Culture and Communication: Building a Collective Identity

This article discusses the role of communication in building culture and a collective identity. It explores the common functions of culture and how it can be built based on social units and religious affiliations. The article also highlights the differences between cultures and the role of communication in establishing movements and connecting people from different cultural alignments.

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Ideally, culture is regarded to be a complex compilation of knowledge, language, rules,
rituals, folklore, beliefs, lifestyle, habits, attitudes as well as customs that are interconnected and,
therefore, asserts a collective identity to a particular group of people at a precise point in time. In
this light, all social units tend to develop a culture; even in two-person relationship culture is
likely to evolve with time. Moreover, groups as well have the ability to build a culture which is
composed of various rules, rituals, and customs. Consequently, human relations have always
been built around diverse cultural beliefs as well as practices. While multiple people have had
different opinions on the issue of culture, people have continued to communicate across cultures
more than ever in the modern world, influenced by contemporary technological advancement.
While defining the aspect of culture, it is important to understand that each culture is
unique. Nonetheless, all cultures in society tend to share some common functions. Notably, this
means that culture can be developed based on the available social units (Joshi, 2018). Some
common functionality of culture based on the social class include the creation of a context
particularly for interaction through communication, providing the basis for a common interest or
rather identity among a particular social class, and connecting individuals to each other.
Furthermore, culture can be build based on a particular religious affiliation or among
people who share common religious beliefs (Joshi, 2018). To understand how culture can be
built within a specific religion it is essential to view culture regarding sociocultural systems.
When culture is viewed in terms of religion, then it refers to the totality of human existence in
the world. In this light, culture can be expressed in many ways depending on the people who are
involved in it.

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While communication has played a huge role in connecting people of different cultures
together, there are still differences among diverse cultural heritage. For instance, as an American
citizen, there are differences between my culture and the one China people practice (Dhanesh &
Sriramesh, 2018). One apparent difference between my culture and that of Chinese concerns the
aspect of privacy (Joshi, 2018). In this light, the Chinese people often talk about topics such as
marital status, ages, and income whereas the Americans consider such topics to be annoying.
Moreover, Chinese cultures treat their elders’ autonomous while older Americans seldom live
with their children.
The role that communication plays in developing a particular culture is considered to be
involved and one that is intimate. Virtually all cultures are created through communication since
communication is a means of all human interaction through which cultural characteristics are
created and shared in the society.
Communication has hugely helped in the establishment of various cultures or rather
group of people who have similar interests or ideology. For instance, communication has helped
in the formations of various movements such as the disability right movements in the
contemporary society (Joshi, 2018). In essence, technology has played its huge share of support
to this movements and therefore connecting such people from various cultural alignments.
Disability rights movement is made up of various organizations of disability activists across the
globe.
In a nutshell, it is clear that culture can be defined in different ways depending on the
interests. Culture has been a long-lasting ideology that has been transitioned especially with the
modern technology and certainly advanced means of communication. The advanced technology

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has connected people from all walks of lives and in different geographical locations thus creating
the aspect of cross-cultural interactions.

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References
Dhanesh, G. S., & Sriramesh, K. (2018). Culture and crisis communication: Nestle India's Maggi
noodles case. Journal of International Management, 24(3), 204-214.
Joshi, S. G. (2018). Branding and Communication Strategies in Healthcare Organizations: An
Indian Study. In Holistic Approaches to Brand Culture and Communication Across
Industries (pp. 227-239). IGI Global.