2.1 Reviewing Acculturation Research Chronologically

It is defined in the online thesaurus of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization（UNESCO）that, "Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups.”This is a paraphrased version of the often cited definition given by anthropologists Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits（1936）in the Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation.Two decades after its publication, the Social Science Council Summer Seminar on Acculturation came to a similar understanding of acculturation“as culture change that is initiated by the conjunction of two or more autonomous cultural systems”（Social Science Research Council, 1954）.When the definitions used by prominent scholars are placed together, it is easy to see the shared consensus on the key elements that characterize this process.Sam（2006）summarized it neatly, in the first chapter of The Cambridge Handbook of Acculturation Psychology, that the building blocks of acculturation are contact, reciprocal influence and change.First of all, acculturation results from contacts between culturally different people（be it at individual or group levels）.Secondly, it has an impact on all who are involved, although to various extents.Thirdly, changes are likely to be observed in those who are involved in cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains.

The publication records in PsycINFO（see Figure 2.1）provide a good sketch of the academic interests in this phenomenon.This bibliographic database covers a wide range of journals, book chapters, and dissertations in psychology and communication which are the two most important publication platforms for acculturation research.“Acculturation”as an index term was assigned to 3, 788 records in total（October 16, 2012）.The number of publications by year is graphed in Figure 2.1. It shows clearly a soaring interest in this phenomenon from the academia since the 90's.In fact, since 2005, there have been over 200 English publications per year. Index terms that are frequently associated with these publications include immigrant, ethnic identity, Hispanics（including Mexican Americans）, and Asians.This gives a glimpse, to an extent, of which populations are the most studied and what concepts are often studied together in acculturation research.

Figure 2.1 Trend of Scholarly Publications Indexed with Acculturation in PsycINFO Database

The types of people that acculturation researchers have interests in are immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, sojourners, and indigenous peoples（Sam, 2006）.The immigrants and sojourners are the most studied groups.The difference between them is that immigrants expect to stay in the host culture permanently, while soj ourning is a temporary state to accomplish tasks or goals such as business, education, humanitarian aid, or military service.Business people assigned to overseas posts and international students constitute the two biggest portions of the sojourners.Their acculturation contexts sometimes differ considerably from immigrants given that they often function in only a few domains in the host country and there is much institutionalized support targeting them.

The outcomes of acculturation are normally termed as adaptation or adjustment. Researchers have found relationships between how individuals acculturate and how well they adapt（Sam & Berry, 2010）.The outcomes of acculturation appear empirically to be two independent but related domains:sociocultural（behavioral）and psychological（affective）adaptation/adjustment.The sociocultural adaptation is often measured by the skills acquired by the acculturating person so that he or she can fit in the new cultural community and behave properly.Thus, a cultural learning framework is useful for explanation.The psychological domain is better understood in terms of a stress-coping framework developed from clinical practices involving immigrants, refugees, or sojourners.It is often measured by general life satisfaction, depression, homesickness, etc.（Ward, 1996; Ward & Kennedy, 1993, 1999）.

The process itself and subsequent changes incurred by the acculturation experience have been theorized and modeled in various ways.The first type is process oriented.One of the most known to the general public is probably the Ucurve hypothesis（Oberg, 1960; Ward, Okura, Kennedy, &Kojima, 1998）.Its graphic representation shows the ups and downs experienced by those in the process of acculturation, hence the name of the theory.The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity（Bennett, 1993）and the Stress-Coping-Growth model（Kim, 2008）are two other well-known examples.

A second type is typological in nature.The widely known and most used b-i dimensional framework elaborated in the works of John Berry and his colleagues（i.e., Berry, 1997b, 1999, 2003; Berry&Annis, 1974）is characteristic of this type.This model categorizes acculturation attitudes, identity preferences, and behavioral orientations into types according to the four patterns of opinions on two issues:（1）whether it is preferable to maintain heritage/ethno-culture;（2）whether it is preferable to make contact with or adopt behavior of other culture（s）.The interactive model developed by Bourhis and his colleagues（Bourhis, Moise, Perreault, &Senecal, 1997）and the relative model by Navas and others（Navas, et al., 2005; Navas, Rojas, Garcia, &Pumares, 2007）both fall into this category as extensions of Berry's original model.

The third type is the component model.They normally include individua-l and societal or cultural level constructs that matter in the acculturation context.Berry's framework for acculturation research（1997b, 2001）, theABC model（referring to the affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of acculturation）proposed by Ward, Bochner, and Furnham's（2001）, and Framework of Acculturation（ArendsToth, Van de Vijver, and Berry, 2006）are illustrative of this kind.

It is easy to criticize any of the models mentioned above as they all have limitations, but what should be kept in mind is that they all have functioned well in representing and explaining part of the phenomenon in focus.For example, the process models are good at capturing long-term trends in acculturation experience, be it cultural learning, emotional adjustment, or personal growth（e.g., Jackson, 2008; Pitts, 2009; Ward et al., 1998）.The typological models define meaningful and generalizable rules that can profile or categorize acculturating behavior and people, and relate them to specific outcomes（e.g., Berry, Phinney, Sam, &Vedder, 2006; Nguyen&Benet-Martínez, 2013）.The component models help the researchers keep in mind the big picture in designing and interpreting findings or developing theories.Taken together, these theoretical frameworks and models provide different angles to mirror the phenomenon labeled as“acculturation”. What is excluded from one theory might be the focus of the other.The point is that all of them together contribute to an all-round understanding of what acculturation involves, implies, and influences.

The current research is interested in finding out the relationship between acculturation behavior and its outcomes, and is most informed and inspired by the bi-dimensional framework.So, the next subsection reviews in detail the evolution of this framework and its models.