Virtuous English AcademyGlobalisation & Culture — B2 English Vocabulary
This B2 vocabulary list gathers 50 upper-intermediate English words about globalisation & culture — identity, heritage and a connected world. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
- #B2
- #DailyLife
- #Flashcards
- #Definitions
- #Examples
- #Pronunciation
Using globalisation & culture words in English
Cultural vocabulary requires care because several of these words describe people, and imprecision reads as carelessness. Ethnicity, nationality and race are not synonyms. The page also separates assimilation from integration, which is one of the central debates in migration policy, and settles the British -isation spelling that runs through the whole topic.
What to watch out for
Ethnicity, nationality, race
Nationality is a legal relationship with a state and appears on a passport. Ethnicity refers to shared cultural heritage — language, ancestry, tradition — and is not tied to a state. Race is a contested category based on perceived physical characteristics, and modern writing tends to prefer ethnicity unless the context is specifically about racism. A person can hold one nationality and belong to a quite different ethnic group.
Assimilation absorbs; integration includes
Assimilation means a minority group giving up its distinct culture and becoming indistinguishable from the majority. Integration means participating fully in society while retaining a distinct identity. The two describe opposite policy goals, and using them interchangeably reverses the argument being made. Multiculturalism is the position that distinct cultures should be actively maintained.
Ritual, rite, etiquette, and the -isation spelling
A rite is a formal ceremonial act, often religious; a ritual is the repeated pattern of such acts, and can be secular: her morning ritual. Etiquette is uncountable and means the conventions of polite behaviour. British English spells this topic’s abstract nouns with -isation: globalisation, westernisation, marginalisation.
Words learners mix up
Writing about culture goes wrong in two ways: using a word for descent when you mean community, and using a word for an old object when you mean an old practice. A third cluster is simply about which terms are still acceptable.
Words for where you come from
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| ancestry | The line of people you are descended from. Uncountable, and about biological descent. | She traced her ancestry to a village in Donegal. |
| lineage | A traceable line of descent, often one that confers status. More formal, and countable. | A family that claims a royal lineage. |
| kinship | The relationships of family, and the system a society uses to organise them. Uncountable, and a technical term in anthropology. | The study maps kinship across four villages. |
| diaspora | A population living scattered outside its ancestral homeland. About where people are now, not who they descend from. | The Armenian diaspora in France. |
| roots | The informal, warm word for the place and culture you come from. Plural only in this sense. | He went back to Jamaica to find his roots. |
Diaspora is the one that describes a situation rather than a bloodline, which is why it takes a definite article and a nationality: the Irish diaspora. It originally referred to the dispersal of the Jewish people, and it retains a sense of displacement — a group of expatriates who chose to move is not usually called one.
Old objects, old practices, old inheritance
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| artefact | An object made by people, especially one studied by archaeologists. British spelling; American English writes artifact. | Bronze Age artefacts from the site. |
| relic | Something surviving from the past — and, in religion, a revered physical remnant of a saint. | A relic of an industry that has gone. |
| heirloom | A valued object passed down within one family. Personal, not institutional. | The watch is a family heirloom. |
| folklore | The traditional stories and beliefs of a people. Uncountable, and it is knowledge rather than an object. | A creature from local folklore. |
| legacy | What someone or something leaves behind — usually abstract: influence, consequences, reputation. | The legacy of the empire is still argued over. |
The three concrete words differ by who owns them: an artefact belongs to the record, a relic to the past or to a faith, an heirloom to a family. Legacy is the abstract one and it is morally neutral — a legacy can be admired or resented, which is why colonial legacy works.
Describing another culture: what is still acceptable?
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| indigenous | Originating in and native to a particular place. The accepted term for peoples who preceded colonisation, and often capitalised when naming them. | Indigenous land rights. |
| primitive | In technical prehistory, early in a sequence. Applied to living peoples it is offensive, and no longer used in serious writing. | Nineteenth-century accounts called them primitive. |
| westernisation | A society adopting Western practices and values. Descriptive, but it takes the West as the reference point, so it is not perfectly neutral. | Rapid westernisation of the cities. |
| assimilate | To absorb a minority into the majority culture. The verb behind the policy — and the loss it implies is the point of the criticism. | Policies designed to assimilate the community. |
Primitive is the word to strike from your active vocabulary for describing people: it ranks cultures on a single ladder with the writer at the top. Where you mean technologically simple, say so; where you mean early, say early. Recognising it in older sources is still necessary, which is why it is on this list.
Collocations that sound natural
Cultural writing reuses a small set of pairings, and several nouns here take only one verb. These are the frames that occur in ethnography, travel writing and IELTS essays alike.
identity
cultural identitya sense of identitynational identityidentity politics
A sense of is the standard frame for something felt rather than documented — the same construction gives a sense of belonging.
pilgrimage
make a pilgrimagea pilgrimage toan annual pilgrimage
The verb is make, and the preposition to. Used figuratively of any journey undertaken with reverence: a pilgrimage to the stadium.
etiquette
a breach of etiquettebusiness etiquettethe rules of etiquette
Uncountable, never etiquettes. French in origin and it keeps the stress on the last syllable in British English.
legacy
leave a legacya lasting legacythe colonial legacya contested legacy
delicacy
a local delicacyconsidered a delicacyregarded as a delicacy
Countable in this food sense. It also has an unrelated uncountable sense meaning tact: handled with delicacy.
inherit
inherit a traditioninherit propertyan inherited condition
Takes a direct object with no preposition — inherit from names the person, not the thing: she inherited it from her grandmother.
Formal, neutral or informal?
This is a topic where the vocabulary has moved considerably in the last thirty years. Several words that appear in older sources now signal a viewpoint the writer may not intend to endorse.
- primitiveAvoid of living peoplesNow read as ranking cultures rather than describing them. Acceptable only in technical prehistory or when quoting a historical source, and worth flagging when you do.
- indigenousRespectful · often capitalisedWidely preferred to older alternatives. Many style guides capitalise it when it names specific peoples — Indigenous Australians — and lower-case it for plants and animals native to a region.
- artefactBritish spellingAmerican English writes artifact. British archaeological writing keeps the e, matching this site’s conventions throughout.
- cosmopolitanApproving · but positionedAt home in many countries and cultures. Generally a compliment in British usage, though it has been used pejoratively in political rhetoric to imply rootlessness, so context does matter.
- secularNeutral · technicalNot connected with religion. It describes institutions and states rather than beliefs — a secular state may be full of religious people, and a person who has no belief is an atheist or non-religious.
- folkloreUncountableNo plural and no article in most uses: according to folklore. It also extends to the informal shared stories of any group: company folklore.
- patriotismPositive twin of a negativeLove of one’s country, and generally approving. Its neighbour nationalism is usually critical in British usage, and the pair is a standard example of how the same sentiment gets two labels depending on the speaker.
- fusionNeutral · food and musicThe blending of two traditions, and it is now most common in fusion cuisine and musical fusion. In sociology the more precise words are syncretism or hybridity.
Sentences to try
Four frames from writing about culture. Each of these words has a narrower meaning than it first appears.
- The census records ethnicity separately from nationality.
- The policy encourages integration rather than assimilation.
- The ceremony is an ancient rite still practised in the region.
- Globalisation has weakened many local conventions.
Questions about globalisation & culture vocabulary
What is the difference between ethnicity and nationality?
Nationality is a legal status: the country whose citizenship you hold, recorded on your passport. Ethnicity is cultural and ancestral: a shared heritage of language, tradition, religion or origin, which does not depend on any state. Someone can hold British nationality and be of Kurdish, Nigerian or Polish ethnicity. Race is a further term again, based on perceived physical characteristics; it is contested as a biological category and careful modern writing uses it mainly when discussing racism itself.
What is the difference between assimilation and integration?
They describe opposite outcomes. Assimilation means a minority group progressively losing its distinctive culture and becoming indistinguishable from the majority. Integration means participating fully in the economic and civic life of a society while retaining a distinct cultural identity. Because migration debates turn on exactly this difference, swapping the words reverses the position you appear to be arguing for. Multiculturalism goes further than integration and holds that distinct cultures should be actively supported.
Should I write "globalisation" or "globalization"?
British English prefers globalisation with an s, and that is the form used throughout this site. American English always writes globalization. Oxford University Press is a notable British exception and uses -ize, so both spellings appear in respectable British publications. The practical rule is to choose one and apply it consistently across a whole document, including related words such as westernisation, marginalise, organise and modernise.