Quiz 5 - Culture and Language


Concepts of Culture


Acculturation - the adoption by an ethnic group of enough of the ways o f the host society to be able to function economically and socially.


Assimilation - the complete blending of an ethnic group into the host society, resulting in the loss of all distinctive ethnic traits.


Cultural maladaptation -  poor or inadequate adaptation that occurs when a group pursues an adaptive strategy that, in the short run, fails to provide the necessities of life or, in the long run, destroys the environment that nourishes it.


Cultural core - the territorial nucleus from which a country grows in area and over time, often containing the national capital and the main center of commerce, culture, and industry.


Cultural periphery - a concept based on the tendency of both formal and functional culture regions to consist of a core or node, in which defining traits and purest or functions are headquartered, and a periphery that is tributary and displays fewer of the defining traits.


Cultural ecology - broadly defined, the study of the relationships between the physical environment and culture; narrowly defined, the study of culture as an adaptive system that facilitates human adaptation to nature and environmental change.


Cultural landscape - the artificial landscape; the visible human imprint on the land.


Culture - a total way of life held in common by a group of people, including such learned features as speech, ideology, behavior; livelihood, technology, and government; or the local, customary way of doing things- a way of life; an ever-changing process in which a group is actively engaged; a dynamic mix of symbols, beliefs, speech, and practices.


Folk and Popular Culture


Adaptive strategies - the unique way in which each culture uses its particular physical environment; those aspects of culture that serve to provide the necessities of life- food, clothing, shelter, and defense.


folk architecture - architecture that comes from the collective memory of groups of traditional people. These buildings are based not on blueprints but on mental images that change little form one generation to the next and use locally available raw materials


Folk culture - a small cohesive, stable, isolated, nearly self-sufficient group that is homogeneous in custom and race; characterized by a strong family or clan structure, order maintained through sanctions based in the religion or family, little division of labor other than that between the sexes, frequent and strong interpersonal relationships, and a material culture consisting mainly of a handmade goods.


Folk - traditional, rural; the opposite of “popular”


Folklore - traditional customs, tales, sayings, dances, or art forms preserved among a people


Material culture - all physical, tangible objects made and used by members of a cultural group, such as clothing, buildings, tools and utensils, instruments, furniture, and artwork; the visible aspect of culture.


Nonmaterial culture - the wide range of tales, songs, lore, beliefs, superstitions, and customs that passes from generation to generation as part of an oral or written tradition.


Popular culture - a dynamic culture based in large, heterogeneous societies permitting considerable individualism, innovation, and change; having a money-based economy, division of labor into professions, secular institutions of control, and weak interpersonal ties; producing and consuming machine-made goods.


Survey pattern - a pattern of original land survey in an area.


Language


Creole - a language derived from a pidgin that has acquired a fuller vocabulary and become the native language of its speakers.


Dialect - a distinctive local or regional variant of a language that remains mutually intelligible to speakers of other dialects of that language; a subtype of a language.


Isogloss - the border of usage of an individual word or pronunciation.


Language - a mutually agreed-upon system of symbolic communication that has a spoken and usually a written expression.


Language family - a group of related languages derived from a common ancestor.


Lingua franca - an existing, well-established language of communication and commerce used widely where it is not a mother tongue.


Linguistic refuge area - an area protected by isolation or inhospitable environmental conditions in which a language or dialect has survived.


Monolingual - speaking only one language.


Multilingual - speaking more than one language.


Official language - in multilingual countries the language selected, often by the educated and politically powerful elite, to promote internal cohesion; usually the language of the courts and government.


Pidgin - a composite language consisting of a small vocabulary borrowed from the linguistic groups involved in international commerce.


Toponymy - place name.


Mutual intelligibility - the ability of two people to understand each other when speaking.