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Abigail Marshall COM 263 Professor Ventura 9/10/2020 Italian Cultural Identity The Italian people have long been admired for their distinctive culture and contributions to most western cultures. Descended from the Roman Empire, Italian food, architecture, technology, language, and so much more has been evolved over thousands of years into what it is today. Italian culture identity is expressed through the behaviors and communication styles of its people and is represented both accurately and inaccurately, depending on the media outlet, having a profound impact on how other cultures perceive them. According to their journal entry in “Frontiers in Psychology”, Pierluigi Diotaiuti, Giuseppe Valente, Stefania Mancone, & Angela Grambone found that though communication styles are coherent with each person’s own fundamental personalities, communication styles can be learned (2020). This is helpful for those who have to interact with others within a culture that is foreign to their own, though they will find difficulty shaking their own culturally-influenced communication styles. In order to understand a culture as a whole, yes, certain assumptions of attribution sometimes need to be made. But any person seeking to truly understand another culture must also not make over-generalizations and let a few people represent a culture as a whole. An American wouldn’t ask a few people from Des Moines, Iowa to represent the culture of the entire United States, so no person should expect a few people from, say, Venice, to represent the entirety of Italian culture.

There are many aspects of Italian culture that make up the experience of being a part of this group, such as communication, values, pastimes, etc. According to D.E. Williams and P.C. Hughes, not only is nonverbal communication functional to express emotion, exert power, establish relationship status, etc., it can be incredibly confounding when used in extracultural contexts (2005). For example, the use of touch can reinforce relation to another person. Williams & Hughes found that women kept closer touch than men and that cultures such as Italy used touch much more than other cultures like Russia. The media may not have the powers of mind-control, but it can tell us what to think and cast any given topic, event, or person in a specific light. Not only in America is this highly prevalent, but in Italy as well. M. Bruno writes about how the symbols and framing the media uses to cover the topic of Italian immigration has effectively caused the general audiences to see immigrants as a negative force. Our views in America are similarly impacted by the media’s input. Not only in how we see immigrants, but for better or worse, in how we see even Italians. Most European cultures don’t have an overwhelmingly negative stigma associated with them in the United States, and Italy is no exception. When thinking of Italian people, the first words that come to mind are pasta, garlic bread, big families, and movies full of mafia members and characters who use large hand gestures, such as “The Godfather”. Most Italians the average person meets will not necessarily carry these characteristics. Media channels and modern social platforms being a mostly a-synchronous variety of platforms allows for perceptions to go rather unchallenged. For example, a person can speak with an Italian person in writing and still imagine that person to speak with large hand gestures and have pasta on the stove without having that notion challenged.

It can be difficult to get to know and understand a culture that is not one’s own without actually coming in regular contact with people from that culture. Even one person may give an inaccurate representation of an entire culture. Each macro culture especially, is host to a plethora of different personality types, language differences, relational roles, communication patterns, and values. Cultural identity is expresses through such things and though the media outlets may have a large say in how people generally perceive other cultures, these perceptions are frequently inaccurate or overgeneralized. It is up to each person to meet other cultures with an open mind to understand others.

References Bruno, M. (2016). Media Representations of Immigrants in Italy: Framing Real and Symbolic Borders, REMHU: Revista Interdisciplinar Da Mobilidade Humana, 24(46), 45–58. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1590/1980-85852503880004604 Grechi, G. (2019). Exhibiting Transnational Identities and Belongings: Italian Culture beyond Borders. Italian Studies, 74(4), 386–391. Italian embassy to host meet on cultural identity and cross-cultural encounters. (2019). The Nation - Thailand. Neuliep. W. J. (2018). Intercultural communications. In Grand Canyon University (Ed.). Intercultural communication: A contextual approach. Retrieved by https://viewer.gcu.edu/tWEX4r Pierluigi Diotaiuti, Giuseppe Valente, Stefania Mancone, & Angela Grambone. (2020). Psychometric Properties and a Preliminary Validation Study of the Italian Brief Version of the Communication Styles Inventory (CSI-B/I). Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01421 Williams, D. E., & Hughes, P. C. (2005). Nonverbal communication in Italy: An analysis of interpersonal touch, body position, eye contact, and seating behaviors. North Dakota Journal of Speech & Theatre, 18, 17–24....