ApHuG Unit 3

Acculturation

The process of adjustment to the dominant culture.

Assimilation

The process of giving up cultural traditions and adopting the social customs of the dominant culture of a place.

Custom

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.

Folk culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Habit

A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.

Popular culture

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Terroir

The contribution of a location's distinctive physical features to the way food tastes.

Creole (or creolized) language

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

Denglish

A combination of Deutsch (the German word for German) and English.

Developing language

A language spoken in daily use with a literary tradition that is not widely distributed.

Dialect

A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

Ebonics

A dialect spoken by some African Americans.

Extinct language

A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.

Franglais

A combination of français and anglais (the French words for French and English, respectively).

Institutional language

A language used in education, work, mass media, and government.

Isogloss

A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.

Isolated language

A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.

Language

A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning.

Language branch

A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that can be confirmed through archaeological evidence.

Language family

A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

Language group

A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.

Lingua franca

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.

Literary tradition

A language that is written as well as spoken.

Logogram

A symbol that represents a word rather than a sound.

Official language

The language adopted for use by a government for the conduct of business and publication of documents.

Pidgin language

A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages.

Received Pronunciation (RP)

The dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in London and now considered standard in the United Kingdom.

Spanglish

A combination of Spanish and English spoken by Hispanic Americans.

Standard language

The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications.

Subdialect

A subdivision of a dialect.

Vigorous language

A language that is spoken in daily use but that lacks a literary tradition.

Vulgar Latin

A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard dialect, which was used for official documents.

Agnosticism

The belief that the existence of God can't be proven empirically.

Animism

The belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life.

Atheism

The belief that God does not exist.

Autonomous religion

A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally.

Branch

A large and fundamental division within a religion.

Caste

The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned, according to religious law.

Congregation

A local assembly of persons brought together for common religious worship.

Cosmogony

A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe.

Denomination

A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations into a single legal and administrative body.

Ethnic religion

A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

Fundamentalism

Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination, or congregation).

Ghetto

During the Middle Ages, a neighborhood in a city set up by law to be inhabited only by Jews; now used to denote a section of a city in which members of any minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure.

Hierarchical religion

A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control.

Missionary

An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion.

Monotheism

The doctrine of or belief in the existence of only one God.

Pilgrimage

A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes.

Polytheism

Belief in or worship of more than one god.

Solstice

An astronomical event that happens twice each year, when the tilt of Earth's axis is most inclined toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun's apparent position in the sky to reach it most northernmost or southernmost extreme, and resulting in the shortest and longest days of the year.

Syncretic

Combining several religious traditions.

Universalizing religion

A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location.

Apartheid

Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas.

Balkanization

A process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.

Balkanized

A small geographic area that cannot successfully be organized into stable countries because it is inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other.

Blockbusting

A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood.

Centripetal force

An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.

Ethnic cleansing

A purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.

Ethnic enclave

A place with a high concentration of an ethnic group that is distinct from those in the surrounding area.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth.

Ethnoburb

A suburban area with a cluster of a particular ethnic population.

Genocide

The mass killing of a group of people in an attempt to eliminate the entire group from existence.

Nationalism

Loyalty and devotion to a particular nationality.

Nationality

Identity with a group of people who share legal attachment to a particular country.

Race

Identity with a group of people who are perceived to share a physiological trait, such as skin color.

Racism

The belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Racist

A person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism.

Sharecropper

A person who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent and repays loans by turning over to the landowner a share of the crops.

Triangular slave trade

A practice, primarily during the eighteenth century, in which European ships transported slaves from Africa to Caribbean islands, molasses from the Caribbean to Europe, and trade goods from Europe to Africa.

Adherents

Adherents worship a single deity, a God or Allah

Centrifugal Force

forces or attitudes that tend to divide a state.

Colonialism

the process by which one nation exercises near complete control over another country which they have settled and taken over.

Culture

a particular group's material characteristics, behavioral patterns, beliefs, social norms, and attitudes that are shared and transmitted

Cultural Convergence

when two or more cultures influence each other and become similar with increased contact

Cultural Divergence

the tendency for culture to become increasingly dissimilar with passage of time.

Cultural Landscape

Cultural attributes of an area often used to describe a place

Cultural Relativism

Understanding a culture on its own terms rather than judging it by the standards or customs of one's own culture

Cultural Trait

The specific customs that are part of the everyday life of a particular culture, such as language, religion, ethnicity, social institutions, and aspects of popular culture.

Diaspora

a community of people who are dispersed throughout the world, but retain their cultural, religious, or ethnic differences.

Ethnic culture

groups with distinct ancestry and cultural traditions

Ethnocentrism

the feeling that one's own ethnic group is superior.

Expansion Diffusion

when innovations spread to new places while staying strong in their original locations.

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Imperialism

Forceful extension of a nation's authority by conquest or by establishing economic and political domination of other nations that aren't it's colonies.

Indigenous Communities

communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group.

Indigenous languages

a language that is spoken by the original, aboriginal, first, first nation, native, ethnic, or island inhabitants of a place, area, or region.

Material Culture

Anything that can physically be seen on the landscape.

Multiculturalism

The policy of maintaining a diversity of ethnic cultures within a community. EX:New York City is an example of a multicultural society.

Multilingual

Countries in which more than one language is spoken.

Placemaking

a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value.

Relocation diffusion

the spread of religions such as Christianity and Islam, to different parts of the world by persons that took these religions along with them when they moved to new locations.

Secularism

The idea that ethical and moral standards should be formulated and adhered to for life on earth, not to accommodate the prescriptions of a deity and promises of a comfortable afterlife.

Sense of Place

a concept to explain how people define and categorize locations in their minds.

Sequent occupancy

the current cultural landscape of a region as a combination of all the people which have 'sequentially' occupied that region from the past to the present.

Sustainability

the use of the earths renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that ensure resource availability in the future

Theocracy

the government is presumed to be divinely ordained by God.

Time-Space Convergence

the decline in travel time between geographical locations as a result of transportation, communication, and related technological and social innovations.

Toponym

another word for name, but is specific to locations.

Uniform Landscape

the spatial expression of a popular custom in one location that will be similar to another