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How does culture influence identity
Relationship between culture and identity
Relationship between culture and identity
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Identity
Identity is what defines a person. It covers who you are, where you’re from, and what your interests are. Our society is formed by our identities. Each decision we make has an effect on what outlines our personalities. However I believe that the people and events occurring around us have more of an effect on our identities than our own choices.
Identity is chosen for us, because we are mostly affected by external forces. In the article “ Do you choose your identity or is it chosen for you?” it states “ Is something really a choice if it has been chosen unconsciously? Is it a choice if you don’t know all the options available to you… born into certain religion…” This quote means that in reality no one gets to choose their identity. In fact they never even chose whether or not to be brought into life. We are born without knowing we will be born, and then they are raised to accept the religion they are taught. Not only religion but also interests, culture, and many more. This quote is important, because it supports the idea of how our identity is mostly chosen for us.
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We are all anticipated to look either beautiful or handsome, and if you are not society rejects you. In reality we are not all the same at all. Every person looks at least a little different. In the poem Grandma Ling, Amy ling says “… and there I faced my five foot height, high cheeks, and stood before me, acted on by 50 years,” This means that a girl was looking like her Grandmother and feared she would end up like her. She wanted to look different and be different. This character did not want the same fate to await her, she wanted to be accepted by society. This completely supports my claim. Everyone wants to be loved in some way. One of those ways is to be molded into whatever people want you to
Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of the self-inside.
What influences a person’s identity? Does one get an identity when they are able to differentiate right from wrong, or are they born with it? There is not one thing that gives a person their identity, there are however, many different factors that contribute to one’s identity. From Contemplation in a World of Action written by Thomas Merton, Merton advocates identity by stating that “A person does not simply “receive” his or her identity. Identity is much more than the name or features one is born with. True identity is something people must create for themselves by making choices that are significant and that require a courageous commitment in the face of challenges. Identity means having ideas and values that one lives by” (Merton). Concurring with Merton a person is not given their identity at birth or while developing as an embryo, rather it is something that you create for yourselves over the course of life through decisions and actions made by the individual. Although identity is something that one may not be fully aware of or discover until last breaths. Identity can
One’s identity is influenced by many things. It’s something that one has a choice of what he wants to become. One has a personal choice as to what identity he possesses; for instance, he can choose what he likes, who he wishes to be friends with, and what he wears. After all, “Fashion is an expression of personal identity” (Latterell 11). Queen Latifah states, “All things start inside your soul and work outward” meaning that it is one’s choice as to what he lets work its way out (Latifah 34). People have even made personal choices that affect their identity by changing their name. Just as Firoozeh Dumas describes in The “F Word”, “Thus I started sixth grade with my new, easy name and life became infinitely simpler” (Dumas 86). People made fun of Dumas’ name, Firoozeh, and thus made her want to change her name to fit in; she changed her identity. An identity is mainly comprised of personal choice.
Identity is a group of characteristics, data or information that belongs exactly to one person or a group of people and that make it possible to establish differences between them. The consciousness that people have about themselves is part of their identity as well as what makes them unique. According to psychologists, identity is a consistent definition of one’s self as a unique individual, in terms of role, attitudes, beliefs and aspirations. Identity tries to define who people are, what they are, where they go or what they want to be or to do. Identity could depend on self-knowledge, self-esteem, or the ability of individuals to achieve their goals. Through self-analysis people can define who they are and who the people around them are. The most interesting point about identity is that some people know what they want and who they are, while it takes forever for others to figure out the factors mentioned before. Many of the individuals analyzed in this essay are confused about the different possible roles or positions they can adopt, and that’s exactly the reason they look for some professional help.
An identity is more than just a name. Sometimes an identity is the first thing and possible the only thing a person notices about one or the other. A person's identity can represent their culture, their race and sometimes, even possible their family background. My identity is what represents me. For those who does not know me personally but knows my name, knows my identity. This identity is what people will recognize me as for now and possible for ever.
Everyone struggles with identity at one point in their life. It will eventually happen to everyone. Identity is how people see one another, it is one of the most important things about someone. Identity goes hand in hand with experience. One’s experiences can impact one’s identity.
For example, in Lusus Naturae, the girl, who is now called “freak,” shows how she was shunned from society when she says, “It was decided that i should die. That way I would not stand in the way of my sister, I would not loom over her like a fate” (Atwood 3). Society, and even her family, feared her so immensely that they wanted her to die, so that they would not have to deal with her looks or the embarrassment of her. They want her gone. In The Lost Children of Tuam, a boy named P.J. was raised in the Tuam home because he did not have a father. “P.J. was happy enough until his teens, when he was called a ‘bastard,’ and people avoided the pew he sat in, and the girls tittered at the sight of him” (Barry 21). P.J. lived his childhood feeling as if he was a normal child, but as he grew up and began to leave the Tuam home, he was shunned and called a “bastard.” No one wanted him in their
She wanted them to see themselves through their own eyes, not the eyes of another race. If they can only accept who they were, they would become happier and more prosperous as individuals and lead to improvement of the entire race. The goal is for them realize their own beauty and self worth before it leads to destruction.
Identity, an ambiguous idea, plays an important part in today’s world. To me identity can be defined as who a person is or what differentiates one person from another. Identity would be a person’s name, age, height, ethnicity, personality, and more. A quote by Anne Sexton states “It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was”(Anne Sexton). This quote helps me define identity because I believe it is saying that identity is what people are remembered by. When some people think of identity, words such as, uniqueness, distinctiveness, or individuality may come to mind. However, I disagree with this because when I think of identity I think of mimicry, self-consciousness, or opinions.
Identity is a fluid concept that has no static meaning. It continuously takes and loses references and connotations. This continuous change of identity results often from defining one’s place in the world and his/her relationship to others. Defining the other is, therefore, integral to defining the self and defining the self is indispensible from shaping one’s identity in others’ perceptions. Identity definition is a multifaceted complex process that is deeply rooted in the web of human social, cultural and lingual interaction as Jenkins suggested:
The quest to find one’s identity and have a sense of individuality is rampant in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. The humanistic urge to have purpose is embodied in the characters of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth very differently. They each know that their life’s purpose is to donate until “completion,” yet on the way there they explore themselves and find out there is more to each of them than their vital organs, even if that is how society has labeled them.
Identity. What is identity? One will say that it is the distinct personality of an individual. Others will say that identity is the behavior of a person in response to their surrounding environment. At certain points of time, some people search for their identity in order to understand their existence in life. In regards, identity is shaped into an individual through the social trials of life that involve family and peers, the religious beliefs by the practice of certain faiths, and cultural awareness through family history and traditions. These are what shape the identity of an individual.
...can go through an entire lifetime and not really know how to define their own identity. In many cases people suffer through a great crisis to discover who they really are. If someone doesn?t know the meaning of their own identity, how can society apply a definition to the word? It leaves people to ponder whether or not there are some feelings and parts of life that simply cannot be explained. When defining the word identity scholars and common men alike must agree to disagree. It is a word so diverse in context that it is seemingly impossible to take it down to a simplified definition. There are some things in life that just aren?t meant to be completely understood, and one?s identity is among these things. Not until a person has a lived out their live could they sit down and tell you how their adventure has shaped them into the person they became in the end.
Identity is a person’s socially and historically constructed concept. We learn and determine our own identity through the interactions of family, peers, media and also other connections that we have encounter in our life. Gender, social class, age and experience of the world are the key concepts which plays a substantial role in shaping how we are by facing obstacles in our lives. According to Mead (1934) as cited in Thulin, Miller, Secher, and Colson (2009), identity theory determines
Zora Neal Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, reveals one of life’s most relevant purposes that stretches across cultures and relates to every aspect of enlightenment. The novel examines the life of the strong-willed Janie Crawford, as she goes down the path of self-discovery by way of her past relationships. Ideas regarding the path of liberation date all the way back to the teachings of Siddhartha. Yet, its concept is still recycled in the twenty-first century, as it inspires all humanity to look beyond the “horizon,” as Janie explains. Self-identification, or self-fulfillment, is a theme that persists throughout the book, remaining a quest for Janie Crawford to discover, from the time she begins to tell the story to her best friend, Pheoby Watson. Hurston makes a point at the beginning of the novel to separate the male and female identities from one another. This is important for the reader to note. The theme for identity, as it relates to Janie, carefully unfolds as the story goes on to expand the depths of the female interior.