Does Cultural Identity A Result Of Lived Experience?

Is Cultural Identity a Result of Lived Experience?

Coming to the United States was a big change for me, having to learn a new language and a new way of living. I didn’t realize that I have an accent when I speak English until people started asking, “Where is that accent from?”. The experience of coming to a different country made me realize I was different. Therefore, experiencing things is what makes you acknowledge who you are. Cultural identity is your surroundings, beliefs, and experiences. Furthermore, what you do and believe is cultural identity. On the other side, there’s invisible culture where our culture is invisible to us because we see that other cultures are different to ours, but we don’t see that ours is different to others.

Some people might say invisible culture is cultural identity, but you don’t notice until you have experienced it.
We only know what we have experienced. In order to know, realize, or understand something you first need to live through it. For instance, you have lived your whole life in America and you decide to go to college in England, now that you are there you notice you speak with a different accent from English. In the text What Is Cultural Identity?, Pacheco and Trumbull state that “We often talk about other people cultures and not so much about our own”. Just like we talk about someone’s accent and not our own. You didn’t realize you had an accent until you encountered a different culture from your own and saw a different perspective. Thus, we become aware of our cultural identity when we experience things that are different from what we know.