Intercultural Interview Paper

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

For first generation immigrants in North America, acceptance into the mainstream society requires them to “learn or improve their English language skills and adapt to its cultural practices” (Liu 1). Liu believes second generation immigrants are better equipped to accomplish this because they are either “born in the host country or migrated at a young age” (1). When Nao’s family moved to Sunnyvale, Nao learned English quickly and internalized American values and norms. Nao was young and had “no memory of Japan from when [she] was a baby” (43), which explains her rapid adjustment to America. Unlike her parents, Nao never had a

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

Whether it is gender, sexuality, religion, race, ethnicity or nationality people’s self-concept is structured around multiple identifiers. Depending on context some identifiers are more predominant than others, however, these identities enable people the ability to understand and differentiate themselves from others. While all identities are important, a crucial dimension of identity often dismissed as a major contributor to self-individuality is national identity (Baldwin, 157). Partaking in a culture, society or community for a length of time the recognition of nationalism begins to diminish. The constant participation of a nationality becomes the “norm” and it is not until withdrawn from a nation that the acknowledgement of national identity occurs. Speaking from personal experience, my national identity had never been as dominant than my time spent studying abroad in the London. While I identified as an American, I never felt American until I came overseas. Customs, language, and practices were foreign to me and fitting into the culture was a learning process. In order to feel as though I belong somewhere in this new community, I found security in identifying with and as an American. Simply, I developed an imagined community to reconnect with my home country. When place in situations where exclusion from people’s nation occurs finding comradeship through imagined communities reproduces the sense of belonging, but also alter one’s self-understanding by unveiling an

During the 1780s, a new wave of immigration was surging in America and because of the growing number of immigrants coming to America is was often referred to as a melting pot. The phrase is a metaphor used to describe the relation between different cultures collaborating together to form one. “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua, discuss the relationship between being a child of an immigrant and being an immigrant oneself. Each woman described in the essays belong in different ways when living in America. Where there are but not limited too, three ways to belong. One way to being emerging oneself to a culture. Another is rejecting it to learn and practice their home countries traditions and the last one is extracting bits and pieces of both cultures to produce one 's sense of values and traditions. Immigrants have been coming to America for hundreds of years, and those immigrants face many obstacles and challenges. One being deciding to accept the United States traditions and language or to continue celebrating their traditions that they commemorate as children. The way an immigrant chooses to conform, it will change how they identify themselves.

Nowadays, with the globalization process, people are closer to get to know new languages and cultures because they can access more easily to a big variety of information all around the world. Being close to information is crucial in the languages’ world since people are already involved and contextualized in it, for instance; English is the Lingua Franca; it is everywhere: The Internet, books, advertisement, films and the like. In this understanding, English learning has become a necessity for some countries, especially those which are influenced politically, socially or even ideologically by English-speaking countries. Nonetheless, regarding languages, identity and speaker’s identity, a social, cognitive phenomenon is becoming polemical in many Spanish-speaking countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and also in North America, particularly in states with large Hispanic communities settled down; it is known as Spanglish.

Individuals are made up of multiple factors, meaning their identity remains diverse and undefined. Although one’s homeland is a constant influence, it doesn’t always deliver the whole story. For Anzaldua, although growing up in Texas, she never departed from her Mexican roots. With a Mexican heritage, she has found it to be more difficult than ever to find acceptance, and the true meaning of home. She recognizes the impact her culture has on her, along with the barriers it brings. However, Anzaldua considers language and culture to be inseparable, with language suffering variations as the culture changes. She presents the term “linguistic terrorism” to further emphasize on extremely valuable points such as imperialism and self esteem affecting identity formation. This attack on the individual and their form of expression can be belittling, regardless of whether it’s with the intent of censure or by lack of self esteem.

The influx of foreign people into political territory alters face, shape, and form. Immigrants bring along with them their native tongue and native character, which explains how the mass movement of humans across the world directly affects the destination’s social identity, language, and demographic.

The study will explore language, immigration, and ethnicity by addressing the question “what role does language have in the ethnic identities of second-generation immigrants in English-speaking countries?” This will be approached both in terms of investigating the personal significance these languages have in individuals’ own conceptions of their ethnic identities, and by examining secondary themes of their impact on interpersonal relationships and experiences of language acquisition. While the study will be guided by a focus on these main areas, it will be primarily exploratory in nature.

There is great plasticity in the self perception and identity of immigrants and even more so in their offspring. The memoir, The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, does a good job in highlighting this statement. Her memoir shows the struggle of the older generation to adapt to American culture after migrating, it shows how the second generation comes to terms with their dual identity, and how their unique perceptions emphasize the gap between the two generations. Thesis tying identity crisis and the gap

This study explores the relationship between bilingualism and identity formation. For this reason, I turn specifically to kikokushijo, and the review of research on those people, the concept of identity, the relationship of identity and language, interrelation of language and social context, and the relation of identities, languages and cultures as my theoretical framework.

As Bucholtz and Hall (2004) explain, language is the most flexible and pervasive symbolic resource for the cultural reproduction of identity. The language ideology of English has embedded its power throughout the educational system and has silently forced second-language speakers adhere to the English norm and to change their cultural identity in the process (Fairclough, 2001; Norton, 2000). The preference of English in school and at home deprives children of their cultural identity and forces them to develop a borderline mainstream

For Decades, developing a distinctive identity in one’s heritage culture has been acknowledged as a crucial task for immigrant’s psychological well-beings. Second generation’s strong link to own heritage develops intercultural awareness, proactive coping with discrimination and hardship (Telzer, Yuen, Gonzales & Fuligni, 2016), positive relations in individual’s well-being and positive sense of self (Rivas-Drake, Hughes & Way, 2007). Furthermore, retention of parent's traditional values and performing the culture (i.e., speaking the language) appears to associate with more positive family relationship (Smokowski, Rose & Bacallao, 2008) especially if there are kin who remains monolingual and still holds norms and values of the birth nation (Min, 2006). Lastly, according to developmental

In the story, ‘Mother Tongue’, Amy Tan accurately describes the struggle and pain one goes through living in a foreign land and having a mother tongue that is not English. It is a story that many immigrants and expats,

According to identity negotiation theory, it is possible for people to retain their original identities while also modifying them in response to exposure to the host culture (Swann & Bosson, p. 170). As I embraced the exposure to these new norms, I continued to remain true to myself and carry my same core values. So as time went on I realized I didn’t need to choose one or the other. I wouldn’t deny my Americanism, but I would try my best to adopt Sevillano ways of life, like the slow pace and beauty of the