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| Communion at the Newman Center |
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| Newman Center Community Room |
In Intercultural
Communication in Contexts, Martin and Nakayama defines personal identity as
“the sum of all our identities,” or “who we think we are” (Martin &
Nakayama, 2013, p. 205). Obviously, a
number of factors contribute to one’s personal identity, including gender, age,
class, ethnicity, and religion. In my focus
on the student Catholic community at UNL, I will be looking into the
contribution of religious identity to an overall personal identity.
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| Newman Center Chapel |
As we go through our day to day routines, the various
parts that make up our personal identities influence every choice we make. We value these aspects of our identity, and
we want to make sure that others acknowledge or at least recognize them. To that end, as we interact with others, we
reinforce our desired identity in a process that Martin and Nakayama call “Identity
negotiation theory” (Martin & Nakayama, 2013, p. 174). We can do this by wearing certain clothes,
attending certain events, or even eating certain foods. There is a back and forth of us trying to
convey our own identity while receiving messages of others’ identities in every
interaction.
Religious identity can be interesting. With the exception of some religions, we can’t
automatically tell somebody’s religious identity by looking at them. Sometimes, “everyday actions may not invoke
religious identity” (Martin & Nakayama, 2013, p. 199). This means that, if we are to convey a
religious identity, we may need to be more conscious of it as we go about the
routine. It is my goal to examine this
identity negotiation among student Catholics, whose faith is often not outwardly
obvious. I will accomplish this in two
phases: I will observe and learn about
the Catholic faith itself, and then I will collect data through interviews
about how people use their identity as a Catholic in their interactions when
not at mass—when their religious identity is coming into contact with a
multitude of challenges and indifference alike.
My own religious identity is certainly not something
that I wear on my sleeve. I enact this
identity more through action and personal reflection. With religion being such a hot subject in
many discussions (especially among passionate college students), negotiating
that part of my identity poses a unique struggle with the day to day. This is what motivates me to look at student
Catholics; as a Baptist, my belief system is different on some key points, and
I’m interested in finding out how that affects a person’s identity.
I will be interviewing three people in the course of
my studies: one who identifies as
Catholic but is not heavily involved with the student organization
HuskerCatholic, one who is heavily involved with HuskerCatholic, and someone in
a position of leadership at HuskerCatholic.
Having a student organization readily available can make a world of
difference in negotiating one’s religious (or any) identity, and I’m hoping
that my data will shed some light on whether having a community of like-minded
individuals is beneficial. I would like
to answer the following question: we openly
negotiate our identities as student just by walking across campus, but how do
we negotiate our religious identities at the same time?
References
Martin, J.N., &
Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th
ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.
Resources
HuskerCatholic Web Site: http://www.huskercatholic.org/
Identity Negotiation Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_negotiation
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