Acculturation

Acculturation, that is, to become part of a culture, occurs when different cultural groups come together, blending their cultural characteristics to form new cultural characteristics. Acculturation also occurs when an individual becomes immersed in a different culture and, as a result, begins to take on the cultural characteristics of that group. Because identities refer to how one defines himself or herself within the social context of culture, acculturation is inextricably tied to identity. This entry discusses the factors that influence the process of acculturation.

In the 1960s, Chester Christian examined the acculturation of bilingual children, asserting that acculturation could be harmful to bilingual children because the education system forces them to choose between their native language and their host cultural language. Christian argued that young children have no voice when it comes to acculturation, because they are born into a family [Page 5]hearing and learning one language on a daily basis, then they enter the school system at 4 or 5 years of age and are expected to set aside all they learned in favor of the host dominant language. As such, acculturation seems to be largely based on power and dominance. The more dominant group is usually the one exerting the most influence, whereby the nondominant group must change to accommodate the dominant group and risk losing some of its cultural characteristics.

Additional research suggests that as a person is acculturated, he or she must unlearn old norms associated with the original culture. In other words, as one is acculturated into one group, one is deculturated from another. Intercultural communication scholar Fred Jandt outlined four levels of acculturation—assimilation, integration, separation, and marginalization—purporting that one's level of acculturation is largely dependent upon cultural similarity and one's own personality characteristics. Those who assimilate into their host culture tend to abandon their original culture, valuing the new culture over the old culture. Those who integrate attempt to maintain ties to both the host culture and their original culture. Those who separate are groups that simply live in the host culture but segregate themselves among their own ingroup members. They tend to live and work in neighborhoods among their ingroup members, such that they do not even need to learn the host language. For instance, a Chinese immigrant who lives in the United States but never leaves the Chinatown area of a city is not likely to acculturate successfully. Lastly, those who feel marginalized do not feel acceptance within their host culture or their original culture.

Various factors can influence a person's process of acculturation. The first factor is attitude. According to Lily Arasaratnam, who examined the experience of Sri Lankan immigrants living in Sydney, Australia, a person's attitude toward the host culture, along with his or her motivation to integrate, is a strong predictor of how that person ultimately acculturates into the host culture. In fact, when compared against a person's reason for migrating into a new culture, attitude was a much stronger predictor. For instance, one can move into a host culture involuntarily but maintain a negative attitude toward that culture and, as a result, never fully acculturate.

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