“Acculturation” is not a common term in literary studies; it has been used mainly in sociological and anthropological studies. The term did not find its way into The Oxford English Dictionary until 1989; it first appeared in the writings of an American geologist and ethnologist, John Wesley Powell, in 1880. Despite the fact that study of cultural modifications is international, the term is still primarily American. The study of acculturation has gone beyond the realm of cultural anthropology, and numerous studies have been conducted to define and conceptualize cultural adaptations between a subculture and the dominant culture. In a sense, acculturation is not a recent phenomenon in human history, nor is it a rare theme in literature. With the rise of the multidisciplinary approach to research and, particularly, the development of the concept of multiculturalism, acculturation has been a constant theme in scholarship.
