The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
acculturation
(uh-kul-chuh-RAY-shuhn) The learning of the ideas, values, conventions, and behavior that characterize a social group. (Seesocialization.) Acculturation is also used to describe the results of contact between two or more different cultures; a new, composite culture emerges, in which some existing cultural features are combined, some are lost, and new features are generated. Usually one culture is dominant (as in the case of colonization).