American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) is the idea that, compared to most people in most other countries, Americans tend to consume much more of their own cultural products and much fewer cultural products produced in other countries than people in other countries do. Americans do so largely because, globally, American culture is still, comparatively speaking, the dominant culture. Globally speaking, it is also the most central culture. That is, people located in cultures outside of the United States are pointed toward the American “center” much more than the other way around.
Cultural products range from films, videos, television series and pop music to books, magazines, and newspapers. The primary notable exception to American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) is food: Americans are, according to the Theory of American Cultural Insularity in the Center, much more open to consuming food items that originate in other cultures than they are to consuming most media content such as books, films, TV series, and pop music. However, ACIC is applied primarily to understanding and explaining Americans’ larger tendencies toward consuming cultural media products rather than non-media products such as food and clothing.
A large component of ACIC is language: Americans, especially Americans from the dominant fundamental (white) group are, on the whole, comparatively monolingual in English, meaning large numbers of Americans are fluent only in English and lack fluency in other languages. This is due to a variety of factors. The fact that “their” language dominates globally is the biggest reason for widespread American monolingualism.
Monolingualism profoundly undergirds American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC). It is apparent in, for instance, Americans’ general aversion toward consuming foreign films in languages other than English and, perhaps most pronounced in relation to popular music where songs sung in English, and to some extent in Spanish, tend to be the only ones listened to by largely monolingual Americans.