ABSTRACT
Since childhood we have all been offered ways of understanding ourselves – from our family, education, friends and the society that surrounds us. In a sense we have been told who we are since our birth from a variety of sources. These messages may be contradictory, and so we may try to integrate these stories about what we are into a unified narrative of our own identity. This narrative is a key aspect of our sense of who we are – of our personal identity. As can be deduced from this perspective, the identity we assume is, at least in part, derived from the social context in which we live, the type of family we are born into, the education we receive and the friends that we are able to make as well as the society that surrounds us. This means that our identity is temporally and spatially framed or influenced. Who we feel ourselves to be is thus influenced by where and when we live our lives. To the extent that certain periods of history and certain geographical locations offer people living in them common features, our personal identity is, at least in part, shared with others from the same time-period and location. Although the non-essentialist view promoted strongly in Section A encourages us to look at individuals, it cannot be denied that culture is nevertheless basically a phenomenon which involves individuals sourcing their identities from commonly held ‘group’ resources. The exercises in Section C are designed to make you critically aware of this process as it applies to you and to the development of your skill as an intercultural communicator.
