Language in Use 149-150
This unit considers the extent to which our most firmly held assumptions about
the world are often bound up with our use of common words, because the assumptions
become attached to the words, and we acquire the words unreflectingly through
their presence in our language. It takes the particular example of our
words for people of different nationalities and explores the ways in which they
determine how we think of other nations, because their use carries with it assumptions
we have never examined.
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[1] The aim of the first session is to get the class to provide their own interpretations of common labels for nationalities. Divide the class into small groups each with a reporter who will require a grid, each column across labelled with the name of a nationality and each line down with a common characteristic. The reporter notes which characteristics his group assigns to each nationality. The nationalities should include at least one from the U.K., one from the Commonwealth, and one from each continent. The characteristics can be such things as easy-going, well-dressed, religious, highly emotional, ill-mannered, unsporting.
[2] This session begins with each reporter announcing his group's decisions,
which are recorded on the board, so as to build up a composite class picture
for each nationality. The next stage is to ask the class how they knew what
characteristics to assign to each nationality.
Questions like:
(a) has anyone visited these countries?
(b) has anyone met people from them?
(c) has anyone seen film or T.V. about them?
will help to focus the discussion upon any discrepancy between what the labels
imply and what people are really like.
[3] This session extends the inquiry by looking at a stereotyped written description. The object is to explore the ways in which such stereotypes come to be passed on by comics, fiction, television, film, theatre or radio. W. E. Johns, Alistair Maclean and Ian Fleming are the sort of writers who will provide the type of figure required.
[4] The class return to their original groups to prepare and perform a short dramatic sketch which makes use of a stereotype the class as a whole are asked to identify. As an alternative to [4], or in addition, short stories can be written around a stereotype and circulated for class discussion.
F3 enables the exploration to be taken further by examining those words that are used pejoratively or affectionately to refer to people of different nationality.