Identity and Intercultural Communication

Plan:

1. Identity

2. Gender Identity

3. Age Identity

4. Racial and Ethnic Identity

5. Physical Ability Identity

6. Religious Identity

7. Multicultural Identity

Identity plays a key role in intercultural communication, serving as a bridge between culture and communication. It is through communication with our family, friends, sometimes with people from different cultures that we come to understand ourselves and our identity. And it is through communication that we express our identity to others. Knowing about our identity is particularly important in intercultural interactions.

Conflicts may arise when there are sharp differences between who we think we are and who others think we are. We examine the relationship between communication and identity, and the role of identity in intercultural communication. After we define identity, we focus on the development of specific aspects of our social and cultural identity including those related to gender, age, race or ethnicity.

Identities emerge when communication messages are exchanged between persons. This means that presenting our identities is not a simple process. Does everyone see you as you see yourself? Probably not. Different identities are emphasized depending on whom we are communicating with and what the conversation is about.

In a social conversation with someone we are attracted to, our gender orientation identity is probably more important to us than our ethnic or national identities. 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.

Our identities are formed through communication with others, but societal forces related to history, economics, and politics also have a strong influence. To grasp this notion, think about how and why people are identified with particular groups and not others. What choices are available to them?

The reality is, we are all pigeonholed (классифицировать) into identity categories, or contexts, even before we are born. Many parents give a great deal of thought to a name for their unborn child, who is already part of society through his or her relationship to the parents. It is very difficult to change involuntary identities rooted in ethnicity, gender, or physical ability, so we cannot ignore the ethnic, socioeconomic, or racial positions from which we start our identity journeys.

To illustrate, imagine two children on a train that stops at a station. Each child looks out from a window and identifies their location. One child says that they are in front of the door for the women’s room; the other says that they are in front of the door for the men’s room. Both children see and use labels from their seating position to describe where they are; both are on the same train but describe where they are differently. And like the two children, where we are positioned – by our background and by society – influences how and what we see, and, most important, what it means.

Societal influences also relate to intercultural communication by establishing the foundation from which the interaction occurs. But the social forces that give rise to particular identities are always changing. For example, the identity of “woman” has changes considerably in recent years in the United States. Historically, being a woman has variously meant working outside the home to contribute to the family income or to help out the country when men were fighting wars, or staying at home and raising a family. Today, there are many different ideas about what being a woman means – from wife and mother to feminist and professional.

In the United States, young people often are encouraged to develop a strong sense of identity, to “know who they are”, to be independent. However, this individualistic emphasis on developing identity is not shared by all societies. In many African, Asian, and Latino societies, the experience of childhood and adolescence revolves around the family. In these societies, educational, occupational, and even marital choices are made with extensive family guidance. Thus, identity development does not occur in the same way in every society.

Gender Identity

We often begin life with gendered identities. When newborns arrive, they may be greeted with clothes in either blue or pink. To establish a gender identity for a baby, visitors may ask if it’s a boy or a girl. But cultural gender is not the same as biological gender. This distinction is important in understanding how our views on biological gender influence gender identities.

We communicate our gender identity, and popular culture tells us what it means to be a man or a woman. For example, some activities are considered more masculine or more feminine. Similarly, the programs that people watch on television – soap operas, football games, and so on – affect how they socialize with others and come to understand what it means to be a man or a woman.

Our expression of gender identity not only communicates who we think we are but also constructs a sense of who we want to be. We learn what masculinity and femininity mean in our culture, and we negotiate how we communicate our gender identity to others. As an example, think about the recent controversy over whether certain actresses are too thin. The female models appearing in magazine advertisements and TV commercials are very thin – leading young girls to feel ashamed of anybody fat. It was not always so. In the mid-1700s, a robust woman was considered attractive. And in many societies today, in the Middle East and in Africa, full-figured women are much more desirable than thin women. This shows how the idea of gender identity is both dynamic and closely connected to culture.

There are implications for intercultural communication as well. Gender means different things in different cultures. For example, single women cannot travel freely in many Muslim countries. And gender identity for many Muslim women means that the sphere of activity and power is primarily in the home and not in public.

 

Age Identity

As we age, we tap into (получить доступ и использовать) cultural notions of how someone our age should act, look, and behave, that is we establish an age identity. And even as we communicate how we feel about our age to others, we receive messages from the media telling us how we should feel. Thus, as we grow older, we sometimes feel that we are either too old or too young for a certain “look”. These feelings stem (возникать) from an understanding of what age means and how we identify with that age. Some people feel old at 30; others feel young at 40. Our notions of age and youth are all based on cultural conventions and they change as we grow older. Different generations often have different philosophies, values, and ways of speaking.

 

Racial and Ethnic Identity

The issue of race seems to be pervasive (всеобъемлющий, глубокий). It is the topic of many public discussions, from television talk shows to talk radio. Yet many people feel uncomfortable discussing racial issues. Most scientists now agree that there are more physical similarities than differences among so-called races and have abandoned a strict biological basis for classifying racial groups.

Instead, taking a more social scientific approach to understanding race, they recognize that racial categories like White and Black are constructed in social and historical contexts. Several arguments have been advanced to refute (опровергать) the physiological basis for classifying racial groups.

Racial categories vary widely throughout the world. In general, distinctions between White and Black, for example, are fairly rigid in the United States, and many people become uneasy when they are unable to categorize individuals. By contrast, Brazil recognizes a wide variety of intermediate racial categories in addition to White and Black. This indicates a cultural, rather than a biological, basis for racial classification. Racial identities, then, are based to some extent on physical characteristics, but they are also constructed in fluid social contexts. The important thing to remember is that the way people construct these identities and think about race influences how they communicate with others.

One’s ethnic identity reflects a set of ideas about one’s own ethnic group membership. It typically includes several dimensions: self-identification, knowledge about the ethnic culture (traditions, customs, values, behaviors), and feelings about belonging to a particular ethnic group. Ethnic identity often involves a common sense of origin and history, which may link members of ethnic groups to distant cultures in Asia, Europe, Latin America, or other locations. Ethnic identity thus means having a sense of belonging to a particular group and knowing something about the shared experiences of group members. For some Americans, ethnicity is a specific and relevant concept. These people define themselves in part in relation to their roots outside the United States – as “hyphenated (писать через дефис) Americans” (Mexican-American, Japanese-American) – or to some region prior to its being part of the United States (Navajo, Hopi, Cherokee).

 

Physical Ability Identity

We all have a physical ability identity because we all have varying degrees of physical capabilities. And our physical ability, like our age, changes over a lifetime. For example, some people experiences a temporary disability, such as breaking a bone or experiencing limited mobility after surgery. Others are born with disabilities, or have a sudden-onset disability. The number of people with physical disabilities is growing. In fact, people with disabilities see themselves as a cultural group and share many perceptions and communication patterns.

Part of this identity involves changing how they see themselves and how others see them. For people who become disabled, there are predictable stages in coming to grips (понимать) with this new identity. The first stage involves a focus on rehabilitation and physical changes. The second stage involves adjusting to the disability and the effects that it has on relationships; some friendships will not survive the disability. The final stage is when the individual begins to integrate disabled into his or her own definition of self.

Religious Identity

Religious identity is an important dimension of many people’s identities, as well as a common source of intercultural conflict. Often, religious identity gets confused with racial/ethnic identity, which means it can be problematic to view religious identity simply in terms of belonging to a particular religion. For example, when someone says, “I am Jewish”, does this mean that this person practices Judaism or views Jewishness as an ethnic identity? When someone says, “That person has a Jewish last name”, does this confer a Jewish religious identity?

Historically, Jews have been viewed as a racial group, an ethnic group, and a religious group. Drawing distinct lines between various identities – racial, ethnic, religious, class, national, regional – can lead to stereotyping. For example, Italians and Irish are often assumed to be Catholic.

Intercultural communication among religious groups also can be problematic. Religious differences have been at the root of conflicts from the Middle East, to Northern Ireland, to India/Pakistan. The traditional belief is that everyone should be free to practice whatever religion they want to, but conflict can result from the imposition of one religion’s beliefs on others who may not share those beliefs.

Religion traditionally is considered a private issue, and there is a stated separation of church and state. However, in some countries, religion and the state are inseparable, and religion is publicly practiced. Some religions communicate and mark their religious differences through their dress. Other religions do not mark their members through their clothes; for example, you may not know if someone is Buddhist, Catholic or Lutheran. Because these religious identities are less obvious, everyday interactions may not invoke them.

 

Multicultural Identity

Today, a growing number of people do not have clear racial, ethnic, or national identities. These are people who live “on the borders” between various cultural groups. While they may feel torn between different cultural traditions, they also may develop a multicultural identity – an identity that transcends (выходить за пределы) one particular culture – and feel equally at home in several cultures.

Sometimes, this multicultural identity develops as a result of being born or raised in a multiracial home. The United States, for example, has an estimated 2 million multiracial people – that is, people whose ancestry includes two or more races – and this number is increasing.

The development of racial identity for multiracial children seems to be different from either majority or minority development. These children learn early on that they are different from other people and that they don’t fit into a neat (чёткий, определенный) racial category – an awareness-of-differentness stage.

The second stage involves a struggle for acceptance, in which these children experiment with and explore both cultures. They may feel as if they live on the cultural fringe, struggling with two sets of cultural realities and sometimes being asked to choose one racial identity over the other. In the final stage, self-acceptance and assertion, these children find a more secure sense of self. This exposure to more than one culture’s norms and values often leads to a flexible and adaptable sense of identity – a multicultural identity.

 

 

Building Intercultural Skills

1. Understand the relationship between identity and history. How does history help you understand who you are?

2. What do you consider to be your identity? Describe your cultural identity. What is the most important part of your identity to you?

3. Notice how diverse your friends are. Do you have friends from different age groups? From different ethnic groups? Do you have friends with disabilities? Whose first language is not Russian/Kazakh? Think about why you have/don’t have diverse friends and what you can learn from seeing the world through their “prescription lenses”.

4. Look for advertisements in popular newspapers and magazines. Analyze the ads to see if you can identify the social values that they appeal to.

 

Lecture 5

"Foreignness" of cultures and ethnocentrism

Plan:

1. Nature and essence of the notions "home" and "foreign"

2. The essence of ethnocentrism and its role in Intercultural Communication (IC)

3. Stereotyping 

 

1. Nature and essence of the notions "home" and "foreign"

The modern types of the transport and communication facilities allow many people to realize the peculiarities and values of other cultures. From the very first contact with these cultures, people quickly perceive that representatives of these cultures react differently on the outside world. They have their own standpoint, system of values and rates of behavior, which greatly differ from the ones accepted in another culture. Thus, in situations of the divergence or mismatch of some cultural phenomena among the cultures, the notions of "home" and "foreign" appear.

The one who faces foreign culture, experiences new feelings and sensations at interacting with unknown and incomprehensible cultural phenomena. Their gamma is rather broad - from simple surprise to active resentment and protest. As the studies display, it is not enough to use only one’s own cultural knowledge and observe the behavior of foreigners. It is much more important to understand “foreign” culture, i.e. to comprehend the place and importance of the new unusual phenomena of the culture, and include the new knowledge in one’s cultural arsenal, in structure of one’s behavior and lifestyle.

Thereby, the notion “foreign” gains the key importance in IC. But problem is that, to these days the scientific determination of this notion is not worded yet. In all variants of the usage the notion “foreign” is understood on ordinary level, that is to say by separations and descriptions of the most typical signs and characteristics of this term.

Under such approach notion "foreign" has several meanings:

o "foreign" as not belonging to this place, residing out of the border of his/her native culture;

o "foreign" as strange, unusual, forming a contrast to usual and accustomed encirclement;

o "foreign" as unacquainted, unknown and inaccessible for cognition;

o "foreign" as something supernatural, omnipotent, in front of which a person is week;

o "foreign" as sinister, alien, carrying threat for life.

In the process of contacts between representatives of the different cultures various cultural-specific conceptions clash, under which each of communicants originally do not realize the differences from the first glance, each side considers their own ideas and conceptions normal. First, as this can be most often, incomprehension (something is not right) comes under which opinion and understanding do not coincide. As a rule, both sides do not call their own cultural-specific conceptions in question, but occupy ethnocentric position and ascribe foolishness, illiteracy or cruel intent to the other culture.

Figuratively, within the contact with the other culture the person feels like being abroad. He/she oversteps the accustomed situation, notions and find himself/herself in unacquainted, but attractive other world. The foreign country, on the one hand, seems to be unacquainted and even dangerous, but on the other hand, all new attracts, promises the new knowledge, and increases the outlook and life experience.