Identity and Crisis

             “The quality of communication is linked to the quality of life.” Kory Floyd made this statement in his book Interpersonal Communication, and it is true in every way. It helps us meet our day-to-day physical, spiritual, emotional and relational needs. However communication also helps us define who we are ourselves, and the people around us. The concept of who we are is called identity, and can be preserved in three different ways (Martin & Nakayama, 2013, p.170). These three perspectives are through Social Science, Interpretive, and Critical. The Social Science perspective is one that mostly comes from our own creation. It is formed through our experiences and how we view our own individuality, our family, our connectedness to a higher power spiritually, etc. Next, Interpretive perspective is basically the opposite of Social Science. The perspective is built on how are seen, ascription, and how we want to be seen, avowal, by others (Martin & Nakayama, 2013, p.174). Confliction may occur between the two, however these are what solidify the perspective. Lastly we have the Critical Perspective. Economics, history, politics, and discourse are four main topics that attribute to the formation of this perspective (Martin & Nakayama, 2013, p.175). Critical Perspective deals with how our society helps develop who we are and how we communicate.

                  Perspectives do not limit the complexity in the process of creating identity. There is a massive selection of groups that an individual can identify with, whether that is through gender identity, age identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, or regional identity. The list goes on and on. With a large selection of identities comes even more opposite sides of the spectrums in each category, in which the perspective can differentiate. For example, if you believe your spiritual identity is Muslim the people surrounding you in this group may bring positivity to your Interpretive perspective. However if you live in the United States where citizens were greatly affected by 9/11 this may cause prejudice attitudes and negativity to your Critical perspective. Using a current example, the conflict in Syria depicts many different identity groups that are bringing negativity to the nation, including displacement, rape, and death of it’s civilians.

                  Without knowing much about the details of the issue that has risen to such detrimental causalities in Syria I definitely had to do my research. After reading the textbook, I found myself finding different identity groups that have blown so far out of proportion that it has caused a thriving country to crumble. Religious identity being the most obvious, different sub-sections of the Arab religion particularly the Sunni Arabs that hold the majority, are being governed and dictated by the relentless Alawite Arabs (Fisher, 2013). This depicts that even when groups of people obtain the same national identity, when having another identity that places you on opposite sides of the spectrum there can still be major disagreements. I personally found that age identity had the worst role in this midst of the warfare… It plays little to no role at all. There is no age consideration or discrimination, innocent children are being raped, abused and killed just as the adults are. Of the 2 million Syrians that have become refugees, half are children (Memmott, 2013). The Critical perspective to the travesty is that it just is how it is.

                  

                 In order for this to end the interpersonal communication between Syria, the United States, and the world need to seriously be improved in a positive manner by working with different identity groups to create peace. Religions like Christians and Arabs, nations like Russia and the rest of the UN, political authority like democracy and dictatorship. This is however, in hopes that there can be some kind of middle ground between them. Although there is no finish line in site it is clear real interpersonal communication needs to be corrected and spoken louder, because after all the quality of communication is liked to quality of life. 

References

Fisher, M.  (2013).  9 Questions About Syria you were too Embarrassed to Ask.  The Washington Post.  Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/29/9-questions-about-syria-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/

Floyd, K. (2011). Intercultural Communication (2nd ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill. 

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill. 

Memmott, M. (2013, September 3).  2 Million Syrians Are Now Refugees and More are ‘On the Way’.  Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/03/218471534/2-million-syrians-are-now-refugees-and-more-are-on-the-way