Cultural Vocabulary Unit 3

Unit 3 Vocabulary

• Acculturation: Occurs when an ethnic group adopts the values and practices of the receiving group while maintaining some of their own culture.
• Adherent: Believers in a faith.
• Animism: Belief that non-living objects, like mountains or rivers, have spirits.
• Assimilation: When an ethnic group loses its distinctive characteristics and blends in with the receiving culture.
• Artifacts: Physical creations reflecting the values, beliefs, and behaviors of a culture, like buildings, roads, and signs.
• Built Environment: Physical aspects created by humans, encompassing buildings, roads, and other infrastructure.
• Centrifugal Force: An attitude that divides people, creating conflict.
• Centripetal Force: An attitude that unifies people and supports a state.
• Colonialism: A form of imperialism where people move and settle in another country's land.
• Contagious Diffusion: A form of expansion diffusion where an idea spreads outward from a central point to surrounding areas.
• Creole Language: A language created through the mixing of two or more languages.
• Culture: Learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects shared among a group.
• Cultural Complex: Series of interrelated traits.
• Cultural Convergence: Cultures becoming more similar and exchanging traits.
• Cultural Divergence: Cultures becoming different due to distance, time and technology.
• Cultural Hearths: Areas where civilizations developed and spread their customs, innovations, and ideologies to other areas.
• Cultural Landscape: Modifications of the natural environment by humans; also called the built environment.

Additional Cultural Concepts

• Cultural Realms: Larger areas containing several cultural regions.
• Cultural Traits: Single attributes of a culture.
• Dialect: Regional variations of a language, distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
• Diaspora: When a group of people spreads to various locations.
• Ethnicity: Identity with a group sharing distinct physical and mental traits.
• Ethnocentrism: Judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture.
• Expansion Diffusion: Spread of a feature from one place to another.
• Globalization: Increased integration of the world economy since the 1970s.
• Glocalization: Adaptation of global products or services to local cultures.
• Hierarchical Diffusion: When ideas or artifacts spread first to larger, prominent places before spreading to smaller, less prominent places.
• Isogloss: A boundary that marks the separation of regions with different language usages.
• Nativist: Anti-immigrant sentiment.
• Pidgin Language: A simplified form of speech used for communication by people with different languages.
• Relocation Diffusion: Spread of a feature or trend through the movement of people.
• Social Constructs: Ideas, concepts, or perceptions that have been created and accepted by groups.
• Stimulus Diffusion: Diffusion of an idea but not the specific trait itself; a basic concept causing changes.
• Taboo: Restrictions on behaviors imposed by social customs.
• Toponyms: Names given to places, e.g., cities, schools, and rivers.

Test your understanding of essential vocabulary related to cultural concepts in this Unit 3 quiz. Key terms like acculturation, assimilation, and colonialism are featured to help deepen your comprehension of cultural dynamics. Ideal for students learning about cultural geography and anthropology.