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Hi. This is Cari and I’m a teacher with the online English school, Englishdom.com.
This week we’re going to talk about stereotypes. A stereotype is a simple generalization about
a group of people. We typically categorize people and then treat them accordingly. This
can also be known as pigeon-holing or stamping or labeling someone.
Hmmm…some of the ways that we stereotype people are according to race, or their religion,
their personality (for example, kids in school: the class clown, the brain, the nerd, the
jock) or according to cliques (like maybe all the kids in the drama club or all the
kids on the basketball team or the music class or even people who are in special education
classes). We also stereotype people according to their
economic status, or what part of town they live in. Gender stereotypes. We also have
stereotypes about different cultures or the countries that people are from. One example
that I remember from living here in Mexico was speaking with a taxi driver and just chatting
about different things and at one point he said, “Are you Canadian?” and I said,
“No, I’m American.” “No! You can’t be American. You’re too nice!” And I found
that very surprising and I asked him why he thought that and he said because Americans
are cold and Canadians are a very warm people. So, that was an example of stereotyping based
on culture. Some phrases or idioms that are related to
the idea of stereotyping… The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
That means that children tend to be very much like their parents.
Another is…like father, like son. Or, like mother, like daughter. And these, obviously,
mean that the child is very similar to the parent of the same sex.
Something sort of related to stereotypes is when you have a textbook case. This means
you have a classic or common example of something. This is often used in medical arenas...you
say, “Oh, this is a textbook case.” (It’s a perfect example of what we expected to see
based on our prior idea of something.) And, if you think about discussing stereotypes
or using a stereotype to categorize a person, you might want to bite your tongue. That means
that you stop yourself from saying something that may be offensive or negative to another
person. So, that’s a little bit of information about
stereotypes. Please join us in one of our discussion clubs or in the forum on our Facebook
to share more ideas. Feel English, feel free!