Module 4 4.01 Formal, functional, and vernacular regions are ways to group people who share particular legal, social, economic, political, or cultural influences. Culture consists of all the things that make up the distinct tradition of a group of people, including customary beliefs, material traits, and social norms. Some important aspects of culture are language, religion, and ethnicity. In many cases, people in a particular place or region share many of these aspects. Geographers use the individual cultural traits to form groups who share these traits into cultural complexes and systems. These can be represented geographically on a map using cultural regions and cultural realms. One way to analyze the unique aspects of place or region is by looking at its artifacts (tangible objects), sociofacts (the ways people interact socially), and mentifacts (intangible beliefs which guide their actions). These aspects of culture can help identify what people value and what they take care of and provide ways to understand different cultures and differentiate between them. Artifacts Any physical creations of a culture—
anything that can be touched Cultural complex A group of people sharing a unique combination of cultural traits Cultural realm The combination of several cultural regions Cultural region A geographic representation of a cultural complex or system Cultural traits Behaviors passed from one generation to another, including customs, language, religion, and skills Cultural system A group of cultural complexes which share common traits Folklore An area whose defining characteristic, such as climate or the nationality of people who live there, is found throughout in the region Folk culture Traditional customs, practices, or ways of behaving that are shared by members of a cultural group Formal region A region that is linked by a particular activity or function, such as a transportation system or an economic activity, and organized around a central point, or node, which is connected to places within the region Material culture The physical objects that a culture creates, such as buildings, tools, and goods Mentifacts The concepts, ideas, beliefs, or meanings that guide cultures Nonmaterial culture The abstract human creations of society (such as attitudes, beliefs, and values) that help define a culture Sociofacts Cultural elements that are related to social behavior, unity, and control Vernacular region A region determined by people’s mental images, or perceptions, of places 4.02 You should recall that folk culture refers to the customs and values of homogenous groups of people who live in a particular region, while popular culture refers to customs and values shared by heterogeneous groups of people who may live far away from each other. You should also recall that socialization, the process by which people learn the rules and customs of their culture, can occur through contact with individuals or through mass media. People are generally socialized into their folk culture through adults and others they know, while mass media often spreads popular culture. In this lesson, you saw how globalization affects popular culture and folk culture around the world, and you applied these concepts to the country of Iran, where the government uses censorship to limit the access people have to other cultures. Understanding these concepts will help prepare you for the AP Exam and will also help you think about the ways you have been socialized and the factors that have influenced your own values, customs, and practices. Assimilate The act of a culture group losing all its original traits and fully becoming a part of a different, dominating culture Autonomy Self-­‐governing or free Censorship Limiting or forbidding the spread of certain types of information which some people consider to be objectionable Folkways Stories, oral histories, or other writings that reflect the values of a particular culture Functional region The cultural practices and customs of a traditional, homogenous society that lives in a single geographic area Mass media Methods of communication, such as newspapers, television, or the radio, that are designed to reach large numbers of people Popular culture The practices and customs of a large heterogeneous group; often created or spread through media and consumerism Propaganda The spreading of ideas or information with the sole purpose of helping or harming an institution or a cause 4.03 In this lesson, you have looked at unique and distant places that share some cultural aspects, especially those from popular culture. The globalization of popular culture brings new influences, interests, and pressures to people around the world. Folk culture spreads slowly and generally remains limited to clusters of populations because of geographic barriers. Popular culture spreads quickly, primarily through mass communications that can help promote hierarchical, contagious, and stimulus diffusion. When people migrate, they often become part of a minority culture within a dominant one. The process of adaptation and cultural exchange can be defined in terms of assimilation, acculturation, or syncretism. Acculturation The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another Assimilation The final completion of the cultural acculturation process, when a culture group loses all its original traits and becomes fully a part of a different, dominating culture Contagious diffusion The transmission of cultural features among people who are in contact with one another Expansion diffusion Customs, ideas, and traditions spread because of factors such as population growth, efficient information channels, pop culture, etc. Globalization The process of economic and cultural integration involving different and distant populations Hierarchical diffusion The transmission of ideas, customs, and traditions passed from people in position of power to the rest of the population Homogeneous Similar or the same as in nature Relocation diffusion The transmission of cultural features when people migrate from one location to another and bring their culture with them Stimulus diffusion The employment of a culture’s idea or innovation by another culture Syncretism A near-­‐equal exchange between two cultures in which each adopts cultural practices of the other 4.04 Natural language is a key cultural element that varies with the time and place people speak it, write it, or sign it. When people who speak different languages within a society need to communicate, they may create a lingua franca, or they create their own pidgin, which might become a Creole when it is spoken as a first language by new generations. The family tree of languages can tell us the genealogy of languages, revealing proto-­‐
languages and descendents. By looking at the family tree of languages, we can understand the way cultures have come into contact with one another throughout history, and the way multilingual societies were born. Social languages are variation of a natural language and are influenced by the speaker’s situation, educational background, age, gender, and social status. A young person who speaks one language at home, another at school, and a subcultural language with friends is a reminder that no single language dominates the globe, but that people find ways to communicate at different (social, formal or informal) levels wherever they are. Creole A native language that develops from pidgin Daughter language A language related to another from genealogical descent Dialect A language that is specific to a community or region Family tree A visual representation of family relationships in the form of a tree Language family A group of languages deriving from a common ancestor called a proto-­‐
language Language isolate A completely distinct natural language that has no genealogical relationship with any other language Language subfamily Division of a language family into smaller categories Lingua Latin word for language or tongue Lingua franca A bridge language spoken by people who do not share the same first language Multilingual Someone who speaks, writes, or signs more than one language Natural language A language spoken by a community Official language Language of a country or region as designated in the constitution or legal system Pidgin A combination of two different languages, created to allow communication among people who do not share a common language Proto-­‐language A language that is the common ancestor of a family of languages Subcultural language A language unique to a certain social group or subculture 4.05 You have learned that the English spoken today is a mixture of many languages and that it developed over thousands of years. Today, the English language is the result of all those interactions and continues to adopt new words and phrases from technology, pop culture, and other languages. English spread worldwide via imperialism, global business, science, art and literature, and pop culture. English is so popular today that it is referred to as the lingua franca of the world. As English spread, it incorporated changes based on regional or local culture, giving way to dialects, pidgin, Creole, and fusion languages. Anatolian theory The belief that Indo-­‐European languages originated in the language of a population that lived on the Anatolian peninsula Dialect A variation of a standard language in common usage in a specific area Kurgan theory The belief that Indo-­‐European languages originated from the Kurgan culture in the steppes around the Black and Caspian seas Multilingual Speaking more than one language Syntax The systematic arrangement of words in a sentence Please make sure that you can answer these DBA questions before you call! J Thanks! 1. What are the five components of culture? Define and give examples of each component. 2. Define folk culture and popular culture. Explain why folk cultures often remain isolated and popular cultures diffuse quickly. 3. What is assimilation and acculturation? Identify examples of each concept. 4. What are five of the world’s major language families? Where are these language families distributed? 5. Should English be established as the official language of the United States? Why or why not? Review your notes from the Geo Journal assessment in Lesson 04.05. Be sure to provide support for your position.