Concept in Definition ABC

The American term is a gentilicio that is used to refer to all those people, spaces or even objects that come from America. Usually, the use of this term can generate some kind of controversy since there are different ways of understanding it depending on where we are located or what we are referring to. Thus, most Americans call themselves "Americans", excluding from this category to the rest of the inhabitants of the continent (This is because the full name of the country is the United States of America). For them, the rest of the Americans are not called that, but the specific space from which they come is highlighted, for example "South American" or "Central American". However, the rest of the countries of America tend to use a more joint designation and usually use "American" to refer to any inhabitant of the continent.

This interesting difference that is generated when using the name has become a species ideological struggle that confronts the United States with the rest of America by considering this northern country as an imperialist country that seeks to exclude from its own

identity to the rest of the countries that actually belong to the continent. This is why the use of the term varies depending on the position one takes.

When we speak of American as part of the identity of a continent, we cannot speak of only one type of identity but we must speak of multiple identities or cultural forms that have been established around the inheritance of three major groups or ethnic groups: that of the native aborigines who inhabited the territory before the European arrival, that of the Europeans and finally that of the African blacks who were forcibly brought to the continent as slaves. Each region of the continent shows a greater predominance of some of these three ethnic groups as well as others show an increasing communion or integration of two or more of them.

The word American is a very broad word that can be used not only to designate a region but also cultural expressions, forms of government, to typical social groups of the region, to international integration among the countries that make up the continent, etc.

Topics in American