Culture of the United States

Culture of the United States
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This article is about the culture of the United States. For customs and way of life, see Society of the United States.
This article is move-protected due to vandalism.

The development of the culture of the United States of America — History, Holidays, Sports, Religion, Cuisine, Literature, Poetry, Music, Dance, Visual Arts, Cinema, and Architecture — has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration: European ideals, especially British, and domestic originality.

American culture encompasses traditions, ideals, customs, beliefs, values, arts, and innovations developed both domestically and imported via colonization and immigration. Prevalent ideas and ideals from the European continent such as Democracy, various forms of Monotheism, and Civil liberties are present as well as those which evolved domestically such as important National holidays, uniquely American sports, proud military tradition, innovations in the arts and entertainment, and a strong sense of national pride among the population as a whole.

It includes both conservative and liberal elements, military and scientific competitiveness, political structures, risk taking and free expression, materialist and moral elements.

It also includes elements which evolved from Native Americans, and other ethnic subcultures; most prominently African-American and Latin American culture. Many cultural elements, especially popular culture have been exported across the globe through modern mass media, but a few of the cultural elements have remained rather exclusive to North America.
Culture of the
United States

Architecture
Cinema
Comic books
Cuisine
Dance
Literature
Music
Poetry
Radio
Sculpture
Sport
Television
Theater
Visual arts
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Languages
* 2 Literature
* 3 Faith
o 3.1 Religious Statistics for the United States
* 4 National Holidays
* 5 Cuisine
* 6 Sports
o 6.1 Sports and community culture
* 7 Scientific
* 8 Visual arts
o 8.1 Architecture
o 8.2 Sculpture
* 9 Popular culture
o 9.1 Fashion
o 9.2 Theater
o 9.3 Television
o 9.4 Music
o 9.5 Films
o 9.6 Dance
* 10 References
* 11 See also

[edit] Languages
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With over two-thirds of the planet's native English speakers, the United States is the second most populous English speaking country in the world (after India)[citation needed] and the most populous in terms of native speakers. Although the country has no official language at the federal level, 30 states have passed legislation making English the official language.

According to the 2007 American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau, Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by over 34 million people aged 5 or older[1]. Many live in the border states with Mexico but also significantly in Florida, Illinois, and New York as well as other areas. Additionally, Spanish is co-official next to English in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Bilingual speakers may use both English and Spanish reasonably well but code-switch according to their dialog partner or context. Some refer to this phenomenon as Spanglish.

French is spoken in parts of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Native American languages such as Navajo are used in Arizona and New Mexico, while numerous other indigenous languages are spoken on the country’s numerous Indian reservations and Native American cultural events such as Pow wows. There are also numerous minority languages spoken among immigrant populations.

Hawaiian is official next to English in the state of Hawaii. In the US commonwealths of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Chamorro is co-official next to English. The Northern Mariana Islands also recognizes Carolinian in an official capacity. Also, Samoan is co-official in the US commonwealth of American Samoa.

The American variety of English contains numerous loan words from European, Native American, Asian and African languages, that frequently also enter other varieties of English through American English.

[edit] Literature
Main article: Literature of the United States
Mark Twain is regarded as among the greatest writers in American history.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, would be recognized as America's other essential poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.[2] A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel". Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction were developed in the United States.

[edit] Faith
Main article: Religion in the United States
Completed in 1716, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña is one of numerous surviving colonial Spanish missions in the United States. These were primarily used to convert the Native Americans to Roman Catholicism.
Surrounded by sleek modern skyscrapers, Saint Patrick's Cathedral stands as the last old world holdout of New York's Rockefeller Plaza

Among developed countries, the US is one of the most religious in terms of its demographics. According to a 2002 study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, the US was the only developed nation in the survey where a majority of citizens reported that religion played a "very important" role in their lives, an attitude similar to that found in its neighbors in Latin America.[3]

Several of the original Thirteen Colonies were established by English and Irish settlers who wished to practice their own religion without discrimination or persecution as religious extremists in Europe: Pennsylvania was established by Quakers, Maryland by Roman Catholics and the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Puritans. Nine of the thirteen colonies had official public religions. Yet by the time of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the United States became one of the first countries in the world to enact freedom of religion by way of a codified separation of church and state.

Modeling the provisions concerning religion within the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the framers of the United States Constitution rejected any religious test for office, and the First Amendment specifically denied the central government any power to enact any law respecting either an establishment of religion, or prohibiting its free exercise. In following decades, the animating spirit behind the constitution's Establishment Clause led to the disestablishment of the official religions within the member states. The framers were mainly influenced by secular, Enlightenment ideals, but they also considered the pragmatic concerns of minority religious groups who did not want to be under the power or influence of a state religion that did not represent them.[4] Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence said "The priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot."[5]

[edit] Religious Statistics for the United States

It should be noted the following information is a ballpark estimate as actual statistics constantly vary.

According to the CIA,[6] the following is the percentage of followers of different religions in the United States:

* Christian: (78.5%)
o Protestant (51.3%)
o Roman Catholic (23.9%)
o Mormon (1.7%)
o other Christian (1.6%)
* unaffiliated (12.1%)
* none (4%)
* other or unspecified (2.5%)
* Jewish (1.7%)
* Buddhist (0.7%)
* Muslim (0.6%)