Josh Wiedel - American Class Identity: Cultural Reporter

 

What is culture? There is no single answer, but I think it can be generalized as a definition of labels. Culture includes the labels of rituals, people, and language we identify with. For my reporter project, I took the instructors suggestion to investigate American class identity. I want to focus on two things: The socio-economic status of my interviewees, and the placement of gender within that hierarchy.
I chose this subject because it's something all around us, something which I see everyday, and yet something I hadn't thought too much about before this class started. In addition, I am increasingly aware of the gender gap, and I would like to explore personal experiences.

Paperwork... Story of my life!

American class is a culture, but not one that most people would label as such. It is something most of us take for granted; we go about our day and pay our bills. Which leads me to believe that class is usually summed up by one thing: Money. While I expect it to be a major factor in this my findings, I hope to discover some insights into the working class vs the privileged, blue collar vs white collar, men vs women, and attitudes towards the "American Dream".

To do this, I think the social science perspective will be utilized most because it "is critical to analyzing data and statistics" (Martin and Nakayama 2012), with dashes of interpretive and critical. Most of the information will come from interviews and surveys, which should help me compare results in the end. I work in a luxury car dealership, but I am an hourly employee and definitely not personally living in luxury. I think this gives me the benefit of reaching out to people in classes above and below mine. In addition, I have friends and family in other parts of Nebraska, so that might make some helpful comparisons.

I will also make some covert observations, or "people watching" as I like to call it. I just want to observe what people do in various situations, but I won't put as much focus on these. I don't think the information I'll get from direct observations will be clear unless I already know their class. After all, some people are just frugal and buy cheap, others live beyond their means and charge it to their credit cards.

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2012). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed).  

            Boston, MA: Mcgraw Hill