Developing intercultural communicative skills

Activity III Match body language idioms with suitable definition
Time: 10 min
Material : Handout 5
Handout 5
Activity IV Body language collocation
Time: 10 min


Material : Handout 6
Procedure: Make 5 sentences of using body language collocations
Handout 6


Home Home assignment

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  Make two activities based on the whole material
  
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  Find additional fact about the body language in Uzbek culture
  

Lesson 5 Extralinguistic issues in cross-cultural communication (attitudes, rituals, traditions, body language, taboos and social roles in different cultures, stereotypes, images, symbols)
Activity 1
A stereotype is “...a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.” (Cardwell, 1996). 
Stereotyping is assuming that “they’re all alike.” It’s looking at a whole group of people and assuming that they all share certain qualities. For example, when you meet an elderly lady, you might assume that she has certain traits – that she likes to knit, or is a grandmother. But these assumptions are stereotypes, and there’s no guarantee that they are right! After all, the lady might not have any grandchildren or might prefer dancing. Stereotypes are very common in popular culture, and can be found in literature as well – mostly due to a lack of information or awareness on the part of the writer but also for comedic effect.
One advantage of a stereotype is that it enables us to respond rapidly to situations because we may have had a similar experience before.
One disadvantage is that it makes us ignore differences between individuals; therefore we think things about people that might not be true (i.e. make generalizations).
The use of stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world; since they reduce the amount of processing (i.e. thinking) we have to do when we meet a new person.
By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorization, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes (i.e. “them” and “us” mentality) which leads to in-groups and out-groups.
Most stereotypes probably tend to convey a negative impression. Positive examples would include judges (the phrase “sober as a judge” would suggest this is a stereotype with a very respectable set of characteristics), overweight people (who are often seen as “jolly”) and television news readers (usually seen as highly dependable, respectable and impartial). Negative stereotypes seem far more common, however.