruments for governing behavior. Culture begins with the assumption that human thoughts is basically both and public.

Cultural identity links a person to their heritage and help the to identify with others who have the same traditions and basics believe systems. When a person identifies with their culture they often embrace traditions that have been presents over several years.

Cultural identity in its most basics form is a sense of belonging such as companionship, beliefs interest and basic principles of living. Embracing one culture of certain tribes or people often means practicing a specific religion or wearing certain types of clothing or something else that represents their culture.

Examples of cultural identity

·         Beliefs structure or religion for example the cross represents Christianity.

·         Dress every tribe has a particular style of dressing as a culture, same prefers head dress while others choose to wear nothing that coves their head for example the Muslims.

·         Hair-how a person wears their hair can also be an indicator of culture identity e.g. Turkana and Pokot ladies usually have something on their head called”donge”.

·         Types of food eaten some tribes like okyek normally like to eat wild animals like gazelles, antelopes and many others because they believe that wild animals graze on green leaves which are not contaminated. These people also look for natural herbs as their medicine. Ethnic groups that live along the coast depend on sea food as fish.

·         Examples of cultural identity can include anything that offer testaments or validation that person is associated with a particular group religion.

Characteristics of cultural identity

a)      Collective phenomenon-culture is a partly shared with people who lived or lived within the same social environment which it was a learnt.

b)      It consists of written rules-cultural identity is a collective program of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others.

c)      It is a learnt- cultural identity is not something born with but it is a learned, stored in mental categories that are recalled. It begins after birth or even earlier.

d)     View of group of people – This means it is shared by a society. People in a given culture share symbols of the culture such as language.

e)      Coherent- It is an outward expression of a unifying and consistent vision brought by a particular community to its confrontation.

FORMATION OF CULTURE

Cultural formation has been define “as a process that trains citizens in the knowledge of their country and their common humanity while giving them moral and intellectual virtues” (Steward 2012). This show that Culture formation is not simply a matter of knowledge. Cultured person is not simply a knowledgeable person but he is also a good person. This just prove that cultural formation includes the formation of the virtues both moral and intellectual. Cultural formation is a process because it begins with a person who is not cultured and transforms them into cultured person. It is not a process that begins today but it is a long process that begins from birth. On the other hand, I identity is the concept of who we are (martin&Nakayama 2011)

                              Perspective on the formation of cultural identity

Social science perspective

According to Martin and nakayama (2011), this perspective emphasizes that cultural identity is created in part by the self and in part in relation to group membership. This is evidence that self is composed of multiple identities and these notions are culture bound. Our identities are created not in one smooth, orderly process but in spurts with some events providing insights onto who we are and long periods intervening during which we may not think much about ourselves or identities.

Interpretive perspective

This perspective emphasizes that identities are negotiated, co-created, reinforced and challenged though communication with others by emerging when messages are exchange between persons (jandt 2007). This show that our identities is not a symbol process but ideas are expressed in core symbols, labels and norms. Different identities are emphasized depending on the individual we are communicating with and topics of conversation and our communication is probably most successful when the person we are talking with confirms the identity we think is most important at the moment

Critical perspective

This show that identity shaped through social historical forces. The driving force here is that attempt to understands identity formation within the contexts of history, economics and even discourse. The identities that others may ascribe to us are socially and politically determined. They are not constructed by self alone but we must ask ourselves what drives the constructions of a particular kinds of identities for examples now days, people do not hesitate to identify themselves as “heterosexuals”. A critical perspective insists that on the constructive nature of this process and attempts to identify the social forces and needs that gives rise to this identities.

                                  Characteristics of cultural identities

According to martin and Nakayama (2011), they describe cultural identities in several ways such as gender, age, racial and ethnicity, religion, national, regional and personal.

Gender identity

This is the identification within cultural notions of masculinity and feminist and what it mean to be a man or a woman. To establish a gender identity for the newborn, visitors may ask if the baby is a boy or a girl. What it mean to be a man or a woman in a society is heavily influenced by cultural norms, for examples, some activities are considered more masculine or feminine. Gender identity is also demonstrated by common styles for example, women communication styles is often described  as supportive, egalitarian, personal and disclosure where’s men are describe as competitive and assertive.

Age

As we age, we also play into cultural notions of how individuals our age should act, look and behave. As we grow older, we sometimes look at the clothes displayed in store windows or advertised in newspapers and magazines and feel that we are either too old or too young for that “look”. These feelings stem from an understanding what age means and how we identify with people that age.Some people feel old at age of 30, others feel young at age of 40 or 50 (jandt 2007). Nothing inherent in age that tell us we are young or old rather than our notions of age and youth are based on cultural conventions.

Racial and ethnic identities

Racial identity is a process of identifying with particular racial groups. Racial are based on some extent on physical characteristics but they are also constructed in fluid social context. It probably makes more sense to talk about racial formation than racial categories thereby casting race as complex of social meanings rather than as fixed and objective concept. Ethnic identity may be seen as set of ideas about own ethnic group membership. It typically includes self-identification, knowledge about ethnic culture, feelings about belongings to particular any group.

Religious identity and National identity

This can be an important dimension of many people identities as well as important site of intercultural conflict. Religious identity often is conflated with racial or ethnic identity which makes it different to view religious identity simply because of in terms of belonging to a particular religion. People in some religion communicate and mark their religion differences by their clothing e.g. Muslims covers their heads to show their religion. On the other hand national identity refers to one legal status in relation to a nation. You can identify someone by asking which country he or she is.

Regional identity

This is an identification with a specific geographical region of a nation. Although some regional identities can fuel national independence movements, they more often reflect cultural identities that affirms distinctive dress, manners and language.

Personal identity

This is an act of who we think we are and who others think we are. Our personal identities are importance to us and we try to communicate them to others. We are more or less successful depending others responds to us but the various ways that identify is constructed to portray ourselves as we want others to see us.

       

References

Steward.M. (2012). Cultural formation. U.S.A: Word press

Jandt.E.F. (2007).An introduction to intercultural communication (5^th ed). U.S.A: Sage publication.Martin.N.J.,Nakayama K.T.(2011).Intercultural communication in contexts, (4^th Ed). New York, NY: MC-Graw-hill publication