Importance Of Self-Concept in communication

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Personal identity and social identity are two main domains that determine quality of interpersonal and intercultural communication process. First and foremost the importance lies in what one thinks of himself or herself, and than how this persons views himself or herself as a part of society. These two domains determine peoples self-concept and also how well one is able to blend in with an external environment in which they live.

Most people, from their birth and likely to the last day of their life, have one very important subconsciously asked question in their mind who am I.

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It is a question of self-concept. How we come up with an answer to this question has various degrees of variation for each person, but very often this question in part is being answered for us by the hints which others give to us. Our own ability to compare ourselves to others puts things in perspective as well. Staring at very young age, even before person is able to think about the things such as who am I, other people start labeling that person by certain qualities and descriptions.

Our physical qualities, such as bodily features in part predetermine our personal identity. Parents give boy or girl names, which suggests their gender. Environment in which we live influences our concept of who we are. There are strong forces which tell us what is the right way of doing things and what degree of freedom we have in determining of who we are. This is explained by cultural scholars as power distance theory, which states in different cultures people have various degrees of freedom to decide on what is acceptable for him or her.

As far as I can remember I know that I always had one important question in my mind, which was who am I right now and what am I going to be when I grow up. I remember writing small essay if first years of my school trying to explain somewhat bothering question of who I want to be when I grow up. I was basically looking around and thinking what was interesting and important. I determined some major things about myself based on my personal appearance, and based on the things that I took for granted which were told to me by people around me, such as my parents and my peers. Now I was faced with making some conscious decisions about the things that I had some control of. The older I was becoming, the more controllable things became part of my decision making process. I was more and more in control of saying to myself who I was. Still internalization of ideas of other people greatly influenced my own ideas about the existence and self-concept. Some of the primary factors that played major role in determination of self-concept were cultural influences, ethnicity, gender, and my personal trends, which were adopted by me from people around me.

In my communication experience with my e-mail partner, although many things were not being clearly spelled out, I was instantly able to pick-up important aspects of my pals dimensions of self-concept. I could tell, even just by stile of writing that I was communication with confident person, who was willing to explore uncharted territories in communication process. Starting first conversation that we had via e-mail we both stated sending messages about each others personal self-conceptions. We were willing to share things that were valued and important to us as individuals, what was acceptable or unacceptable, favorable and unfavorable, what were the things that we thought that were right. Of course those things were primarily self-centric, were my partner and I had tendency to put our own qualities of self-concept over our counterparts qualities. We started to compare ourselves one to another on how similar we were. Surprisingly enough although we were living in same part of the world we probably had 90 of variation of how we viewed ourselves as a person. This helped be to look beyond my selfs usual framework, and made me able to evaluate myself once again, but from different perspective. I realized that who I am was something that was learned, and there are endless possibilities of what I am able to become if I had desire to do it. I realized that people are not limited to what they were told to be like since they were children, and that their personal identity has room for liquidity and change. This concept has strong connections to personal open mind ness and ability to adjust and adapt to various situations in life.

Besides personal identity perspective, social identity perspective plays major role in persons life. It goes beyond the question of who am I, and addressed future question of who am I in this world. In other words how do I fit-in in the bigger scheme of things. It addresses questions such as how important is out environment to me in order to have pleasant existence. One of the worst feelings many people describe is the feeling of being lonely and secluded. People who spend long time by themselves in prison cells without social interaction loose their sense of being part of the humanity. People need others to be able to live meaningful life. All of us are part of the humanity, but we also all divide and subdivide into smaller social groups. Gender, culture, ethnicity, social status, professions, lifestyles are variation dimensions which influence our perception of the world and formulate our norms of behavior.

My e-mail partner and I had no problem in finding categories in which we were able to put ourselves in order to be able to describe ourselves. Our racial background, places of our living past, religion, ethnicity, gender, past experiences, norms, values, sexual orientations, hobbies, preferences, were the guidelines we were using in order to try to describe our culture. Everyone is unique in combination of every one of those perspectives. Because of this variations and differences we are not always finding balance for mindful and effective intercultural communications. People tend to be naturally narrow-minded, and prefer to be more willing to communicate with people who are more similar to them. We socially categorize others and constantly compare them to ourselves in the process of intercultural communication. Out of this come out such a phenomenon as ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, and racism. In order to be mindful intercultural communicators we need to realize that those tendencies exist in all of us in some degree. Changing our habitual default presumptions also changes the quality of our communications and the notion of social identity.

I remember when not so long ago I stepped out of an airplane into new country and new environment. Eight years ago my family and I mover form country of Belarus, in Western Europe to United States. From day one to this day I am experiencing culture shock which in many ways have open my eyes onto importance that culture plays in our lives. Our culture clearly dictates what is ok and not ok in respect how the peoples lives should be lived. I left one form of life behind in the country where I was born and raised, and started new life here in US. During this experience I am not only was able to learn about different cultures, I was also able to learn many things about myself which I could not see before. Culture shock served as an eye opener about my own ethnocentric tendencies and prejudices. For me it wasnt a choice, I was forced to adjust and adapt to the new environments. I had no choice, but to step out of my ingrained self and consider the fact that others have a lot to offer as well. I had not group identity for a while, what I thought was right no longer existed in my life, so the only thing was to do was to move on and make the best out of it. My personal experience is a prime example of the fact that everyone is able to contradict his or hers personal shortcoming and become better intercultural communicator by being more open-minded about those who are not alike. More so people should purposely but themselves into uncomfortable situations, where the healthy type of conflict might occur between members of different cultures. No matter how rough the ages can be between two surfaces, it they are rubbed against each other for long enough, the roughness will disappear and rub off. Same principle applies to our communicational differences.

It is clear that there is no single formula that can be used to solve all communication problems. Important thing is for all of us to be able to become an effective communicator we need to change our usual attitudes. We need to stop taking for granted all the things that we got used to and become an active members of social change. I is not only important to be mindful communicators ourselves, we also need to inform other of the importance to be able to get along in our everyday life. Social change does not happen over night, but it does happen. Everyone needs to make an effort on their part to be able to experience major changes during our lifetime.