AP Human Geography: Cultural Patterns and Processes Vocabulary

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering cultural patterns, processes, languages, and religions in human geography.

Acculturation

When a person or group comes into contact with a different culture and adopts some of its traits while maintaining elements of their own culture.

Agnosticism

The belief that nothing can be known about whether or not God exists.

Animism

Belief that inanimate objects or natural events have spirits and a conscious life.

Artifact

Tangible objects created by a culture.

Assimilation

The process of absorbing one cultural group into another. When this happens, a smaller group cannot be distinguished from the dominant culture.

Atheism

The belief that God does not exist.

Centrifugal Force

Forces or attitudes that tend to divide a state and pull the population apart.

Centripetal Force

Forces or attitudes that bring people together and enhance support for the state.

Charter Group

The first group to establish cultural and religious customs in a place.

Contagious Diffusion

Diffusion where one person spreads an idea or innovation to multiple people and then those people spread it to multiple people, until it uniformly affects all individuals and areas outward from the source.

Creole

A language that results from the mixing of the colonizer’s language with the indigenous language of the people they colonized.

Cultural Convergence

When two cultures become more similar the more that they interact.

Cultural Divergence

When members of a culture become less like others over time.

Cultural Hearth

An area where civilizations began from which they radiated their customs, innovations, and ideologies.

Cultural Landscape

The structures within the physical landscape caused by human activities.

Cultural Relativism

The idea that a person’s beliefs and actions should be understood by others through the lens of that individual’s own culture rather than that of another culture.

Culture

All of a group’s learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects.

Custom

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

Dialect

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

Diaspora

When people of one group are dispersed to various locations but still maintain their heritage in their new land.

Diffusion

The process by which an innovation or idea spreads from one place to another over time.

Distance Decay

The idea that the interaction between two places decreases as the distance between them increases.

Endangered Language

A language in danger of becoming extinct (dying off because its speakers die off and the language is not taught to the next generation).

Environmental Determinism

The belief that the physical environment actively shapes culture.

Ethnic Cleansing

A process in which a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes or eliminates another to form a homogenous state.

Ethnic Enclave

Relatively small, ethnically homogenous areas situated within a larger and more diverse cultural context.

Ethnicity

A shared cultural identity based on common traits such as language, history, or traditions.

Ethnic Religion

Religions that primarily appeal to one group of people living in a particular place.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own culture or ethnic group is superior to others; judging other groups through the lens of one’s own culture.

Expansion Diffusion

A type of diffusion where an idea or innovation develops in a hearth and remains strong there, while also spreading outwards.

Extinct Language

A language that is no longer spoken, read, or used in daily activities by anyone in the world.

Folk Culture

Culture that is traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogenous groups living in isolated rural areas.

Fundamentalism

A type of religious movement characterized by strict conformity to a religious text.

Gendered Spaces

Areas that are socially or culturally assigned to or associated with one gender over another.

Genocide

The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular cultural or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that group.

Globalization

The spread of businesses, products, people, and ideas around the world.

Hearth

The place an idea or innovation originates from.

Hierarchical Diffusion

The spread of an idea from a person or node of authority to other people and places with less power and influence.

Indo-European Language Family

The world’s largest language family, which has around 3 billion speakers.

Isogloss

Word usage boundaries, determined by data collected directly from people.

Isolated Language

A language unrelated to any other (not attached to any language family).

Language Branch

A collection of languages within a family, related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago.

Language Family

A collection of languages related through a common ancestry that existed 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 many similarities in grammar and vocabulary.

Lingua Franca

A language of international communication.

Material Culture

Tangible aspects of culture such as architecture, clothing, books, instruments, etc.

Mentifact

The ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge of a culture.

Missionary

Someone who embarks on a mission to spread their religion to new people and places.

Monolingual

Speaking only one language.

Monotheism

Belief that there is only one God.

Multiculturalism

The coexistence of several cultures in one society, with the idea that all cultures are valued and worthy of practice.

Multilingual

Speaking more than one language.

Nativism

Favoring those who were born in a country over immigrants.

Non-Material Culture

Invisible, intangible culture such as values, beliefs, behaviors, and norms.

Official Language

A language designated by a country as one used by the government for laws, reports, and public objects.

Pidgin Language

A simplified form of language that adopts the grammar and vocabulary of a lingua franca to allow speakers of two different languages to communicate.

Polytheism

Belief that there is more than one God.

Popular Culture

Culture found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Possibilism

The belief that while environmental conditions may impact culture in some ways, people are the primary architects of culture.

Proto-Indo-European Language

A language that linguists agree must have existed at some point because several language families have similar words. They disagree about when and where it originated and how it diffused.

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of an idea or innovation through the physical movement of people who migrate and take their ideas with them.

Romance Languages

A group of related languages derived from Vulgar Latin.

Sect

A relatively small group that has broken away from an established religious denomination.

Secularism

The principle of separating religion from government, laws, and public institutions.

Sense of Place

The emotions someone attaches to an area based on their experiences.

Sociofact

The ways in which a culture behaves and organizes institutions (family, education, gender roles, government, etc.).

Stimulus Diffusion

When something spreads but is changed by the people who adopt it.

Syncretism

When traits from two distinct cultures fuse to form a new cultural trait.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by a social custom.

Theocracy

A system of government in which religious leaders or institutions hold power and laws are based on religious doctrine.

Time-Space Compression

The reduction of the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place, as a result of improved communication and transportation technologies.

Toponym

The name given to a place on Earth.

Universalizing Religion

Religions that attempt to appeal to all people, everywhere in the world, not just those of one culture or location.