Bicultural Competencies and Identities in Acculturation and Intercultural Relations

Undefined in the mainstream literature, acculturation has been a research field of bicultural attitudes. Contrastingly, this paper posits it is a second culture learning process where acquired competencies are cognitions and behavioral skills in domains of symbols, language, and axiology; parallel to first culture’s enculturation. They are bridged with affective attachments to form bi-cultural/cultural identities in these three thematic domains. Four studies are reported. The first two address acculturation and axiological identities of (a) Bangladeshi immigrants in the UK, compared to nationals from both countries (Sharmin, Study #1), and (b) Pakistani immigrants in Norway (Tariq, Study #2). A gap between family collectivism and egalitarian autonomy was found between these regions of Asia and Europe. Personal preferences were split between Western egalitarianism vs. Familism associated with the cultures of origin. This led to partial identities with the host and home cultures. The next two studies explored linguistic and symbolic identities in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Ethnic Kazakhs, Russian vs. Kazakh speakers were compared in their mutual value-attributions (Ospanova, Study#3). Irrespective of their linguistic ingroup/outgroup divide, Kazakh speakers were high in interpersonal warmth and societal traditionalism, whereas Russian speakers were high in agentic self-enhancement. The last study was focused on symbolic identities among Ukrainian and Russian L1 speakers in Ukraine (Kurapov, Study#4). Research was conducted in two waves: just before, and 5 months after the outbreak of the war. Stronger identity with national symbols was found with Ukrainian speakers. Ukrainian linguistic and symbolic identities predicted the anticipated threat of an imminent military aggression.