Thursday, July 12, 2007

Avoiding Stereotypes

Once of the greatest challenges facing students who travel to a new culture is carrying with them stereotypes or incorrect images of the target culture. Such images can be seen in the media (movies, music, and newspapers), and these images can lead to negative judgments about others. A simple example of a stereotype is that all North Americans love fast food and pizza. This is obviously not true. Some North Americans do eat a lot of fast food, but even more and more restaurants serve healthy food choices. What stereotypes do people have of your culture? How can this affect how they interact with others. Please share your ideas.

Randall

6 comments:

  1. Some people think that people in the US can't use chopsticks. In fact, Asians are surprised when they see Americans using them. In fact, more and more people use them, so it isn't unusual.

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  2. . . . agreed. I think Asians have low expectations of Americans in general. Although to some extent they are legitimate, Asians tend to have a conceit in believing us too stupid to learn their language.

    Asians also make the same mistakes as many Americans cannot tell the difference between Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Pacific-Islanders. Asians often can't tell the difference between themselves.

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  3. Today, we are surrounded by stereotypes. Some stereotypes give a bad image to certain societies. We usually judge people by the first impression we have of them. We should try to really know people, see what their preferences are, and not judge them for what they look like.

    VIKING THE GREAT . Zamorano, Honduras

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  4. Stereotypes have become a great problem in our world. Reasons..... well different cultures like the Asian ones mentioned above, are considered by outsiders, to only eat with chopsticks. The thing is that if you decide to deeply analize the culture`s society, you may be surprised when you see the huge food variety`s and utensils that Asians have...

    ALVARO SANTOS, ZAMORANO, HONDURAS C.A-

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  5. stereotypes do chnage the images of the peolpe, and we have somo responsability on these because we accept the comments they make

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  6. Brazilians are generally thought of to be tactile people, meaning that we love to hug and kiss even those we are not really acquainted with. This is by no means true. Firstly, there are introverted people anywhere in the world, it's not different here in Brazil.
    The image that is spread in the media is that we love to party and that we are really laid back people.
    Well, I, myself, love going to bed
    early. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for posting a comment. I appreciate your interesting in sharing your ideas.

Best,

Randall

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