| Argot | Specialized language used by members of a group or subculture.
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| Counterculture | A subculture that deliberately opposes certain aspects of the larger culture.
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| Cultural relativism | The viewing of people’s behavior from the perspective of their own culture.
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| Cultural universal | A common practice or belief shared by all societies.
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| Culture | The totality of our shared language, knowledge, material objects, and behavior.
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| Culture lag | A period of adjustment when the nonmaterial culture is still struggling to adapt to new material conditions.
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| Culture shock | The feelings of disorientation, uncertainty, and even fear that people experience when they encounter unfamiliar cultural practices.
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| Diffusion | The process by which a cultural item spreads from group to group or society to society.
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| Discovery | The process of making known or sharing the existence of an aspect of reality.
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| Dominant ideology | A set of cultural beliefs and practices that legitimates existing powerful social, economic, and political interests.
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| Ethnocentrism | The tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others.
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| Folkways | Norms governing everyday social behavior, whose violation raise comparatively little concern.
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| Formal norm | A norm that generally has been written down and that specifies strict punishments for violators.
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| Informal norm | A norm that is generally understood but not precisely recorded.
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| Innovation | The process of introducing a new idea or object into a culture through discovery or invention.
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| Invention | The combination of existing cultural items into a form that did not exist before.
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| Language | A system of shared symbols; it includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, and nonverbal gestures and expressions.
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| Laws | Formal norms enforced by the state.
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| Material culture | The physical or technological aspects of our daily lives.
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| Mores | Norms deemed highly necessary to the welfare of a society.
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| Nonmaterial culture | Ways of using material objects, as well as customs, ideas, expressions, beliefs, knowledge, philosophies, governments, and patterns of communication.
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| Nonverbal communication | The use of gestures, facial expressions, and other visual images to communicate.
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| Norm | An established standard of behavior maintained by a society.
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| Sanction | A penalty or reward for conduct concerning a social norm.
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| Sapir-Whorf hypothesis | The idea that the language a person uses shapes his or her perception of reality and therefore his or her thoughts and actions.
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| Society | The structure of relationships within which culture is created and shared through regularized patterns of social interaction.
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| Sociobiology | The systematic study of how biology affects human social behavior.
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| Subculture | A segment of society that shares a distinctive pattern of mores, folkways, and values that differs from the pattern of the larger society.
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| Technology | Cultural information about how to use the material resources of the environment to satisfy human needs and desires.
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| Value | A collective conception of what is considered good, desirable, and proper—or bad, undesirable, and improper—in a culture.
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