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Acculturation is the process of two cultures influencing each other’s language, behavior, and beliefs, often resulting in cultural assimilation. Linguistics studies how acculturation affects language, which can lead to language substitution or the creation of a new language. Acculturation scales show the evolution of language as a changing act of communication. In some cases, a third language can be created, such as Pidgin English, which was born out of the need for people from two different cultures to communicate.
Acculturation is, broadly speaking, the process of two cultures coming into contact with each other and influencing each other’s language, behavior and beliefs. This process is often seen as a form of cultural assimilation where one culture is carried into another culture until one group has little or no remaining cultural identity. While this is a somewhat negativistic view of the process, much cultural research focuses on this potentially devastating aspect of the process. While the general definition of the term implies that both cultures could impact each other equally, more often the minority culture is more heavily affected than the majority culture or the more empowered culture.
While the process of acculturation is studied in many fields, such as anthropology, cultural history and ethnography, linguistics is a field that has taken a special interest in how acculturation affects language. While languages can sometimes be irrevocably changed or eliminated through cultural contact and language substitution, sometimes the two languages will remain and take on only new words and minor changes from the contact. This is often seen in areas of large immigrant populations such as the United States (USA) where the prevailing English language has taken on many colloquialisms and words from other languages, such as Italian, German, Yiddish and Spanish.
An acculturation model illustrates how the process of language migration can occur between members of one culture immersed in another culture. This often happens when someone undergoes second language acquisition (SLA) and learns a new language that is used by the new culture but is typically not the language used in their home. The model of acculturation demonstrates how the assimilation process takes place from belonging to a distinct “home” culture, through the fusion of cultures and the person who feels part of both cultures, and finally to the person who tends to identify more with the secondary culture as well as with its “home” culture.
Linguists create acculturation scales that indicate how much a language has deviated in its use among some populations compared to samples of the original linguistic form. For example, the language of Chinese immigrants in the United States could be compared to how the language exists in China. These scales show the evolution of language as a changing act of communication that adapts to the speaker’s environment, and not just a static method of expression.
In other situations, a language shift can occur in either direction and a third language can be created that is a blend of the two original languages. Linguists point to languages like Pidgin English, which is a form of English mixed with another language that developed in regions like Papua New Guinea and West Africa. Pidgin English was born out of the need for people from two different cultures to communicate for business and commercial reasons, but who otherwise had little meaningful contact. As such, they had no impact on each other’s languages, but mixed to create a streamlined language that allowed for the necessary communication.
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