Archive for the ‘Vocabulary’ Category
Friday, July 18th, 2008
Glossary of Cross-Cultural Communication Terminology | Part Four
- Rites of intensification — religious practices that increase group solidarity and commitment
- Rites of passage — religious practices that mark an individual’s passage from one life stage into another
- Role — the behavior, attitudes, and values associated with a particular status
- Role conflict — conflict between the demands of a single role or between roles
- Role set — an array of roles that accrue to a particular status
- Rules of descent — a set of ordered relations limiting recruitment into various kinship groups
- Secondary groups — utilitarian, formal, and impersonal groups
- Selector — a tool used to discriminate among several inputs
- Skill — the acquired ability to apply a given technique effectively and readil
- Social class — those people on a social scale who see themselves as equal and are seen as equal by others on the scale
- Social organization — the regularization of interpersonal relations
- Society — a social organization made up of a group of people who share a geogrpahical area and a culture
- Sororal polygyny — a marriage arangement by which a man marries a woman and er sisters
- Sororate marriage — an arrangement by which if a woman dies childless, her sister marries the widower
- State — a governmentall unit based territoriality, cultural organization, and formal government
- Status — a position or place in a social system with its attendant rights and duties
- Stratification — a hierarchy of statuses
- Subculture — a cluster of behavior patterns related to the general culture and yet distinguishable from it
- Survey — a research technique involving collecting data by systematic questioning of individuals
- Switch — a valve with a finite number of positions
- Technique — a set of categores and plans used to acheive a given end
- Technological systems — those parts of culture that enable man to produce objective changes in his physical and biological environment
- Technology — the sum total of all the social customs by which a people manipulate entities and substances of all kinds
- Terms of address — terms used to address persons
- Terms of reference — terms used to talk about persons
- Tools — devices for transmitting, transforming, or storing energy
- Totem — a nonhuman “progenitor” of a clan
- Trap — a tool that is a selector combined with a container
- Tribe — a group of people who share a language, culture, and territory and see themselves as an autonomous unit
- Unilateral descent — descent traced through only one parent
- Urban anthropology — the crosscultural study of urbanization
- Valve — a device that passes different kinds or quantities of input at different times
- Vehicle — a tool used to transmit stored objects, energy, or information through space
- Vertical status — the hierarchical ordering of statuses
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Friday, July 11th, 2008
Glossary of Cross-Cultural Communication Terminology | Part Three
- Language — verbal, systematic, and symbolic communication
- Laws — rules and regulations that are enforced by the state
- Levirate marriage — an arrangement by which if a man dies childless, his brother marries the widow
- Mana — supernatural nonpersonalized forces in animistic religions
- Marriage — a pattern of norms and customs that define and control the relationship between a man and a woman, designating them as legitimate sex partners
- Matrilineal descent — descent traced through the mother’s line
- Matrilocal residence — a living arrangement in which a couple live with the wife’s family
- Mechanism — arrangements of media designed to transmit or modify the application of power, force, or motion
- Media — tools used to transmit matter or energy through space while preserving their essential qualities
- Medical anthropology — the application of cultural criteria to the practice of medicine and response to medical, clinical, and educational practices
- Moiety — the division of a tribe into two groups, based on birth
- Monogamy — a marriage arrangement in which each individual has only one mate
- Mores — social norms of a moral nature
- Mutually exclusive — groups in which membership in one group precludes membership in the other group
- Neolocal residence — an arrangement by which a couple lives apart from both partners’ families and sets up a new household
- Noninclusive groups — groups in which joint membership is neither precluded nor requisite
- Nonverbal communication — the process by which a message is sent and received through any one or more of the sense channels, without the use of spoken language
- Norms — regular and accepted patterns of behavior
- Nuclear family — a husband and wife and their immature children
- Overlapping groups — groups in which membership in one group does not preclude membership in the other group or groups
- Parallel cousin — the child of one’s parent’s same-sex sibling
- Participant observation — systematic observation while participating in a society
- Patrilineal descent — descent traced through the father’s line
- Patrilocal residence — a living arrangement in which a couple live with the husband’s family
- Peasant economies — subsocieties of a larger stratified society that is either preindustrial or semiindustrial
- Phratry — a group of two or more clans held together either by kinship or mutual interest
- Polyandry — a marriage arrangement in which a female has more than one husband
- Polygamy — a marriage arrangement in which a person has multiple mates
- Polygyny — a marriage arrangement in which a male has more than one wife
- Primary group — a small, intimate, and informal group
- Primogeniture — a system of inheritance in which the family’s wealth and position is passed on to the first-born son
- Proximic communication — transmission of messages that utilizes space
- Quasi-experimental design — a methodology similar to that of using an experimental design but in which the researcher cannot control all the factors
- Rationalization — a psychological defense process by which an individual recasts a difficult situation into one that is acceptable
- Religion — the shared beliefs and belief practices of a people. These may or may not be supernatural in character
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Friday, July 4th, 2008
Glossary of Cross-Cultural Communication Terminology | Part Two
- Endogamy — a sociological rule requiring a person to select a mate from within a culturally defined group of which both are members
- Eskimo kinship system — a bilateral, linear kinship system
- Ethnocentrism — the practice of interpreting and evaluating behavior and objects by reference to the standards of one’s own culture rather than those of the culture to which they belong
- Ethnography — the descriptive study of human societies
- Ethnohistory — the cultural history of a people
- Ethnology — comparative ethnography
- Ethnoscience — a linguistic approach to the study of nonverbal culture
- Ethnotheology — a discipline concerned with the deculturalization and contextualization of theology
- Exogamy — a sociological rule requiring that potential mates come from different culturally defined groups
- Experimental design — a methodology used to control various factors in an experimental study
- Extended family — a living arrangement in which two or more related nuclear families share a household
- Family of orientation — the family one is born into
- Family of procreation — the family one forms by marriage
- Fictive ties — socio-legal kinship relationships
- Folkways — low-level norms such as customs and manners
- Foraging — food acquisition by gathering naturally growing foodstuffs
- Formal government — an independent system or social institution set up for the purpose of governing
- Fraternal polyandry — a marriage arrangement in which a woman marries a man and his brothers
- Functional equivalent — something in one culture that performs the same function as something else in another culture
- Government — a society’s mechanisms and structures for the maintenance of order and communal decision making
- Group — a unit of two or more people involved in communication and interrelationship and having “unit awareness”
- Hawaiian kinship system — a bilateral, generational kinship system
- Horizontal status — a status on the same level or having the same rank as another
- Horticulture — intensive types of agriculture involving killing certain plant growth and planing other plant growth with higher food value
- Hunting — the catching and killing of wildlife for food
- Hypothesis — a statement to be tested by a scientific methodology
- Idiolect — an individual usage of a language
- Incest taboo — the prohibition against mating with or marrying kinsman
- Inclusive groups — groups in which membership in one group means inclusion in another group
- Independent variable — a factor that is varied in an experimental study
- Informal government — a governmental system based on an already-existing system such as the kinship system
- Iroquois kinship system — a unilateral, linear kinship system
- Kinesic communication — the transmission of messages by body movements
- Kinship — a network of family relationships
- Kin term — a specific term in a specific language used to refer to a kin type
- Kin type — an abstract concept of a relationship that can be described in every culture
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Friday, June 27th, 2008
Glossary of Cross-Cultural Communication Terminology | Part One
- Acculturation — the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge and skills that enable them to more or less function in a second culture
- Achieved statue — a status obtained through choice and achievement
- Adjudication — the process involving delegating decisions to others
- Affinal ties — kinship relationships by marriage
- Animism — the religion of primitive people based on a belief in a spirit world
- Anthropology — the study of man as a biological, psychological, and sociological culture bearing being
- Archaeology — the study of the artifacts of prehistoric societies
- Artifact — any portion of the material environment deliberately used or modified for use by man
- Ascribed status — a status that society assigns to an individual, usually based on characteristics of birth such as race and sex
- Assimilation — the total adaptation to a new culture
- Avunculocal residence — a living arrangement by which a married couple live with the brother of the wife’s mother
- Behavioral sciences — those sciences that study human behavior, including anthropology, psychology, and sociology
- Bilateral descent — descent traced through both parents
- Clan — a consanguinely related group, patrilineal or matrilineal, believing in a common descent
- Clinical design — the application of anthropology to a social problem
- Cognitive anthropology — the study of the organizing principles underlying behavior
- Community — a corporate body sharing sociopolitical identity and a geographic area
- Compartmentalization — a psychological process by which a person boxes off conflicting things from each other
- Consanguine ties — kinship relationships based on biological relationships
- Container — a tool used to sore matter or energy for a length of time while preserving it from loss or contamination
- Converter — a tool that changes one kind or form of matter or energy into another
- Cross cousin — the child of one’s parent’s sibling of the opposite sex
- Cultural anthropology — the branch of anthropology concerned with the study of existing human cultures
- Cultural determinism — the approach to human behavior that sees culture as the determining factor of behavior
- Cultural relativism — the approach to an interpretation and evaluation of behavior and objects by reference to the normative and value standards of the culture to which the behavior or objects belong.
- Culture — the learned and shared attitudes, values, and ways of behaving of a people; also the artifacts of the people
- Culture complex — a cluster of related culture traits seen as a single unit
- Culture shock — the reaction experienced by an individual who comes to live in a new and different culture
- Culture trait — the smallest unit of culture; individual acts characteristically done by members of a culture
- Dependent variable — the observed factor in an experimental study
- Deviance — behavior that violates normative rules
- Dialect — a variation of a language
- Economics — the production, distribution, purchase, and consumption of goods and services
- Educational anthropology — the comparative study of socialization and enculturation processes
- Enculturation — the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that enable them to become more or less functioning members of their society.
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