Neal Smith

Unit 3 Vocabulary
Acculturation- is a process in which members of one cultural
group adopt the beliefs and behaviors of another group.
This could be anything from building style to food thats eaten.
Artifacts- an object made by a human being, typically an item of
cultural or historical interest.
An example of this would be the Buddha statue that the
Buddhists worship. This is an artifact that they use to show their
faith.
Assimilation- the process by which a person or persons acquire
the social and psychological characteristics of a group.
Waves of immigrants have been assimilated into the American
culture.
Cultural adaption- is the process of ensuring your message,
whether translate into another language or not, is presented
using cultural references and role models that your intended
audience will identify with.
Cultural core/periphery pattern- is the underlying value that
defines organizational identity through observable culture.
This could be like a Hispanic person living in American and
speaking English here, but to his relatives back home, he speaks
Spanish.
Cultural ecology- is the study of human adaptations to social and
physical environments.
Human adaptation refers to both biological and cultural process
that enable a population to survive and reproduce within a given
or changing environment.
Cultural identity- identity of a group, culture or an individual,
influenced by ones belonging to a group or culture.
Using adjectives on yourself are always examples of your cultural
identity.
Cultural landscape- a geographic area, including both cultural
and natural resources and the wildlife or domestic animals
therein, associated with a historic event, activity, or person
exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values.
Cultural realm- a collective of culture regions sharing related
culture systems; a major world area having sufficient
distinctiveness to be perceived as a set apart from other realms
in terms of cultural characteristics and complexes.

 Culture- the quality in a person or society that arises from a

concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters,
manners, scholarly pursuits and so on.
Cultural region- aspects of culture associated with an
Ethnolinguistic group and the territory it inhabits. Specific
cultures do not limit their geographic coverage to the boarders of
a nation state, or to smaller subdivisions of a state.
Innovators- a person who introduces new methods, ideas or
products. People have changed history because of ideas that
have helped them form new ideas of religion and culture.
Innovators are a huge part of history and are who made us who
we are today.
Majority adopters- the early adopters were the first sizable
segment of a population to adopt the innovative technology. The
early majority tends to be a small part of the population, and will
adopt a new product after seeing it used successfully by either
innovators or other early adopters that they know on a personal
level.
Laggards- a person who makes slow progress and falls behind
others. This is something that once you get into would be hard to
get out of in todays society if it came to creating a new product
and allowing new innovations to take place. This is happening a
lot in technology fields due to all of the machinery that are taking
over hand jobs now.
Mentifacts- used together with the related terms sociofact and
artifact to describe how cultural traits, such as beliefs, values,
and ideas take on a life of their own spanning over generations,
and are conceivable as objects in themselves.
Sequent occupance- notion that successful societies leave their
cultural imprints on a place each contributing to the cumulative
cultural landscape.
Sociofact- the institutions and links between individuals and
groups that unit a culture, including family and structure and
political, educational and religious institutions.
Built environment- is a material, spatial and cultural product of
human labor that combines physical elements and energy in
forms of living, working and playing. This is basically the humanmade space in which people live, work and recreate on a day-today basis.
Folk culture- refers to the unifying expressive components of
everyday life as enacted by localized, tradition-bound groups.
Earlier concepts of folk culture focused primarily on traditions

practiced by small, homogeneous, rural groups living in relative

isolation from other groups.
Folk food- food that is traditionally made by the common people
of a region and forms part of their culture.
Folk house- common houses in America based on cultures.
Folk songs- traditionally sung by the common people of a region
and forms part of their culture.
Folklore- the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a
community, passed through the generations by word of mouth.
Material culture- refers to the physical objects, resources, and
spaces that people use to define their culture. These can include
homes, neighborhoods, cities, schools, churches, synagogues,
temples, offices, factories, tools, goods and products, stores and
so on.
Nonmaterial culture- this would be the opposite of material
culture. This does not include any physical objects or artifacts.
They include ideas, beliefs, values and norms that may help
shape the society.
Placelessness- places that lack a sense of place are sometimes
known as placeless or inauthentic. Placeless landscapes are
those that have no special relationship to the place in which they
are located. They could be anywhere and mean nothing to
majority of the population.
Popular culture- culture found in a large, heterogeneous society
that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal
characteristics.
Polytheism VS. Monotheism- polytheism is the belief in or
worship of more than one god/higher power. Monotheism is the
exact opposite where they believe or worship only one
god/higher power.
Animism- the belief that supernatural power that organizes and
animates the material universe.
Hinduism- a major religious and cultural tradition of South Asia,
developed from Vedic religion.
Buddhism- is a path of practice and spiritual development
leading to insight into the true nature of reality. Buddhist
practices like meditation are means of changing yourself in order
to develop the qualities of awareness, kindness, and wisdom.
Judaism- the monotheistic religion of the Jews. The religion
developed among the ancient Hebrews that stresses belief in
God and faithfulness to the laws of the Torah.

 Christianity- the religion based on the person and teachings of

Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices. The religion
derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture,
and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant
bodies.
Islam- a monotheistic religion which teaches that there is only
one God and that Muhammad is Gods prophet: the religion of
Muslims.
Eastern religions- refers to religions originating in the Eastern
world India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia and thus having
dissimilarities with Western Religious. This traditions, as well as
animistic indigenous religions.
Theocracy- government of a state by immediate divine guidance
or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. These are
countries that are controlled and ruled by religious leaders.
Societal impacts of religion Syncretism- merging of different inflectional varieties of a word
during the development of a language.
Secularization- refers to the historical process in which religion
loses social and cultural significance. As a result, the role of
religion in modern societies becomes restricted.
Fundamentalism- a conservative movement in theology among
19th and 20th century Christians. Fundamentalists believe that the
statements in the Bible are literally true. They also tend to argue
against the theory of evolution.
Landscapes of the dead- the certain areas where people have
commonly been buried. This is important to human geography
because it has always been important where people are buried.
Sharia law- system of Islamic law that is based on the Quran.
Fatwa- a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized
authority.
Madrasa- a college for Islamic instruction.
Language- means of communicating by sounds and/or symbols.
Ideograms- a written character symbolizing the idea of a thing
without indicating the sounds used to say it. These can be
anywhere from numbers to Chinese characters.
Indo-European languages- are a family of several hundred
related language and dialects. There are about 440 languages
according to the Ethnologue estimate.
Sino-Tibetan- a large language family of eastern Asia whose
branches include Sinitic, Tibeto-Burman and in some

classifications, Tai. They are tonal languages, but the exact

relationships among them are unclear.
Afro-Asiatic- a family of languages spoken in the Middle East and
North Africa. The family is commonly divided into five groups:
Semitic, Omotic, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic. Ancient Egyptian
was also a member of this family.
Polyglot states- speaking, writing in, or composed of several
languages.
Ethnolinguistic group- a field of linguistics which studies the
relationship between language and culture, and the way different
ethnic groups perceive the world. It is a combination between
ethnology and linguistics.
Pidgin- a grammatically simplified form of a language used for
communication between people not sharing a common language.
They have a limited vocabulary, some elements of which are
taken from local languages but arise out of language contact
between speakers of other language.
Creole- a person of mixed European and black descent,
especially in the Caribbean.
Isolated language- in the absolute sense, is a natural language
with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with another
language, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from
an ancestor common with any other language.
Toponym- the general term for any place or geographical entity.
Related, more specific types of Toponym include hydronym for a
body of water and oronym for a mountain or hill.
Isogloss- is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic
feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a
word, or the use of some syntactic feature.
Lingua franca- a language that is adopted as a common
language between speakers whose native languages are
different. Its a mixture of Italian, French, Greek, Arabic, and
Spanish, formerly used in the Levant.
Acculturation- is a process in which members of one culture
group adopt the beliefs and behaviors of another group. Here in
the United States we have Italian foods, Chinese foods, Mexican
foods and so forth. There are a lot of different cultures here and
it always gives me the opportunity to learn something new and
experience new things.
Apartheid- a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on
grounds of race. This is something most common in South Africa.

It can also be segregation on grounds other than race meaning

religion and other things as well.
Assimilation- the process by which a person or persons acquire
the social and psychological characteristics of a group.
Barrio- a district of a town in Spain and other Spanish speaking
countries. In the United States this would be a Spanish speaking
quarter of a town or city, especially one with a high poverty
level.
Balkanization- a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the
process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into
smaller regions or states that are often hostile or noncooperative with one another.
Cultural shatterbelt- areas where diverse languages are spoken.
Ethnic cleansing- a mass expulsion or killing of members of an
unwanted ethnic or religious group in society.
Ethnic conflict- an armed conflict between ethnic groups. It
contrasts with civil war on one hand and regular warfare on the
other, where two or more sovereign states are in conflict.
Ethnic enclave- a neighborhood, district, or suburb which retains
some cultural distinction from a larger, surrounding area.
Ethnic group- a community or population made up of people who
share a common cultural background or descent.
Ethnic homeland- is the concept of the place with which an
ethnic group holds a long history and deep cultural association.
The country is which a particular national identity began. This
could also be as simple as it connecting the country and its
culture at a physical location.
Ethnic landscape- landscape affected and varied by the ethnic
group living there.
Ethnic neighborhood- an area within a city containing members
of the same ethnic background.
Ethnocentrism- evaluation of other cultures according to
preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of ones
own culture.
Ghetto- a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a
minority group or groups.
Nationality- the status of belonging to a particular nation.
Nationalism- an extreme form of patriotic feeling, principals and
efforts, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other
countries.

 Plural society- defined as a society combining ethnic contrasts:

the economic interdependence f those groups, and their
ecological specialization.
Race- people who are believed to belong to the same genetic
stock.
Segregation index- the separation or isolation of a race, class, or
group.
Social distance- the perceived or desired degree of remoteness
between a member of one social group and the members of
another, as evidenced in the level of intimacy tolerated between
them.