The primary goal of this activity is to guide participants in reflection on the complexities of cultural identities. To achieve this, the four layers of identity from the Communication Theory of Identity will be introduced, followed by pair work that allows participants to reflect on each layer of identity.
As with prior publications, ICD Exercises are available as free PDFs; just click on the thumbnail to download.
Root, E. (2025). Exploring layers of identity through interviews. Intercultural Dialogue Exercises, 8. Available from: https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/icd-ex-8-root.pdf
If you have an exercise you’ve used that works, and you would like to share it, please submit it. All authors will be asked to answer the same set of questions, and to make the exercises available for others to use, thus these are being published with a Creative Commons license (as is the case for all CID publications). If you are new to CID, please provide a brief resume. This opportunity is open to masters students and above, on the assumption that some familiarity with academic conventions generally, and discussion of intercultural dialogue specifically, are useful.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz Director Center for Intercultural Dialogue
She began her career as an English as a second/foreign language teacher. Besides teaching refugees, immigrants, and international students in Minnesota, she also taught conversational English classes in both China and South Korea for seven years. Her experience working with international students prompted her to return to graduate school to study intercultural communication. Research during her PhD program took her back to South Korea to collect narrative data exploring the intercultural relationships between native-English-speaking teachers and Korean students in a classroom setting. This branch of her research explores how the hegemony of English has impacted foreign language classrooms. Ideological beliefs attached to English influence how cross-cultural adaptation occurs in complex and uneven ways. She has also examined perceptions of agency of English speakers within the context of English hegemony. Another branch of Elizabeth’s research is focused on intercultural communication pedagogy. She employs qualitative research to study teacher identity and students’ descriptions of intercultural learning. Deeper intercultural learning occurs through acknowledgement of dialectical tensions as students navigate cultural differences and similarities.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 