Cultural identity
Abstract: When people from different cultures come together to share ideas，feelings，and information，then intercultural communication occurs. Intercultural communication is the circumstance in which people from different diverse cultural backgrounds interact with another. What is significant and critical to this kind of interaction is the extreme cultural diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and assumptions which constitute the unique identity of communicators. So, it is important for us to appreciate what constitutes memberships in the cultures and how that membership influence the manner in which we approach, perceive and interact with other cultures.
Key words：cultural identity  communication 
摘要：跨文化交流源于来自不同文化的人们在一起交流分享信息，在该情境下，不同文化背景的人产生互动。不同的文化背景，文化经历，文化假设，对于这种跨文化的交流互动是非常关键的，同时它也构成了交流者的特殊特征。因此，跨文化交流对于我们理解构成交流关系的成分以及这种交流关系怎么影响交流者之间的互动和洞察具有重要意义。
关键字：文化特征  交流
1 what is cultural identity?
To talk about our identity, we try to answer the question: who am I? One’s identity consists roughly of those attributes that make one unique as an individual and different from others. Or it is the way one sees or defines oneself.
Cultural identity is bureaucratically or self-ascribed membership in a specific culture [1]. Cultural identity is the feeling of identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as he or she is influenced by his or her belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity may refer to the membership of a racial, ethnic, regional, economic, or any other social community exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others. Cultural identity can stem from the following differences: race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, country of origin, and geographic region [2]. we are all of course members of many overlapping communities: speakers of our native language, citizens of the same city
or neighborhood, members of the same sports teams , churches or political groups, fellows of university students or co-workers of a particular profession or occupation, or friends of the same sex or the opposite sex, etc.
Cultural identity is important in intercultural communication, because there are cultural differences in the structures of expectation to identity. Each community implies certain types of culture which might be shared with other members and which communicators must seek to infer as they interact. When people from different cultures come in contact, if one perceives himself in one way, and the people with whom he interacts perceive him in another way, serious problems can arise. In this case, a single term used to define a particular culture is often exclusive; therefore, "culture is a group which shapes a person's values and identity"
2 Cultural identity and communication
Everyone has multiple identities. And those identities connect the individual to cultural groups and the main institutions of the culture. A person's cultural identity exerts a profound
influence on his or her communicative style, because communication constitutes identity and also reflects identity. So, the relationship between identity and communication is reciprocal.
2.1 Communication constitutes identity
"You are not born with an identity. Through countless interactions you discover who you are ". People who identify themselves as members of a social group acquire common ways of viewing the world through their interactions with other members of the same group [3]. Communicative practices are themselves a crucial means through which cultural identity is constituted, exercised, resisted, and contested. Once discovering their identities, people learn what they need to know to become members, with a particular ideological position, and with quite specific forms of interpersonal relationships among members of those groups and will use the linguistic resources and social strategies to affiliate and identify with many different cultures and ways of using language in communication.
2.2 Communication reflects identity
All communication is communication that divides us into different memberships of different groups. "Everyone has multiple identities which may compete with or reinforce each other: kinship, occupational, cultural, institutional, territorial, educational, partisan, ideological, and others"[4]. And those identities connect the individual to cultural groups and the main institutions of the culture. A persons made of a multiplicity of social roles or "subject positions" which they occupy selectively, depending on the interactional context in which they find themselves at the time.
    In communication, persons with many identities may select different communicative styles according to the different context. So, "behavior is governed by many factors---socioeconomics status, sex, age, length of residence in a locale education---each of which will have an impact on cultural practices as well. Finally, individuals may differ by the degree to which they choose to adhere to a set of cultural patterns, some individuals identify strongly with a particular group: others combine practices from several groups." Usually, through socialization or acculturation in a given society, all those who share a common culture can be expected to behave correctly, automatically and predictably becaus
e common attitudes, beliefs, and values are reflected in the way how members of the culture behave. And people learn to expect certain behaviors of others as well. So “a person's cultural identity exerts a profound influence on his or her life ways"solidity

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。