Co-Cultural Identities

Brody De Loria Instructor Solveig E. Pedersen Oral Comm. A111 11/12/12 Co-Cultural Identities Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual, as far as one is influenced by ones proceeding to a group or culture. In recent decades, a new form of identification has emerged which breaks down the understanding of the individual as a coherent whole subject into a collection of various heathenish identifiers.These cultural identifiers may be the result of various conditions including location, gender, race, history, nationality, language, sexuality, religious beliefs, aesthetics and ethnicity. The divisions between cultures can be very fine in nigh move of the world, especially places such as the United States, where the population is ethnically diverse and social unity is based primarily on mutual social determine and beliefs. Everyone is a part of many co-cultural identities and they all have an effect on how one communicates with others.Some co-cultur al identities may have more of an influence on whateverones decision making while communicating than others, but they all do affect us in one way or another. Some of these co-cultural identities you argon born into, such as ethnicity or gender and others you gradually fall into throughout your life such as religion, depending on your experiences. No matter what co-cultural identities you belong to, they influence how we communicate with others because they are factors of what makes us who we are, and we cant help that.What we can help is to know what those co-cultural identities are so we can understand when wherefore we might be having communication problems with someone who belongs to other co-cultural identities. Also of interest is the interplay between cultural identity and new media. Rather than necessarily representing an individuals interaction at heart a certain group, cultural identity may be defined by the social network of people imitating and following the social nor ms as presented by the media.Accordingly, instead of learning behavior and knowledge from cultural groups, individuals may be learning these social norms from the media to build on their cultural identity. Political nicety is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts.An example of governmental correctness is the changing terminology used to describe handicapped people. In the past the term crippled was short acceptable and not considered offensive. At some point, some politician decided crippled was degrading and the preferred term changed to handicapped. This, too, was eventually deemed offensive and disabled became the preferred term. Today, even disabled is considered degrading to some and differently abled and physically challenged are used by those p eople.The same can be said for the changing uses of terms for Black Americans Negro and colored, once perfectly acceptable terms, became offensive during the 1970s and Afro-American and Black came into use, which in turn gave way to African-American, and in broader usage, people of color. As well as language, political correctness discourages the use of racial or stereotypes in fiction out of concern that these stereotypes may become self-perpetuating.For example, frequently seeing the image black gang-members decked out in gold chains, carrying guns and listening to rap may pressure young black people into seeing this lifestyle as the more acceptable choice for their racial group. The common image of female-dominated occupations, such as nurses, secretaries, care workers, etc, and of male-dominated occupations IT workers, military, machinery operators, mechanics, etc. , can discourage individuals of either gender from considering those occupations traditionally belonging to the ot her.