University of Pittsburgh

Give the short description of the four stages of acculturation ?

The four stages are tourist, survivor, immigrant, citizen. I am not able to understand about the four stage of acculturation. Please would you give me the easy description to make me understand ?

Asked by
Last updated by jill d #170087
Answers 1
Add Yours

You are too funny! Those may be the four stages of SOMETHING, but it's not acculturation.

The challenge of learning a new language and the

culture that goes with it is one that all LEP students face.

They require a period of adjustment to the new and baf-

fling ways of saying and doing things that they encounter

every day. Four successive stages that each student will

pass through on the road to acculturation have been iden-

tified:

1. Euphoria. During this initial phase the students will

experience a period of excitement over the newness

of the surroundings.

2. Culture Shock. This term refers to phenomena rang-

ing from mild irritability to deep psychological panic

and crisis. Culture shock is associated with the

learner’s feelings of estrangement, anger, hostility, in-

decision, frustration, unhappiness, sadness, loneliness,

homesickness, and even physical illness. Persons un-

dergoing culture shock view their new world with

resentment and alternate between being angry at oth-

ers for not understanding them and being filled with

self-pity.

3. Anomie. This is a stage of gradual—and at first ten-

tative and vacillating—recovery. This stage is typi-

fied by what is called “culture stress”: some problems

of acculturation are solved while others continue for

some time. As individuals begin to accept the differ-

ences in thinking and feeling that surround them,

they slowly become more empathic with other per-

sons in the second culture. Anomie might be de-

scribed as a feeling of homelessness, where one feels

neither bound firmly to one’s native culture nor fully

adapted to the second culture.

4. Assimilation or Adaptation. This fourth stage rep-

resents near or full recovery as shown by acceptance

of the new culture and self-confidence in the “new”

person who has developed in this culture.

Source(s)

http://suwannee.schooldesk.net/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=fKDb-XZfA3g%3D&tabid=14927&mid=23761