Stereotype In Cross-cultural Communication And Its Implications For ESL Teaching

Culture is a way of perceiving, believing, evaluating and behaving. The word "communication" originated from the Latin word "commutio" which means common and sharing. Culture is closely related to communication in the sense that culture is the basis for communication while communication has impact on culture. Yet both are pervasive, endless, dynamic and symbolic. At the same time individuals are inseparable from culture because, in the words of Kant is that "we are living in Culture while Culture is in our mind." On one hand, we are influenced by our culture and our thinking and behaviors tend to conform to the social norms and expectations just like weeds in the wind; On the other hand, we are weeds, capable of thinking—we are continuously adjust our thinking, behaviors and stereotype for effective and efficient communication. In the process stereotype are generated, confirmed, or disconfirmed and transmitted from generation to generation. Against the background of "global village", there are many instances of miscommunication or misunderstanding partially due to the influence of stereotype. Stereotype has both positive and passive impact, which makes stereotype a possible bridge or pitfall for cross-culture communication.Stereotype in the thesis refers to the images which persons or groups have of each other, the pictures in their heads that they have of one another. A distinction between auto-stereotype and hetero-stereotype is made. Stereotype is an inevitable and pervasive cognitive process and phenomena which are manifested in many ways and in many "faces", such as racial stereotype, age stereotype, class stereotype, gender stereotype. The thesis adopted questionnaire which is based on that of Sun Li (2004), to explore the stereotype of Chinese adolescents toward Canadian, Chinese and "I".This thesis explores stereotype from the perspective of culture, psychology and pedagogy, and it could be divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction about the definitions of culture, communication and stereotypes. This chapter also gives readers some clue as to how and why I choose stereotype as research orientation. Chapter 2 is literature review traces the historical study about stereotype both abroad and in China, and introduces some relevant theories and methods of stereotype research; the sources of stereotype and stances of researchers are also discussed. The focus of this chapter is the underpinning theories of stereotype. Chapter 3 reports a survey carried out in four schools of Da Lian and data analysis result with SPSS along ten dimensions (morality, wealth, attitude, reason-politeness, emotion, complexion, temperament or disposition, male-chauvinism, body features and collectivism awareness). Chapter 4 discusses the implications of stereotype for ESL teaching and learning, including teaching philosophy, teaching methods and tips as well. Chapter 5 is the conclusion of this thesis.