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The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture. It is particularly used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the United States. The melting-together metaphor was in use by the 1780s.〔p.50 See "..whether assimilation ought to be seen as an egalitarian or hegemonic process, ...two viewpoints are represented by the melting-pot and Anglo-conformity models, respectively" 〕 The exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in the United States after it was used as a metaphor describing a fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities in the 1908 play of the same name. The desirability of assimilation and the melting pot model has been reconsidered by some proponents of multiculturalism, who have suggested alternative metaphors to describe the current American society, such as a ''mosaic'', ''salad bowl'', or ''kaleidoscope'', in which different cultures mix, but remain distinct in some aspects.〔Jason J. McDonald. American Ethnic History: Themes and Perspectives. (2007) ISBN 978-0-8135-4227-0 https://books.google.com/books?id=InEqAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions〕 Others argue that cultural assimilation is important to the maintenance of national unity, and should be promoted. ==Origins of the term== In the 18th and 19th centuries, the metaphor of a "crucible" or "smelting pot" was used to describe the fusion of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures. It was used together with concepts of the United States as an ideal republic and a "city upon a hill" or new promised land. It was a metaphor for the idealized process of immigration and colonization by which different nationalities, cultures and "races" (a term that could encompass nationality, ethnicity and race) were to blend into a new, virtuous community, and it was connected to utopian visions of the emergence of an American "new man". While "melting" was in common use the exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in 1908, after the premiere of the play ''The Melting Pot'' by Israel Zangwill. The first use in American literature of the concept of immigrants "melting" into the receiving culture are found in the writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. In his ''Letters from an American Farmer'' (1782) Crevecoeur writes, in response to his own question, "What then is the American, this new man?" that the American is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are ''melted'' into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world." In 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson, alluding to the development of European civilization out of the medieval Dark Ages, wrote in his private journal of America as the Utopian product of a culturally and racially mixed "smelting pot", but only in 1912 were his remarks first published. In his writing, Emerson explicitly welcomed the racial intermixing of whites and non-whites, a highly controversial view during his lifetime. A magazine article in 1876 used the metaphor explicitly: In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner also used the metaphor of immigrants melting into one American culture. In his essay ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', he referred to the "composite nationality" of the American people, arguing that the frontier had functioned as a "crucible" where "the immigrants were Americanized, liberated and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics". In his 1905 travel narrative ''The American Scene'', Henry James discusses cultural intermixing in New York City as a "fusion, as of elements in solution in a vast hot pot".〔, p. 116〕 The exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in the United States after it was used as a metaphor describing a fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities in the 1908 play of the same name, first performed in Washington, D.C., where the immigrant protagonist declared: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Melting pot」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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