John Wesley Powell is credited with creating the word acculturation. Powell defined "acculturation" as the psychological changes brought by cross cultural imitation. Acculturation is a process in which members of one cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviors of another cultural group. Although acculturation is usually in the direction of a minority group adopting habits and language patterns of the dominant group, acculturation can be shared meaning that the prevailing group also adopts patterns typical of the minority group. Integration of one cultural group into another may be evident by changes in language preference and loss of separate political or ethnic identification.
