Sicilian Family Culture Essay

Sicilian Food Extroversion! How the social aspect of a Sicilian family meal has resulted in my extroverted identity.
Culture has been defined in many ways. However the definition that reflects Sicilian culture the most is that “culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing and responding to the social realities around them” I feel that Lederach’s (1995) approach is most relatable to Sicilian culture as there are many Sicilian culture events that thoroughly express the vibrant values of their culture.
Lederach’s theory is shown through the cultural event that is a huge part of Sicilian culture of eating food. During lunch and dinner in Sicilian families, everyone is sat round a large table allowing everyone to communicate, as Italians adhere to the “set of convictions and beliefs of a certain group” (Leyens at al., 1994; Smith and
This is due to my Sicilian family following the stereotype and conforming to the generalised image of Italian people (Beck et al, 20015) “Italian people are loud and talk with their hands”. I end up conforming to this by speaking loudly and excitedly as the family I am around eat dinner in an unformal manner and there is always light hearted humour and many conversations occurring at the same time. This links into my extroverted identity as extroverts are known to want to have people to talk to all the time and are known to be more sociable. Due to these factors, my extroverted identity is shown through many similar personality traits which my family also have, these consist of similar communication techniques such as the way my family verbally communicate which I have genetically inherited from my Dad (Gesall, 1925). As we have similar extroverted identities, these compete against each other at the table, resulting in louder volume of speech between