Culture:
Chapter 3 describes culture as
“learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people.” This
in context to my topic, Republicans, explains a lot. Being a Republican is completely built of a
set of shared attitudes, beliefs and behaviors with the larger group. While not every person agrees on each thing
completely in the Republican party, they overall have the same attitudes on
political, religious and moral topics.
Through doing this assignment I have found that these attitudes and
beliefs are something that individuals are usually born into. What their parents believed, they in turn
grew up to feel the same way, thus having a set of learned patterns. I chose this topic because, I consider myself
to be a Democrat, and I am less than a year away from marrying a
Republican. I felt that this was a
perfect chance to find out more about the culture of this political party and
maybe learn more about what part it plays in not just his life but in others lives.
Intercultural
Concept:
Cultural spaces,
from chapter 7. Cultural space is
explained as “the social and cultural contexts in which our identity forms-
where we grow up and where we live” (Martin and Nakayama, 2013, pg 274). I chose this concept because cultural space
has a lot to do with how a person becomes who they are. A persons political affiliation can be a
large part of their identity, so what they consider their cultural space
impacts that part of them. I see this
now, after conducting interviews with two Republicans. They are both a product of their
surroundings, even while interviewing one student, Jim, he admitted that he was
in fact a product of what he was raised in, with everyone he knows being
Republican and being rather religious as well. Along with that is the fact that
we are living in a Red state. Almost everyone I know is a republican, besides
my immediate family that is, but all of my friends and their parents are
registered Republicans.
Findings:
Nebraska is a Republican states, so finding a culture for
Republicans was not hard to do According to the secretary of states
website, during the 2012 election 1,164,166 people were registered to vote in
Nebraska with 558,170 being registered Republicans (http://www.sos.ne.gov/elec/prev_elec/). A majority of my
friends consider themselves part of the Republican party, mostly listening to
everything their parents had said growing up and then attempting to form their
own opinions along the way. The two
people I interviewed for my study of the Republican culture were Tony Cavalieri
and Jim Ficenec. Both men consider
themselves to feel strongly for the Republican party, and both are political
science majors, Tony and UNL and Jim and UNO.
After talking with both of these young Republicans I found a few
themes. One being that Republicans are
very confident about their political affiliation to the party, family has a
large part in how they chose a political party, and that Republicans are a minority
in Nebraska public University settings.
 |
| Tony |
One of the themes
I found while interviewing Tony and Jim were that they were both consistently
confident in their choice to vote and belong to the Republican party. From what I have gathered both in interviews
and at the College republican meetings were that Republicans are confident in
their affiliation with the party. When
asked how their experiences in the state of Nebraska were as a Republican and
both replied in a similar way stating that it is great. Jim stated “It is nice to see the local
candidates I support win, though. That is an added benefit to living in
Nebraska.” He said that while he enjoys
the culture that comes with being a Republican he wished others would feel the
same as him. He points out that he often
feels embarrassed when people post things on social media outlets about hating
Obama or ranting about gun laws, “it upsets me to see those individuals give
conservatives a bad reputation.” Jim
says that despite instances like those he is confident in his choice to belong
to the party and has since he was a kid.
The most
interesting theme I found was the connection each person had with politics and
their family. Both Jim and Tony had
early experiences with the Republican party and beliefs. Jim had said he had at one point during the
2004 election debated with another classmate about Bush and his beliefs on
abortion and also talking about his political beliefs with his father. Jim said that his father sat him down and
told him that there were two parties, Republican and Democrat, he was
Republican and thought Clinton was the worst president of all time. Tony as well had a very early experience with
politic, he recalls righting a anti-abortion paper at the young age of 12 for a school assignment. Tony attended a Catholic school for a
majority of his life, and while many time Catholics are associated with the
Democratic party many of their religious beliefs fall into a more conservative
level. Tony also recalls a time where he
and his mother stayed up all night watching the 2000 election updates during
the final tally of votes. He says that this played a huge part in him becoming
so interested in politics as he got older.
When asked who in their family was Republican bother Jim and Tony
replied “Everyone”. I thought this was
interesting, that living in Omaha Nebraska in 2014, not a single family member
changed their opinion or political affiliation.
In the political science course I took last semester one of the major
theories was that association by family is one of the most important aspects in
the decision of political affiliation, so it is no wonder I found this theme in
studying the Republican culture.
 |
| Jim |
The final theme I
found was that both Jim and Tony felt in the minority at their schools, UNO and
UNL. Both claim that in courses where
politics are discussed they usually feel uncomfortable or uneasy when sharing
their conservative beliefs and opinions at a predominantly liberal
university. Being a red state, one
wouldn’t truly think this is the case, but both students said that in a
classroom setting, they are almost always the minority and they feel that in
discussions and they even feel the difference between their professors, who
they consider to be liberal as well.
I attended a
meeting with the college republicans here on campus at UNL. They meet every Wednesday at 7 pm in a small
CBA room. I was very uncomfortable with
the idea of going, mostly because I did not want them to ask who I was or what
I was doing there. I had this idea in my head that it would be some sort of
lecture, led by a kid my age, trying to recruit people into being a
Republican. The meeting I attended was
actually a lot different from that though.
Every week they try to bring a different speaker in, and they often do,
even having several government employees, senators and legislative
employees. This week they had a lobbyist
for a private firm come and speak. A
young female, mother of two, who has worked for a few Republican candidates
before her career led her to her current position. I found this meeting really interesting and
while I did not learn much about the individuals that attended I made several
observations that proved helpful in learning more about the culture. There were more women then men at this
meeting, something I didn’t expect to see.
With that, a young female, a senior at UNL, was leading the
meeting. It seemed as though she was the
one setting up speakers and creating the forum that was the College
Republicans. Each female there was also
wearing some sort of sorority tagged clothing item. I am not sure if this is because sororities
require belonging to clubs or if this was just a strange coincidence.
Bigger Picture:
Being able to
communicate effectively is the only way people with intercultural relationships
can share and learn about one another.
Especially when looking at the topic of the Republican party. Politics can be such a touchy subject, much
like the intercultural relationship of religion or race, one might find themselves
tip toeing around certain topics to avoid discrimination or to avoid causing
any offense to that person. Different
cultures, whether its race, age, gender, location, religion or political
affiliation, are all connected to each other in some way or another, and no one
person is going to be the same. Culture influences communication, while
communication reinforces culture (Martin & Nakayma, 2013). Allowing yourself experience and
communicate in a intercultural relationship or situation can bring so much
knowledge and competence for future communication experiences.
Martin, J.N. & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural
communications in contexts (6th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
VR Statistics Count Report. (2012, October 30). Nebraska
Secretary of State. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.sos.ne.gov/elec/2012/pdf/VR%20Figures.pdf
Tony (2014, April 10th). Personal
interview by M. McLaughlin. Intercultural communication: Tony
Jim (2014, April 12th). Personal
interview by M. McLaughlin. Intercultural communication: Jim
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