Identifying Your Culture

When a culture is identified, one would think of a society or group in which many or all people live and think in the same way. Culture distinguishes one human group from another. In The Encarta Reference Library, it explains the characteristics of culture is based on symbols and signs referring to the understanding of ideas, objects, feelings or behaviors, and the ability to communicate with others using language. People in the same society share common behaviors and ways of thinking through culture. Culture is learned; it’s shared. While many people biologically inherit many physical traits and behavioral instincts, culture is socially inherited. Culture is adaptive. People use culture to be flexible and quickly adjust to changes in the world around them.

Identity is who you are within a culture. Each person possesses different characteristics that give them their own identity. The word identity is dealing with the self and not a group although; a cultural group can also have certain identities. For instance, one can be identified by race, language, or even features.

In the poem, Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question by Diane Burns (Meyer p.741), the speaker struggles for her own identity and not that of her culture. I was able to sense the tone of frustration in the speaker’s voice. It seems as if Burns was trying to show how frustrating it may be for someone to be continuously identified or stereotyped by their physical or cultural differences. In the end the speaker states “This ain’t no stoic look. This is my face.” With that being said, I felt Burn was simply stating: this is who I am.

The short story, Baglady by Antonia S. Byatt, portrayed a woman that didn’t seem to be too happy with her identity or her cultural background. The woman, also known as the character Daphne Gulver-Robinson was depicted to be an ordinary woman. She decided to go on this trip with her husband, which included people of what may be known as a “prim and proper” person. Their first stop was the Good Fortune Mall. I believe this mall signified social status. “Lifts that say they are going down go only up” (Byatt p. 504), in my opinion, this line represented Daphne wanting to live up to the social status of the people included in her trip. Throughout the story, Byatt did very well in portraying how simple it is for one to lose themself in the process of getting caught up in another person’s way of life. Byatt shows how Daphne ends up looking for her belongings, but ultimately loses them all trying to get back down to ground level. The loss of her belongings in that matter signifies Daphne losing herself.