Cultural appropriation - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation

Acculturation

Acculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and...

or assimilation

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...

, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

and art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

cultural contexts, can take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.

Appropriation practice involves the 'appropriation' of ideas, symbols, artefacts, image, sound, objects, forms or styles from other cultures, from art history, from popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

or other aspects of man made visual or non visual culture. Anthropologists have studied the process of cultural appropriation, or cultural borrowing (which includes art and urbanism), as part of cultural change and contact between different cultures.

Overview

The term cultural appropriation can have a negative connotation. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture; or, when there are other issues involved, such as a history of ethnic or racial conflict between the two groups. A more neutral term is cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation

which does not imply blame.

Cultural and racial theorist, George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz is an American Studies Scholar and a Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. He is a lead scholar in social movements, urban culture, inequality, the politics of popular...

, outlined this concept of cultural appropriation in his seminal term "strategic anti-essentialism." Strategic anti-essentialism is defined as the calculated use of a cultural form, outside of your own, to define yourself or your group. Strategic anti-essentialism can be seen both in minority cultures and majority cultures, and are not confined to only the appropriation of the other. For example, the American band Redbone

Redbone (band)

Redbone is a Native American rock group that was most active in the 1970s. They reached the Top 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1974 with the million-selling gold-certified single, "Come and Get Your Love".-History:...

, composed of founding members of Mexican heritage, essentialized their group as belonging to the Native American tradition, and are known for their famous songs in support of the American Indian Movement

American Indian Movement

The American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...

"We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee" and "Custer Had It Coming." However, as Lipsitz argues, when the majority culture attempts to strategically anti-essentialize themselves by appropriating a minority culture, they must take great care to recognize the specific socio-historical circumstances and significance of these cultural forms so as not to perpetuate the already existing, majority vs. minority, unequal power relations.

Cultural appropriation may be defined differently in different cultures. While academics in a country such as the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, where racial dynamics had been a cause of cultural segmentation, may see many instances of intercultural communication as cultural appropriation, other countries may identify such communication as a melting pot

Melting pot

The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...

effect.

Cultural appropriation has also been seen as a site of resistance to dominant society when members of a marginalized group take and alter aspects of dominant culture to assert their agency and resistance. This is exemplified in the novel Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge

Merle Hodge

BiographyMerle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and high school education in Trinidad, and as a student of Bishop Anstey's High School, she won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls Island Scholarship in 1962. The...

when those who are colonized appropriate the culture of the colonizers. Another historical example were the Mods in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

in the 1960s, working class youth who appropriated and exaggerated the highly tailored clothing of the upper middle class. Objections have been raised to such political cultural appropriation, citing class warfare

Class conflict

Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....

and identity politics

Identity politics

Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...

Arguments in favor

Justin Britt-Gibson's article for the Washington Post looked at the appropriation of Jamaican culture by Italians and of other cultures by African-Americans as a sign of progress:

Throngs of dreadlocked
Dreadlocks
Dreadlocks, also called locks, a ras, dreads, "rasta" or Jata , are matted coils of hair. Dreadlocks are usually intentionally formed; because of the variety of different hair textures, various methods are used to encourage the formation of locks such as backcombing...

Italians were smoking joints, drinking beer, grooving to the rhythms of Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...

, Steel Pulse
Steel Pulse
Steel Pulse is a roots reggae musical band. They originally formed at Handsworth Wood Boys School, in Birmingham, England, composed of David Hinds , Basil Gabbidon , and Ronald McQueen .-History:...

and other reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

icons. Most striking was how comfortable these Italians seemed in their appropriated shoes, adopting a foreign culture and somehow making it theirs. The scene reinforced my sense of how far we've come since the days when people dressed, talked and celebrated only that which sprang from their own background. For the first time in my life, I was fully aware of the spiritual concept that we're all simply one.

That sense hasn't left me. Everywhere I look, I see young people -- such as my two younger brothers, a Japanese-anime-obsessed 11-year-old and a pastel-Polo-sporting 21-year-old -- adopting styles, hobbies and attitudes from outside the culture in which they were raised. Last month in a Los Angeles barbershop, I was waiting to get my trademark Afro cut when I noticed a brother in his late teens sitting, eyes closed, as the barber clipped his hair into a "'frohawk", the punk-inspired African American adaptation of the mohawk. Asked why he chose the look, the guy, without looking up, shrugged, "Something different." Immediately, I understood. Minutes later, his "different" cut became my new look.

Michael Lazarus, a Native American, in his essay Anti-racist Measures Take Culture Away From Sports published by the Lowell Observer writes that the use of an ethnic symbol by a sports team is a progressive, liberal act that can be used by a culture to embrace history rather than hide from it.

Examples

A common sort of cultural appropriation is the adoption of the iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

of another culture. Examples include sports teams using Native American tribal names, tattoos of Polynesia

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

n tribal iconography, Chinese character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s, or Celtic bands

Celtic art

Celtic art is the art associated with the peoples known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient peoples whose language is uncertain, but have cultural and stylistic similarities with speakers of Celtic...

worn by people who have no interest in, or understanding of their original cultural significance. When these artifacts

Cultural artifact

A cultural artifact is a term used in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology, and sociology for anything created by humans which gives information about the culture of its creator and users...

are regarded as objects that merely "look cool

Cool (aesthetic)

Something regarded as cool is an admired aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance and style, influenced by and a product of the Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of...

", or when they are mass produced

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

cheaply as consumer

Consumer

Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...

kitsch

Kitsch

Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...

, people who venerate and wish to preserve their indigenous

Indigenous peoples

cultural traditions may be offended. In Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, Aboriginal artists

Australian Aboriginal art

Indigenous Australian art is art made by the Indigenous peoples of Australia and in collaborations between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians . It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpture, ceremonial clothing and sandpainting...

have discussed an 'authenticity brand' to ensure consumers are aware of artworks claiming false Aboriginal significance. The movement for such a measure gained momentum after the 1999 conviction of John O'Loughlin for the fraudulent sale of works described as Aboriginal but painted by non-indigenous artists.

Historically, some of the most hotly debated cases of cultural appropriation have occurred in places where cultural exchange is the highest, such as along the trade routes in southwestern Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

and southeastern Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. For instance, some scholars of the Ottoman empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

and ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

argue that Ottoman and Egyptian architectural traditions have long been falsely claimed and praised as Persian or Arab, and Greco-Roman, innovations, respectively. A more subtle example is brass band music trubaci. While this kind of music is almost exclusively performed by Romani people, who may not consider themselves Serbs

Serbs

The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...

, many people of Serbian origin consider this to be their own style. On the other hand, when the middle-class Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

n band Pankrti

Pankrti

Pankrti were a punk rock band from Ljubljana, Slovenia, active in the late 1970s and during the 1980s. They were known for provocative and politically engaged songs and billed themselves "The First Punk Band Behind The Iron Curtain"...

adopted the style of London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

punk music rooted in unemployment and other issues specific to the UK

United Kingdom

, it was seen in Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

as the spread of British culture and its adaptation to the local setting.

African American culture

African American culture

African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...

historically has been the subject of a good deal of cultural appropriation, especially elements of its music

African American music

African-American music is an umbrella term given to a range of musics and musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large and significant ethnic minority of the population of the United States...

, dance, slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

, dress, and demeanor. (See blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

and cool

Cool (aesthetic)

.) For example, artists such as Eminem

Eminem

Marshall Bruce Mathers III , better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition...

, a white American who adopted a contemporary African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

musical style may be perceived this way. Another prominent example of cultural appropriation is the use of real or imaginary elements of Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

culture by North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

n summer camp

Summer camp

Summer camp is a supervised program for children or teenagers conducted during the summer months in some countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer camp are known as campers....

s, by organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America

Boy Scouts of America

The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...

, or by New Age

New Age

The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...

guru

Guru

A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...

s, some of whom put up for commercial wholesale, paraphernalia modelled on Native American healing traditions and techniques (see plastic shaman

Plastic shaman

Plastic shaman is a pejorative colloquialism applied to individuals who are attempting to pass themselves off as shamans, holy people, or other traditional spiritual leaders, but who have no genuine connection to the traditions or cultures they claim to represent...

s). Many summer camps, and many age-segregated groups of campers within summer camps, are named after real Native American tribes (Mohawk

Mohawk nation

Mohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...

, Seminole

Seminole

The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...

, etc.); tipi

Tipi

A tipi is a Lakota name for a conical tent traditionally made of animal skins and wooden poles used by the nomadic tribes and sedentary tribal dwellers of the Great Plains...

s are common at summer camps for example. The Boy Scout honor society

Honor society

In the United States, an honor society is a rank organization that recognizes excellence among peers. Numerous societies recognize various fields and circumstances. The Order of the Arrow, for example, is the national honor society of the Boy Scouts of America...

is called the Order of the Arrow

Order of the Arrow

The Order of the Arrow is the national honor society of the Boy Scouts of America . It uses American Indian-styled traditions and ceremonies to bestow recognition on scouts selected by their peers as best exemplifying the ideals of Scouting. The society was created by E. Urner Goodman, with the...

. Similarly, popular authors and non-indigenous self-styled teachers of Huna claim to be teaching authentic Native Hawaiian cultural practices, but often their notion of "Huna" is a synthesis of Freudian psychology, New Thought

New Thought

New Thought promotes the ideas that "Infinite Intelligence" or "God" is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect.Although New Thought is neither...

and New Age

New Age

metaphysical beliefs. Controversy has also arisen concerning the usage of the leprechaun

Leprechaun

A leprechaun is a type of fairy in Irish folklore, usually taking the form of an old man, clad in a red or green coat, who enjoys partaking in mischief. Like other fairy creatures, leprechauns have been linked to the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology...

mascot by the Boston Celtics

Boston Celtics

The Boston Celtics are a National Basketball Association team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They play in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. Founded in 1946, the team is currently owned by Boston Basketball Partners LLC. The Celtics play their home games at the TD Garden, which...

basketball club and the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Notre Dame Fighting Irish football

Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team is the football team of the University of Notre Dame. The team is currently coached by Brian Kelly.Notre Dame competes as an Independent at the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision level, and is a founding member of the Bowl Championship Series coalition. It is an...

football team. Some people of Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

ancestry see the usage as an example of cultural appropriation and even racism. Leprechauns appear in many Celtic mythological

Celtic mythology

Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure...

motifs, and the reduction of this mythological figure to a set of stereotypes and clichés may be perceived as offensive. A common term among the Irish for someone who appropriates or misrepresents Irish culture is Plastic Paddy
Plastic Paddy
Plastic Paddy is a slang term used to describe some members of the Irish diaspora, or those with no ancestral connection to Ireland, who appropriate Irish customs and identity. A Plastic Paddy may know little of actual Irish culture, but nevertheless assert an Irish identity...

.
In some cases, a culture usually viewed as the target of cultural appropriation can become implicated as the agent of appropriation, particularly after colonization and an extensive period re-organization of that culture under the nation-state

Nation-state

The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...

system. For example, the government of Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

has been accused of cultural appropriation in adopting the Caribbean Emancipation Day

Emancipation Day

Emancipation Day is celebrated in many former British colonies in the Caribbean and areas of the United States on various dates in observance of the emancipation of slaves of African origin. It is also observed in other areas in regard to the abolition of serfdom or other forms of...

and marketing it to African American tourists as an "African festival". A bindi

Bindi (decoration)

A bindi is a forehead decoration worn in South Asia . and Southeast Asia...

dot when worn as a decorative item by a non-Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

woman could be considered cultural appropriation, along with the use of henna

Henna

Henna is a flowering plant used since antiquity to dye skin, hair, fingernails, leather and wool. The name is also used for dye preparations derived from the plant, and for the art of temporary tattooing based on those dyes...

in mehndi

Mehndi

Mehndi or menhdi is the application of henna as a temporary form of skin decoration in India, as well as by expatriate communities from the country. The word mehndi is derived from the Sanskrit word mendhikā. The use of mehndi and turmeric is described in the earliest Vedic ritual books...

as a decoration outside traditional ceremonies.

And in some contemporary Western subculture

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

s such as gay culture

Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures

Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of persons who have shared experiences, background, or interests due to a common sexual or gender identity. Among the first to argue that members of sexual minorities can constitute cultural minorities as well as...

, metrosexual

Metrosexual

Metrosexual is a neologism derived from metropolitan and heterosexual coined in 1994 describing a man who spends a lot of time and money on shopping for his appearance...

fashion is sometimes seen as a form of cultural appropriation done by straight

Heterosexuality

Heterosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, physical or romantic attractions to persons of the opposite sex";...

men. This view is parodied in the South Park

South Park

South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...

episode "South Park is Gay!

South Park Is Gay!

"South Park Is Gay!" is the eighth episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series South Park. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on October 22, 2003...

" Another Western-styled subculture borne in the USA called Wigger

Wigger

Wigger is a pejorative slang term for a white person who emulates mannerisms, language, and fashions associated with African-American culture, particularly hip hop in the United States or the Grime/Garage scene in Britain. The term is a portmanteau of either wannabe or white and nigger...

s have often been criticised by blacks for cultural appropriation. However, black street culture has been said by some to contain examples of a type of cultural appropriation. For instance, the word "innit": - question tags such as these existed in West Country English long before it became fashionable for blacks to use them (e.g. "innum?" meaning "aren't they?", "inner?" meaning "isn't he?", "innee?" meaning "aren't you?" etc.). Another example is consonant swapping e.g. by saying "aks" instead of "ask": - consonant swapping has been common in the West Country for a long time e.g. "chillurn" (children), "gert" ("great", although used to mean "very"), "Burdgwa'er" (Bridgwater

Bridgwater

Bridgwater is a market town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is the administrative centre of the Sedgemoor district, and a major industrial centre. Bridgwater is located on the major communication routes through South West England...

) etc. In many instances though, these redefined fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

statements and changes in the way subcultural colloquialism

Colloquialism

A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...

s, slang

Slang

-forms, and linguistic idioms are used often include elements that bear a resemblance to markers of cultural identity

Cultural identity

Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....

but because they are categorically as such more in the line of trends within popular culture

Popular culture

than statements of a traditional culture, such subcultural emblematic adoption and language-use practices therefore would more aptly be described as a "borrowing" of sorts relative to the elements of one subculture being taken and implanted by another. The term cultural appropriation however is more accurately applied to those situations where indigenous cultures or oppressed minorities have been robbed of their cultural property (either overtly or more discretely) by the governments and social institutions of the majority society, and these situations have usually had turbulent historical trajectories with marked intergenerational impacts on the collective transformation undergone by both individuals and communities within these cultures.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Overview

Arguments in favor

Examples

See also

External links