Two related but distinct components of our identities are our personal and social identities (Spreckels, J. Instead, our identities are formed through processes that started before we were born and will continue after we are gone therefore our identities aren’t something we achieve or complete. We must avoid the temptation to think of our identities as constant. Our identities make up an important part of our self-concept and can be broken down into three main categories: personal, social, and cultural identities (see Table 8.1 “Personal, Social, and Cultural Identities”). This begins a lifelong process of thinking about who we are now, who we were before, and who we will become (Tatum, B. While this happens from birth, most people in Western societies reach a stage in adolescence where maturing cognitive abilities and increased social awareness lead them to begin to reflect on who they are. Our parents, friends, teachers, and the media help shape our identities. Personal, Social, and Cultural IdentitiesĪsk yourself the question “Who am I?” Recall from our earlier discussion of self-concept that we develop a sense of who we are based on what is reflected back on us from other people. It is from these cultural influences that our identities are formed. Last, the definition acknowledges that culture influences our beliefs about what is true and false, our attitudes including our likes and dislikes, our values regarding what is right and wrong, and our behaviors. There is also deviation from and resistance to those patterns by individuals and subgroups within a culture, which is why cultural patterns change over time. Culture is patterned in that there are recognizable widespread similarities among people within a cultural group. The definition also points out that culture is learned, which accounts for the importance of socializing institutions like family, school, peers, and the media. Culture is “negotiated,” and as we will learn later in this chapter, culture is dynamic, and cultural changes can be traced and analyzed to better understand why our society is the way it is. Unpacking the definition, we can see that culture shouldn’t be conceptualized as stable and unchanging. For the purposes of exploring the communicative aspects of culture, we will define culture as the ongoing negotiation of learned and patterned beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors.
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