Talk:Biculturalism

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Does anybody know what the author of "In the context of deafness, the word biculturalism is used less controversially because the distinction (between spoken language and sign language) is commonly recognised as a genuine binary distinction transcending the distinctions between various spoken languages." means? A little bit of explanation might help. Biculturalism is not just a national policy and a deafness-related term. It is also a personal experience, which I suppose would place it in the realm of psychology. What happens to people of mixed ethnic heritage, who develop understandings of two different cultures? Or immigrants, who learn the culture of their new country while retaining their own? I'll try to figure out a way to work biculturalism as a personal phenomenon in.--Rockero 02:20, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Biculturalism vs Monoculturalism vs Multiculturalism

Biculturalism is also described as when a country has two large ethnic or religious groups of comparable size, and little other diversity. Examples include Fiji (indigenous Fijians and Indians), Quebec (francophones and anglophones), Rwanda (Hutus and Tutsis), Macedonia (indigenous Macedonians and Albanians) and Sri Lanka (Singhalese and Tamils)

A bicultural country is possibly at greater risk of instability since the second most dominant group (in terms of economic or military power, or simply actual numbers) may be large or powerful enough to threaten the largest group, and to use their strength to leverage political concessions or succession. The ruling group consequently is aware of its insecurity, and may try to keep its elite status through any kind of means, from granting concessions to repressing dissent.

Alternatively, in a multicultural society, the second largest group would likely to be relatively less powerful, and could instead be threatened by the dominant group allying itself with (for example) the third largest group. Consider how Britain could control large swathes of the world by populating colonies with other colonised people it would ally with against the indigenous population, yet could still not maintain good control of bicultural Northern Ireland.