My Cultural Identity
Defining my own cultural identity by Stefanie A–ttl Culture is one of the most difficult concepts in the human social sciences and there are many different ways of defining it. It is often argued that culture is a learned behaviour pattern shared by a specific group of people. Culture is about shared meanings, and language is the privileged medium in which meaning is produced and exchanged. People sharing one culture interpret the world in roughly the same way. Defining my own cultural identity seems to me quite difficult. I actually have to admit that I am not quite sure which culture I belong to.
I was born in Austria but my father comes from South Tyrol, the northern part of Italy, where Italian and German are spoken. Therefore I have Italian nationality but I have only some basic knowledge concerning the language. Although I live in Austria, there are still some traditions and cultural aspects in my family that are not Austrian. Not only is there some Italian influence, but also Canadian due to the fact that my mother`s stepmother is British but emigrated to Canada. I haven`t got Canadian nationality, but I was brought up bilingually (German/English).
Furthermore I spent half a year living in Chile and therefore I was influenced by the Chilean way of life. Understandably I sometimes get quite confused about which culture I really belong to. There are several parameters for defining onea`s culture, such as nationality, language, the country you live in, gender, social class, occupation, interests, educational levela. But the question is, which of these parameters is to be considered the most important. I have Italian nationality, but due to the fact that I donat really know the language I dona t really feel Italian or Southern Tyroliana.
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And although I am not Canadian by citizenship I sometimes feel more at home there because of the language. Still, concerning some traditional aspects, I am more familiar with the ? South Tyroliana ones but I don`t really feel that I belong there because I don`t know Italian nor do I really speak German with a South Tyrolianaaccent. I believe that not knowing the language could be seen as a barrier keeping me from really experiencing Italian culture. I strongly believe that one can somehow adopt a culture by learning specific behaviour patterns, values, moralities or more precisely, a certain way of life.
I experienced this while living in Chile and I can say for sure that it was far more difficult to adjust to a new way of living and learn how to react in certain situations than learning the foreign language. Despite all these influences of different cultures, I still feel very Austrian due to the fact of actually living in this country. The parameters which I believe to be very important in order to define your culture are first of all the is the country you live in because your culture depends very much on what is happening around you.
The second important aspect is language through which thoughts, ideas and feelings of a certain culture are represented. The least important thing in my opinion is the nationality because I believe this to be a very official way of defining your culture. But, as I already mentioned, I sometimes don`t really know which culture I really belong to. I believe I am a mixture of all of them. Understanding home by Michael Pelitz “the night is your friend, your only friend the center stage, a moonscape as you walk. alk your head is a thread; your head’s a thread the eye of the needle becomes indistinct we’re just a sadder song away we’re just a sadder song away the mountaintops, the rainbow drops the fires from the temples and palaises. hurray the hierarchy that swallows me the pavement emptied out by night we’re just a sadder song away we’re just a sadder song away we’re off to understanding home we’re off to understanding home we’re off to understanding home we’re just a sadder song away.
Just as I reached Radetzkyplatz, passing by the Hotel Garni Lind, Understanding Homeaept rotating in my disc player. The center stage, a moonscape as you walka . The display warns: a BATTERY LOWa , but Alexa apartment is right across the square, so I decided not to worry about it. I suddenly remembered a letter I read on the internet, written by an Austrian social worker after his return from his social service year at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Detroit: a When being abroada , he wrote, a you become a true patriota ! He stayed in the U. S. during the international crusade against the Austrian government in 2001.
I started to remember all these artists who cancelled their concerts in Austria, and every single e-mail I had to send to my American friends, explaining a the situationa . And I had to think about all these desperate and aggressive anti-Moslem e-mails my mum received from a friend of hers who lives in Virginia, fearing that her son might not return from Iraq safely. I glanced over my shoulder to check on the traffic lights. Red. Suddenly I was confused, even a bit aggressive. I felt terribly blank despite the music, or maybe, because of the music. The whole world (including me) seems to be talking about sending, I thought!
Sending e-mails, sending troops, sending messages, sending money, sending support, sending social workers. Mobility is the keyword of our times. Nobody seems to be talking about the sense of belonging. a You become a true patriota , returns to my mind. I thought of how much I detest the concept of patriotism. To me, patriotism leads to flag-waving, flag-waving gives beautiful pictures, beautiful picture are very likely to be shown in the news, satellites enable worldwide broadcasts within milliseconds, and the media have an incredible manipulating impact.
I know the concept underlying the word a patriotisma is not that easy, but I am sure that patriotism is a great source of misunderstandings. The next moment I pictured myself at the soccer stadium singing the national anthem. Again, it leaves me confused. I felt exhausted. It has been a long day. An estimated 750 metres, the way from the U4-metrostation LandstraAYer HauptstraAYe to here, lay behind me. Another two and a half miles to the 23 rd district, where Ia ve parked my car, 102 kilometres to MA? zzuschlag, my hometown, an additional 87 kilometres to Graz, the city where I live, and yet another 8944 km to Portland/Oregon, the place where I spent the most wonderful year imaginable, describe my route. I think about my travels, the times I was sent, the times I mobilized. The batteries ran out on the final lines of the song.
I would have loved to listen to the outro and the repetition of the chorus. I pushed the doorbell and heard the buzzing of reality. Maybe all of this is not as contradictory as I thought. Maybe the understanding of our cultural identity needs to a travel lighta in order to find its way back home. And in its backpack it carries all the concepts we fear, detest or treasures so much. a Wea re off to understanding homea , I repeated, as suddenly the front door opened and I entered the building. Cultural Identity by Ana Flac A couple of years ago I found myself wandering between cultures, customs and different traditions. At the beginning of this “cultural voyage” I was torn between contradictions which forced me to ask myself: Who am I? What makes me a Croatian? Six years ago a specific incident happened in Osijek which triggered off these thoughts .
Morete mi reci da ide vlak za Cakovec? (Could you tell me when the next train goes to Cakovec? ), I asked a railway man as I was on my way home, after I had taken my entrance exam at Osijek University in 1998. The friendly man smiled and begged my pardon. He did not quite understand me. At this point I realized that I was no longer in my home town in Medjimurje and that all the competence I had in speaking my dialect which I’m so proud of could constitute a burden rather than a merit. This was the first time I perceived myself as being different from other people in Croatia.
Some of my fellow students in Osijek rejected their dialect but I was proud of it and it made me somehow stand out from the crowd so I could be easily identified by it. I realized that my Medjimurian dialect was a part of my cultural identity. As time passed by I got to know many different people from the Slavonic region, their customs and their way of living. Since this region was greatly affected by the war, a very critical attitude towards Serbs had developed there. Most of the inhabitants often expressed their fury mostly against Serbs and emphasized Pan-Croatian nationalism.
I noticed I wasn’t prepared to emphasize a Pan-Croatian position and I didn’t want to perceive the whole Serbian nation so destructively. I just couldn’t identify myself with all this Pan-Croatian nationalism and I mainly disagreed with people who had this kind of attitude. I kept my distance and withdrew into my regional cultural frames. After having spent two years in Osijek, I continued my studies in a completely different country, in Austria. I was very much excited about the new faces and new culture I was about to meet. And then one day I encountered a girl on the campus and we started talking.
I found the conversation quite neat. Apart from other things, she wanted to know where I come from so I told her I was from Croatia. Ah, aus Kroatien.. those were the next words she said. They sounded strange, as if she got the whole picture of me when she found out about my origin. At this moment I realized there was not only no place left for my Medjimurian identity, which I am extremely proud of, but there was also hardly even any left for my Croatian identity. I was differentiated from other students by labels such as another ex-Yugoslavian or inhabitant of the Balkans.
For the first time in my life I felt ashamed of my nationality. And from that moment on I was somehow torn between my Medjimurian pride and the feeling of shame for who I was in Austria. I was trapped in some generalized prejudices about myself that I did not want to have anything to do with. My identity was on the verge of being formed by some stereotypic views which I could not accept. But inspite of all these confrontations and contradictions I had to face and which scared me and disoriented me at first, they were also the one that gave me strength and motivated me to figure out who I really am.
My Cultural Identity by Camilla Leimisch If someone asked me if I was proud to be Austrian or Finnish, I would not answer a Yesa right away. Ia ve always felt that proud was not the appropriate word to describe my feelings towards the country where I was born or the country where I grew up, because I find it hard to be proud of something that I did not decide or that I did not achieve on my own. But I do not want to be misunderstood: I am proud of my parents to whom I owe my bilingualism and who introduced me to both cultures right from the start (Finnish from my mother and Austrian from my father).
I am also happy to have kept this bilingualism and I consider myself lucky to have two native countries. Although I was born in Finland and I was only two years old when my family moved to Austria, I have never considered Finland to be my second home country, in the sense of second best. This is because I have a family there, too, and I spend every summer in Finland. This is also because my mother took care that I did not forget my Finnish roots in Austria, so I could develop feelings of the same value for both of the countries, as well as an understanding of cultural awareness that is closely connected to the feeling of home.
As I see it, not only my nationality is an important part of my cultural identity, but also what I have done and what I am doing in my country and in its society. Austria is the country where I live and study. As my main subject is music, and Austria is a country of great musicians, music has become a big part not only of my personal but also of my cultural identity. I also appreciate Austrian folk music which I consider a very relevant and unique cultural tradition in the country. With Finland, ita s different. Ia d rather identify myself with Finnish people than with Austrian people.
It is not easy to explain why. All I can say is that Finnish people are very attached to nature, and that I often share their moments of melancholy which are even more intense when they are far away from their own country. Ia ve already said that I am happy about my bilingualism. In fact, language is an important parameter for defining my cultural identity, because other people also define or identify you by the way you speak. Certainly you become most aware of your language when you find yourself in a foreign country where no-one speaks your language.
What Ia ve noticed is that if you are among people who do not only speak differently, but also behave differently and look different from you, you suddenly distinguish yourself culturally from the others, and your cultural identity becomes much more evident. The frequently asked question about whether I feel more Austrian or more Finnish is not easy to answer. I am not 100% Austrian and not 100% Finnish. But I think that this diversity which has shaped my personality is also the key to my cultural identity.
Cultural Identity
Losing Cultural Identity Both the authors Choy and Engkent focussed mainly on the ideas of culture, immigration and assimilation. These two essays showed that acculturation is bi-directional from both the sides and it requires neither a change value, although values may become acculturated nor the internal change. Assimilation is unidirectional, towards the dominant group and it requires change in values and the internal change. Losing cultural Identity : Immigrants always have fear that they will lose their identity when move into new society.
In I'm banana and proud of it, Choy expressed his father feeling by saying that "Father used to say We lacked Taiost rituals, Taoist manners. We were, he said, "mo li. " Similarly, Engkent showed his father fear of losing cultural values and how he discouraged his wife not to learn English by saying these words " That old women will get rich doing nothing. What have these women learned ? Fan- gwei ways- make-up lipstick, smelly perfumes, fancy clothes.
Once she gets through with them, they won't be Chinese about the land and the life they had been forced to leave behind. " Even the author Choy personally felt that he is caught between two cultures. He claimed himself as Banana, which means that he possessed both the Chinese physique outside and Western lifestyle inside. Acculturation of immigrants: The acculturation is process of cultural change between two different cultural groups who come in contact with each other. The media and language are greatly responsible for acculturation.
In I'm a banana and proud of it, the author greatly influenced by the host culture through media. The host media like magazines, music and movies are the only choice for them to read, listen and watch. This showed great influence over immigrants soul and culture. On the other hand, there are some people unable to acculturate into new society due to greater affection towards their culture and lack of communication. In, Why My Mother Can't Speak English Engkent mother was unable to acculturate into new society. hat's why she offered. lai-shi to the officer, which means bribe in Canada even after 30 years stay in Canada. Further, she faced difficulty in learning English. The Berry (1990) psychologist defined acculturation is individuals change both by being influenced by contact with another culture and by being participants in the general acculturative changes underway in their own culture". This means that culture is being influenced by internal force within the individual and external environmental factors.
This acculturation leads to assimilation which gives either an harmony or conflict and stress. References Berry, J. W. (1990). Psychology of acculturation: Understanding individuals moving between cultures. In R. Brislin (Ed. ), Applied cross-cultural psychology. Newhury Park: SagePublications John W. Berry (2005). Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures. Retrieved from ?? http://isites. harvard. edu/fs/docs/icb. topic551691. files/Berry. pdf
I am My Language
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of a man disappears" - Octavio Paz. Language is tied to many cultural backgrounds, heritage, and can form one's identity. When a language is extinct or becoming extinct the culture, the history, and the people behind it
disappear. People come from "different countries that speak different languages, these different ways of communicating is a way to express themselves their thoughts and emotion freely. Losing a language can be detrimental because language expresses one's identity and that is the essence of language.
In both readings, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" by Gloria Anzaldua and "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is" by James Baldwin explain the deeper meaning behind language and extreme efforts to assimilate that would cause one to reject and or lose one's identity. Language can play a small role in how individuals' identities are formed. Language is a part of identity it has an impact on our personality which originates from different type languages in every nation such as dialects, accents, and terminology.
In the first reading, "How to Tame A Wild Tongue" by Gloria Anzaldua she expresses the different languages she speaks or is compelled to speak. For example, Gloria states the language she uses are Standard English, working class and slang English, Standard Mexican Spanish, Chicano Spanish, and others. Gloria discusses being caught in the middle using her native tongue that is Chicano Spanish.
English including the clash between the two cultures. "Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish…" (Anzaldua 39). In this quote Anzaldua does not want to be limited on how many languages she speaks, she also believes a person language will forever be a part of their identity. In addition, she believed that people shouldn't have to change their identity, but they should embrace their culture because it's part of what makes an individual unique.
"Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicano's need to identify we as a distinct people" this reveals that the Chicano Spanish is their legitimate identity that differentiates the people itself from both English and Spanish. This means that language forms identity for Chicano people to have a distinct language for themselves that relates to their cultural identity with Chicano Spanish.
Identically, Language can play a huge role in people live it can either unites them or separates them. "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" by Ludwig Wittgenstein. In other words, this quote means that language is a form of expression that demonstrates cultural diversities of people from different countries. For example, limiting languages of the world can create barriers and can make it difficult for people to experience other traditions.
For instance, In the second reading "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is" by James Baldwin he explains how drastic lifestyles can shape one's language depending on the situation. In Baldwin article, he also explains how Black English was created. In this time, the whites did not want to give the slaves the opportunity learn how to read or write.
Nor did they allow them to communicate with each other in their languages because they believed that education will lead the slaves to power. To demonstrate, Slavery dates to the 15th entury where many Africans were kidnapped from different tribes and was enslaved.
Africans was from different tribes it was difficult from them to communicate or express concern with one other. This led to the creation of Black English. Furthermore, how important is language to one's sense of identity? A sense of identity is perceived through language, ethnicity, race, and religion.
Language creates one's identity and can be altered by various circumstance whether it's a hostile or friendly environment. Demonstrate this concept "It is the most vivid and crucial key to identify: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity" (Baldwin). This quote reveals that language can either create bonds with other different types of people or can set them apart. Baldwin also states, "A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey" (Baldwin).
In other words, this means that when the slaves from the different tribes over the years they created Black English to communicate with one another in a form they can only understand each other. Black English was formed in a violent circumstance it benefited by creating a new form of language.
In conclusion, both Anzaldua and Baldwin, explain the struggle of dealing with a hybrid identity formed by language. Both writers expressed how the different type of languages can create one' identity willingly or with "brutal necessity". Baldwin explains how the violent creation of Black English brought the different sets of the tribe together as one. Anzaldua talks about adjusting with two identities and finding pride speaking different types English and Spanish while keeping her native tongue intact. Both writers showed the different perspectives on the role of language by discussing the ways the African - Americans assimilate an identity with Black English and Chicano people with Spanish.
Work Cited
- Anzaldua, Gloria. "How to tame a wild tongue" Everett's. PDF. Page: 36-39
- Baldwin, James. "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?" The New York Times. 29, July, 1979.
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My Cultural Identity. (2018, Jul 26). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/my-cultural-identity/
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