Throughout life many people struggle with different issues in life and handle then in different ways. So how do we become the people we are today? How did we get this identity? By doing some reading I came across two articles; one written by George Herbert Mead, “Mind Self and Society” and Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, “Socialization: The Internalization of Society.” Both of these article help define what is identity and how it is developed.
While reading “Socialization: The Internalization of Society” Berger and Luckmann mention primary socialization which is composed of, “significant others are representatives of society and social class, individual’s identity, and generalized other is created that represents a coherent society.” All of these factors occur during the developmental years of childhood. A child is born into a social structure, whether it being lower class or a higher class society. The child absorbs what the parents are feeding him/her. This affects their mood of satisfaction, their views on the world around them, and rebelliousness. Later comes an emotional attachment. With this attachment a child mimics what he/ she sees the parents doing. With this comes out a connection between two elements. For example, “Mummy is angry with me now” to “Mummy is angry with me whenever I spill the soup.” Then follows other family members having a negative attitude towards the split soup. The child connects and links these two elements together and does not spill soup anymore, or at least on purpose.
With the formation of primary socialization, now comes secondary socialization. Secondary socialization divides a socialized individual into parts of the world of society. Primary socialization is so key to the development, due to the fact that it places a child into a category of where he will end up in society, status. Language plays another important factor with secondary socialization. “Language, of course, is the principal vehicle of this ongoing translation process in both directions.” Without language there is no means of communication, therefore no sense of ones self.
In the “Mind Self and Society” Mead discusses how language is essential for the development of self. Lets first discuss how the self and the body are two distinctive organisms. Mead mentioned that, “It is perfectly true that the eye can see the foot, but it does not see the body as a whole.” Take for example a pair of twins, one lives in Orange County, California and the other lives in East LA, California and have never met. Their genetic make up is the same biologically, but their personality differs due to the area they we’re raised in. With society arises the mind. The mind acting upon itself with gestures that later result in actions.
Society plays such an important role with socialization. It helps develop habits and how we perform in our every day lives and most importantly the development of language. Language is a form of speech that is a vocal gesture. “…Communication lies in the fact that it provides a form of behavior in which the organism or the individual may become an object to himself.” The type of communication that is translation to others and to himself. This is where a person is a self and may communicate with himself, hear himself, and knows himself.
Within society come out socialization and one can now identity himself as a self and in society. Language is the key stepping stone to identity and how it is developed over the years and especially during the crucial years during childhood. Knowing identity, is knowing your “self” and place in society.
