Culture and Ideologies

Definition: A distinctive manner of expression in reference to the inflection, tone, or emphasis on pronunciation that is distinctly different from the listeners, and is taken to be unique. Characterizing an individual as having a thick accent, could be defining them as “other” or “less than” and could be seen as stereotyping.

Source: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Definition: Linguistics, phonetic features of an individual’s speech that are associated with geographical region or social class. The standard version of a language is usually considered by native speakers to be unaccented.

Source: American Psychological Association

Definition: Accentism is a term which refers to linguistic discrimination. It describes any situation in which an individual feels as though they have been unfairly judged, treated, or commented on because of the way they speak, write, and communicate more broadly.

Source: Adapted from The Accentism Project – University of Manchester

Definition: Imposing judgments about a specific person or the whole group or community because of their accent. Thinking that someone with a particular accent is not very smart or clever. It is also called linguicism.

Source: Accent Bias: How Can We Minimize Discrimination In The Workplace? – By Dr. Pragya Agarwal – Forbes.com

Definition: The capacity to understand and function well in more than one cultural group.

Source: American Sociological Association – Asa.org

Definition: Individuals are considered bicultural if they speak both the language of their heritage cultural context and the language of their receiving cultural context, have friends from both cultural backgrounds, and watch television programs and read magazines from both cultural contexts. Some writers have gone even further, suggesting that true biculturalism involves synthesizing the heritage and receiving cultures into a unique and personalized blend. From this perspective, the bicultural individual selects aspects from the heritage and receiving cultures and integrates them into an individualized ‘culture’ that is not directly reducible to either the heritage or receiving cultural streams. For example, a Chinese American person might eat hamburgers together with traditional Chinese vegetables and might mix in social groups that include both Chinese and American friends.

Source: Adapted from Seth J. Schwartz and Jennifer B. Unger

Definition: When a person switches between languages or dialects (codes) while speaking. Switching may occur for several reasons. The speaker may be unable to express themselves adequately in one language/dialect, the speaker may switch unconsciously when upset, tired, or excited, or the speaker may switch in order to express solidarity with a particular group.

Source: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Definition: Code-switching is when someone changes their language based on who they are with, typically to fit in better with that group.

Source: ScienceLeadership.org

Definition: Theft of cultural elements—including symbols, art, language, customs, etc.—for one’s own use, commodification, or profit, often without understanding, acknowledgment, or respect for its value in the original culture. Results from the assumption of a dominant (i.e. white) culture’s right to take other cultural elements.

Source: Colours of Resistance Archive, “Cultural Appropriation” – accessed 2 July 2021)

Definition: Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It’s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects.

Source: Who owns Culture? By Susan Scafidi, 2005

Definition: Cultural competence — loosely defined as the ability to understand, appreciate and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one’s own — has been a key aspect of psychological thinking and practice for some 50 years.

Source: American Psychological Association

Definition: Cultural competence is the ability to understand and interact effectively with people from other cultures. To have multicultural competence, you need:

• A basic understanding of your own culture. (It’s difficult to understand another’s culture if you aren’t familiar with your own.)
• A willingness to learn about the cultural practices and worldview of others.
• A positive attitude toward cultural differences and a readiness to accept and respect those differences.

Source: Preemptivelove.org

Definition: Cultural and linguistic competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations. ‘Culture’ refers to integrated patterns of human behavior that include the language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups. ‘Competence’ implies having the capacity to function effectively as an individual and an organization within the context of the cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs presented by consumers and their communities.

Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention – CDC.Gov

Definition: An approach to engagement across differences that acknowledges systems of oppression and embodies the following key practices: (1) a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, (2) a desire to fix power imbalances where none ought to exist, and (3) aspiring to develop partnerships with people and groups who advocate for others on a systemic level.

Source: LGBTQIA Resource Center (Melanie Tervalon & Jann Murray-García, 1998)

Definition: Cultural humility is proposed as a more suitable goal in multicultural medical education. Cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the people dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and non paternalistic partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations.

Source: Adapted from Cultural Humility Versus Cultural Competence: A Critical Distinction in Defining Physician Training Outcomes in Multicultural Education – Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-García, May 1998

Definition: Cultural myopia or cultural blindness is a significant factor in maintaining ethnocentric assumptions. Myopia means a lack of clear-sightedness and foresightedness, a restricted and blurred view of things. A myopic person, then, is someone who is shortsighted, lacking in perspicacity, with diminished capacity to see and evaluate the facts and the contexts as they actually are. In today’s global business environment, as cross-cultural relations become even more embedded within the American infrastructure, there is an increasing need to understand and connect with a highly heterogeneous network by beginning to adopt a global “habit of mind” and global “habit of heart.”

Source: Adapted from The Cultural Myopia and Cultural Blindness in Overseas Management – S.M. Jameel Hasan, Eastern Washington University

Definition: The belief that one’s particular culture is appropriate to all situations and relevant to all other individuals.

Source: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Definition: Cultural misappropriation distinguishes itself from the neutrality of cultural exchange, appreciation, and appropriation because of the instance of colonialism and capitalism; cultural misappropriation occurs when a cultural fixture of a marginalized culture/community is copied, mimicked, or recreated by the dominant culture against the will of the original community and, above all else, commodified.
One can understand the use of “misappropriation” as a distinguishing tool because it assumes that there are
1) instances of neutral appropriation,
2) the specifically referenced instance is non-neutral and problematic, even if benevolent in intention,
3) some act of theft or dishonest attribution has taken place, and
4) moral judgement of the act of appropriation is subjective to the specific culture from which is being engaged.

Source: Racial Equity Tools (Devyn Springer, “Resources on What ‘Cultural Appropriation’ Is and Isn’t” – 2018, accessed 7 October 2019)

Definition: Cultural misappropriation is a land of darkness. It’s a place where one culture (most often one that has a historical record of oppressing other cultures) engages in the unauthorized taking of some aspects of another (most often a minority) culture.

Source: Metcalf, 2012 cited by Kevin Nute – Toward a Test of Cultural Misappropriation, University of Hawai. 

Definition: Basic and obvious respect and appreciation of various cultures that many differ from your own.

Source: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Definition: Cultural Sensitivity is defined as:
a) Being aware that cultural differences and similarities between people exist without assigning them a value – positive or negative, better or worse, right or wrong.
b) Being aware that cultural differences and similarities between people exist and have an effect on values, learning and behavior.
c) A set of skills that allows you to understand and learn about people whose cultural background is not the same as your own.

Source: NYC Department of Social Services

Definition: Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action.

Source: Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952 quoted by Gustav Jahoda, 2012. Critical reflections on some recent definitions of ‘‘culture’’.

Definition: The shared patterns of behavior and interactions, cognitive constructs and affective understanding that are learned through socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group. People within a culture usually interpret the meaning of symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or similar ways.

Source: Berkeley | Equity Fluent Leaders Glossary of Key Terms

Definition: Culture refers to the knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.

Culture is the knowledge shared by a group of people. Culture is communication, communication is culture.

A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

Source: Dismantling Racism.org

Definition: Dominant culture in a society refers to the established language, religion, values, rituals, and social customs on which the society was built. It has the most power, is widespread, and influential within a social entity, such as an organization, in which multiple cultures are present. An organization’s dominant culture is heavily influenced by the leadership and management standards and preferences of those at the top of the hierarchy.

Source: Providers.org – Race, Equity & Inclusion Glossary

Definition: The group whose members hold more power relative to other members in society. Dominant cultures may or may not hold a quantifiable majority of the population.

Source: The Decision Lab – Dominant Culture

Definition: The teaching of English to people whom English is not their primary language.

Source: Adapted from English Second Language teacher

Definition: A more or less systematic ordering of ideas with associated doctrines, attitudes, beliefs, and symbols that together form a more or less coherent philosophy or Weltanschauung for a person, group, or sociopolitical movement.

Source: American Psychological Association – Dictionary of Psychology

Definition: A comprehensive and coherent set of basic beliefs about political, economic, social and cultural affairs that is held in common by a sizable group of people within a society. Such interrelated ideas and teachings purport both to explain how political, economic, social and cultural institutions really do work and also to prescribe how such institutions ought ideally to operate.

Source: Glossary of Political Economy Terms, by Dr. Paul M. Johnson

Definition: A process of learning about and becoming allies with people from other cultures, thereby broadening our own understanding and ability to participate in a multicultural process. The key element to becoming more culturally competent is respect for the ways that others live in and organize the world and an openness to learn from them.

Source: Paul Kivel, “Multicultural Competence” (2007)

Definition: Multicultural competence, as defined by D. W. Sue (2001), is obtaining the awareness, knowledge, and skills to work with people of diverse backgrounds in an effective manner. Sue and colleagues (1982) developed the tripartite model of MCCs that includes attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, and skills. They proposed that

1) culturally competent mental health providers are aware of their own beliefs, attitudes, values, and worldviews that might impact their work with their clients;

2) they have the knowledge of beliefs, attitudes, values, and worldviews that are common to the specific populations they work with; and

3) they have the skills necessary to work with diverse populations (Sue et al., 1982).

Source: Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy

Definition: The notion that patterns of human interaction (often deemed to be normal, natural or universal) are, in fact, humanly produced and constructed by social expectation and coercion but is presented as “objective.” For example, the erroneous assumption of women being better at housework is not at all connected to their female anatomy, but to social expectations and pressures imposed on women.

Source: Harvard Diversity, Equity, Access, Inclusion & Belonging

Definition: The theory that all reality and meaning is subjective and created through dynamic interactions with other individuals and groups. Some examples of Social Constructionism include the meaning of words in language and the social construction of race.

Source: Open Education Sociology Dictionary

Definition: Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). It is a theory proposed by Henri Tajfel (1979). He proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.

Source: Adapted from Simply Psychology.org – Social Identity Theory, by Dr. Saul McLeod

Definition: A conceptual perspective on group processes and intergroup relations that assumes that groups influence their members’ self-concepts and self-esteem, particularly when individuals categorize themselves as group members and identify strongly with the group. According to this theory, people tend to favor their ingroup over an outgroup because the former is part of their self-identity. With its emphasis on the importance of group membership for the self, social identity theory contrasts with individualistic analyses of behavior that discount the importance of group identifications. [proposed in 1979 by Polish-born British social psychologist Henri Tajfel (1919–1982) and British social psychologist John C. Turner (1947–2011)]

Source: American Psychological Association – Dictionary of Psychology

Definition: The process by which societal norms influence a number of aspects that frame how members of a community live – including how they might think, behave, and hold certain values. Socialization can reinforce assumptions or expectations that give power to systems of oppression.

Source: LGBTQIA Resource Center

Definition: The process of preparing newcomers to become members of an existing social group by helping them to learn the attitudes and behaviors that are considered appropriate.

Source: American Sociological Association – Asa.org