Identity as a Key Modern-Day Issue in Interpersonal Communication - Research Paper Example

Identity Identity Introduction Interpersonal communication is a process that involves the transfer of information between two or more individuals. During this process, a message is sent and another is received. The process is done in either a direct or an indirect method. A triumphant interpersonal communication is the one in, which the sender and the receiver of the message make sense of the message (Trenholm & Jensen 2008). There are various issues in the field of interpersonal communication. Examples are perception, identity, language, intimacy, conflict, and emotions. Identity is an individual’s notion and expression of a self-image. It is a unique characteristic belonging to a particular individual or a group of persons. The paper adopts the thesis; identity is a key modern-day issue in interpersonal communication. It tries to argue that people portray their identities in their interpersonal communications. It bases it argument on the identity management theory. It also provides three examples to justify the argument. The first example is from a program I watched on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The second one is about the Facebook posts of University students, and the other is about a personal experience. Literature Review Identity Management Theory (IMT) is a theory on intercultural communication. Tadasu Todd Imahori and William R. Cupach developed the theory in the 1990s. The two persons based their development on Erving Goffman’s essay titled Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior (1967). Imahori and Cupach differentiated between intracultural communication and intercultural communication. Intracultural communication is the communication between people sharing the same culture while intercultural communication is that between people from diverse cultures. Every individual possesses multiple identities. However, Imahori and Cupach regarded relational and cultural identities as important to their theory. Imahori and Cupach pointed out that the presentation of one’s face portrays aspects of an individual’s identity. A person can reveal his/her interpersonal communication capability whether he/she maintain or does not maintain face. According to them, the utilization of stereotypes in any intercultural conversation is due to ignorance of one another’s culture. The use of stereotypes threatens the face. Management of the consequential tension is an element of intercultural communication ability. Competency in intercultural communication is developed when an individual goes through three steps. He/she goes through trial and error, mixing up different communication identities and renegotiating the specific cultural identities that he/she has identified. Identity is associated to the identity management theory. Identity is a perception, which an individual holds in a social situation. Particular characteristics show how a person feels about himself or herself in a particular social setting. Even though identity management theory focuses on intercultural communication, its idea is applicable to all types of communication including intracultural communication. It relates with social identity theory, which also points out that individuals apply diverse identity management approaches to deal with endangered identities. Miles (2012) summarized the work of Imahori and Cupach by arguing that an individual identity is recognizable and understandable through face. Individuals create positive face with the motive of approval from other individuals. They create negative face with the motive to be independent and free of others’ approval. He added that IMT is an intercultural communication theory because it is founded on the idea that individuals from different cultures have not ideas of characteristic perceive positive, and those perceived negative. However, he noticed that even though the theory was created to describe intercultural communication, it applicable to every situation of interpersonal communication. According to him, people in every interpersonal communication develop impressions with intention of developing particular impacts on the other person. According Cornelissen (2004), Identity management theory explains the behavior of every individual in every situation. The way an individual manages his/her identity changes with every situation he/she faces. Orbe and Harris (2008) pointed out that an individual facework is influenced by the interaction he/she has with other people. Facework involves perceiving other peoples’ view of your and creating a face that you would like other people to see. A person may be experiencing a difficult situation and decide to show a positive trait through happiness, optimism, and by being funny. He/she can decide to express positive characteristics, as he/she does not like others to identify him/her as a negative person. Imahori and Cupach pointed to this idea in their theory of identity management. Orbe and Harris (2008) claimed that people adopt communication behaviors to influence the perception of others on them. They pointed out that people adopt particular communication behaviors because of the need to become active citizens, seek help, or maintain their authority. Eagly et al (2004) related the behavior of a person attempting to manage an impression to a theatrical performance. Cornelissen (2004) added that an individual is an actor performing for people or audience surrounding him/her. Implicit personality theory point out that the specific biases and patterns that an individual utilizes in forming impressions are based on inadequacy of information that particular person have about unfamiliar person. Even thought there are impressions, which are context dependent, people usually exhibit particular tendencies when creating impressions across various situations. Every person creates an impression in his/her unique way. Domenici and Littlejohn (2006) described social perception as usually automated. They pointed out that a person is able to have automatic or implicit thought processes without his/her knowledge. A person can create an impression after making observation of a particular situation and then referring to expected behavior in that particular situation without his/her knowledge. When creating an impression an individual does not consider every observed feature equally. An observer regards some feature more than he/she regards other features. There are highly influential features that have strong effects on an impression and less influential features that have small influence on the impression. A person can thus form impressions of an intelligent, industrious, skilful, determined, warm, practical, cautious, and a practical person even though they may not have these characteristics. Since a person meets and wants different people in his/her lives, to view him/her differently, he/she usually presents diverse faces to different people. A person would act different in front of a parent as he/she would act in front of a professor. A person can be more willing to present his/her vulnerability to a parent than to a professor. He/she would portray a strong self to a professor because he/she considers him/she as a role model. There is nothing wrong with a presentation of diverse faces to different people. People are complex as they have several identities that change as they interact with others. They have different identities that fit different situations. The type of an identity presented is usually inspired by the image or face that an individual would want others to see. For instance, a person can be one thing to his parents but another to his friends. His friends may consider him indiscipline, but the parents might consider the same man a discipline son. An identification of a person character is in what he/she communicated to the people around him. The discussion of these people points to the fact that communication of the identity of a person is done in every interpersonal communication. Through interpersonal communication, a person can portray himself/herself as an active citizen, a happy person, a skillful worker, and many more. The realization of these impressions is in verbal or nonverbal communication. Through facial expressions, tonal variation, and others, an individual can toss out his/her personal identity or the way he/she want to be recognized by other people. Due to the several interpersonal communications that we engage in as individuals, there are many examples of expressions of identities in communication between two or more person. However, this paper uses only three examples to justify and elaborate more on the existence of expression of identity in interpersonal communications. BBC Program British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television usually airs interviews of people in different situations. On late April 2014, they aired interviews of two women each diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. One woman by the name Sara Ray was a citizen of the United Kingdom while the other, named Betty Naiga was from Nestled village in Uganda. The interviews had been filmed separately, and during the broadcast, Naiga’s interview came first. The intention of the broadcast was to make governments and viewers to understand the importance of palliative care for terminally ill persons. Betty Naiga talked about the agony; breast cancer brought to her. She talked about how her poverty deprived her of the ability or capacity to seek for modern medical help. She also talked of how she had to rely on traditional medicine before a community volunteer gave her palliative care. Throughout the interview, Naiga clearly expressed her difficulties. The interview inspired so much sympathy in most people as the pain was so excessive. With no medical help, the women had to contend herself with the fact that she had to die any time. Her family and community members did not understand the disease well. Therefore, most of them avoided her. Sara Ray on her interview expressed herself differently. She was jubilant despite her terminal cancer. She talked of her happiness with life. In one particular point, she brought some of her son’s photos and joked of the fact that she will leave him soon. Sara Ray was so happy with life even though the sickness had not gone away. She had accepted that she will die soon, but she had resolved to enjoy her last days. The palliative care that she regularly received had helped changed her perception of death. She had accepted death as part of life. Her image and expression portrayed a health person. Perceiving anything wrong with her was difficult. She had decided to see fun on anything including the disease and death. Justification of the Existence of Identity in Interpersonal Communication Betty Naiga and Sara Ray were in the same situation. Each one of them was experiencing the pain and was facing death. However, they expressed themselves differently. I expected Sara Ray to be emotional as Naiga but she was so happy with everything. Ray’s face was extremely positive. She talked about her happiness and her intention to be happy until her last day on earth. As mention earlier, facework entails understanding other people’s view on your face and modifying to create an impression that you would like them to see in you. Sara Ray did this perfectly. Her facial expressions showed her happiness. She smiled almost throughout the interview. She made fun of death. The implicit personality theory points out that there are context-specific characteristics. People, therefore, tend to identify an expected behavior for a particular situation. Because I knew that Ray was facing death, I expected her to be sad and regretful. However, because of her personality during the interview, I identified that she possesses characteristics like a sense of humor, friendliness, and positive attitude. I did not think that she was a pessimistic and depressed person because she did not express the traits during the program. Instead, I saw her as an optimistic person. On her part, Betty Naiga was so unhappy with her situation. She had lived with the disease without any modern medication until it was almost late. She was thus not hopeful of anything. She was so sad of her situation because she could not think of leaving her young children. Unlike Ray, she was sad that she was soon going to leave her children. Even though, the expressions of her are expected as per the implicit personality theory, they portray her traits. After the program, I had identified her as pessimistic and a depressed woman. Facebook Posts of University Students Many University students see alcohol drinking as socially desirable. Therefore, most of them usually use their Monday posts on Facebook to express to their peers the high amount of alcohol that they consumed over the weekend. They use the Facebook to portray a positive face to their peers. Even though, they usually exaggerate, their posts portray their identities. They show that these students are boastful, outgoing, alcohol drinkers, and extravagant. Personal Experiences I have engaged in several interpersonal communications. In all the interpersonal communications that I have entered, my identity or the other person’s identity can be perceived. At grade six, my classmates awarded me together with my teacher an opportunity to represent the class in a particular Fathers’ day. I was given the task to talk on behalf of my class. During that time, I was a little bit shy, and I could not usually stand in front of many people. The situation was a bit challenging as I was to talk in front of over forty people. In one hand, I had a burden to represent my class professionally and in another, I had my fears. I was forced to overcome my fears because according to my teacher I was picked because of my abilities. On Fathers day, I presented myself clearly and confidently. My father, class teacher, and many of my classmates were surprised by my presentation. In my appearance as a class representative, I presented a different face from the one my closest friends had been accustomed to. I was able to present a positive face, which I knew my audience, which included my teacher expected. Fortunately, I was able to go beyond their expectations. In the presentation, I portrayed myself as a confident, articulate, and a social student. I did not represent the class fearfully. I adapted myself to the situation and talked as I seen my teacher do. According to George H. Mead’s Sociological theory, an individual adopts his/her characteristics from experience. A person performs as a co-actor in a similar situation. I was able to express the idea of this theory in my presentation. Even though I perceived myself as a shy person, I was able to present a different identity in my facial work and verbal communication. Nobody noticed I was a shy individual. I received many congratulations after the end of the ceremony. Conclusion A person portrays his/her identity in an interpersonal communication. In the BBC’s program, the identities of Betty Naiga and Sara Ray were quite different. Even though, they shared a common problem, they had different identities, which they presented in the program. Naiga presented a negative face while Ray presented a positive one. They way the communicated gave them different identities. Naiga presented herself as a depressed woman while Ray portrayed her happiness. Therefore, they have different identities. Naiga is pessimistic while Ray is optimistic. In the same way, the way I presented myself and the way most University Student posted on Mondays portray certain identities. My presentation gave me the nature of a skillful communicator and a self-confident student while the University students’ posts showed the identities of those who posted as social and boastful people. Therefore, people portray their identities in their interpersonal communications. References Cornelissen, J. (2004). Corporate communications: Theory and practice. London: SAGE Publications. Domenici, K., & Littlejohn, S. W. (2006). Facework: Bridging theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. Eagly, A. H., Baron, R. M., Hamilton, V. L., & Kelman, H. C. (2004). The social psychology of group identity and social conflict: Theory, application, and practice. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Miles, J. A. (2012). Management and organization theory: A Jossey-Bass reader. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass. Orbe, M. P., & Harris, T. M. (2008). Interracial communication: Theory into practice. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications. Read More