assimilation

1 the state of being assimilated; people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family

2 the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another [syn: absorption]

3 the process of absorbing nutrients into the body after digestion [syn: absorption]

4 a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound

5 the process of assimilating new ideas into an existing cognitive structure [syn: acculturation]

6 in the theories of Jean Piaget: the application of a general schema to a particular instance

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes with: -eɪʃǝn

Noun

1. The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated.
2. The metabolic conversion of nutriments into tissue.
3. In the context of "by extension": The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.
4. A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs.
5. The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.

Related terms

• assimilate

Assimilation (from Latin assimilatio; "to render similar") may refer to more than one article:

• Assimilation (linguistics), a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound
• Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adopts the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture
  • Language shift or language assimilation, the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language
  • Americanization (of Native Americans), cultural assimilation of Native Americans in the United States
  • Jewish assimilation
• Assimilation (biology), the conversion of nutrient into the fluid or solid substance of the body, by the processes of digestion and absorption
• Assimilation (meteorology), the process of objectively adapting the model state (of a numerical weather prediction model) to observations in a statistical optimal way taking into account model and observation errors.
• Assimilation (philosophy), incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes

See also

• Assimilating race in science fiction
  • Assimilation (Star Trek), process used by the fictional Star Trek Borg race to integrate a being into their collective structure
  • Biological assimilation is also used by the Zerg in the StarCraft series as a way of incorporating the genetics of other species into their own genepool.
  • In Superman, assimilation is the method of being stabbed or injected with kryptonite
• In psychoanalysis, a mutual penetration of conscious and unconscious contents
• In Piagetian developmental psychology, one of the twin processes whereby concepts are modified (along with accommodation)
• In computer science, the modification of anti-virus software to detect a new virus
• In typesetting, the symmetry property possessed in varying degrees by a typeface that creates mirror relationships and other similarities of form between letters
• L'assimilande, a novel by Paul Laurendeau about fast-paced linguistic assimilation triggered by a technical device called the glottophore.

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