identity in communication

When we talked about identity in class the one concept I found the most interesting was agency. This wasn’t the first time I had heard it because in my English class this semester the main focus for this class was rhetorical strategies and appeals along with the main topic being agency. The first time I had heard the word agency all I could think about is mean something related to business and corporations, but I was wrong. What I learned in my English class is agency means actions individuals take given a particular set of circumstances and the capacity to make a difference. The word agency may stem from intrinsic motivation to do well with the task a person is doing. When I heard what agency meant in this class of communication studies was something similar but also had different meaning. The defining this class provided stated that agency means your ability to reproduce or reduce social norms. The example I got form this course was if you want to do something embrace it if you don’t then don’t embrace it. I feel that in communication agency is important because the way a person chooses to communicate is based on the influence of the people in our society.