Stereotypes - positive or just lazy
 

Let me say up front that derogatory and discriminatory stereotypes are not a good thing.

My thoughts are in regard to stereotyping benefitting communication. Communication is really a relaying of mental pictures from one person to another. Those pictures are converted into a set of words which are received by the listener and then converted once again into pictures in the mind. Is it any wonder that we have so many problems with communication? My thoughts are this - a stereotype can give you a mental picture with just one word. Someone who is communicating can use that mental picture to get their point across much more quickly and clearly. Could we automatically turn to stereotyping to hasten our communication? Is it lazy? or it is simplifying things so that our communication can be more clear?

For example: A simple stereotype (I can use this one cause I am blonde) is using the term "blonde" in reference to a person's mental ability. I myself have said "I'm having a blonde day." That expresses to my friends that I'm just not on the top of my game and feel a little out of it. I just don't have to use so many words. I'm not using it in a derogatory manner. I'm simply using the stereotypical picture to express my feelings and state of mind. Would you say this is oversimplifying things? or it is good communication? Being verbose simply bores people and eventually the communication breaks down because the listener stops receiving the words or converting them into a mental image. It's as much the speaker as the listeners fault most of the time when communication breaks down.

Can you think of other "positive" uses of stereotypes? Are there some stereotypes that have NO positive use?

Maybe I'm just rambling. This thought popped into my head juts yesterday and I haven't ruminated on it long. Hope you don't mind me dwelling on it here. Writing/typing it out helps me think it through.

I believe that all stereotypes can be used positively and negatively. How they're received is based purely on context.

The one I get all the time? "God, you're such a nerd." I concur. I am a nerd. I don't fit all the usual imagery (glasses, runny nose, afraid of women), but I certainly am nerdy. I fix computers for fun. I'd rather stay up all night playing computer games or D&D than have a few beers. It's just who I am, and my friends love me for it.

But in a different context, that same word could be derogatory. I don't personally use it that way, but I've heard nerd often used to mean "different than us," or "smarter than us, so we're going to beat you up." I didn't hear those often directed at me, because I fought back, but I still DID hear them.

If you can't embrace a stereotype as positive or endearing, then you haven't really engaged it. When I was younger, I thought nerd was always a bad thing. Then I came to terms with it, and I realized it's almost always a compliment, and I take it as such. Again, it's about context.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Words themselves - all of them - are very poor substitutes for experience. Our dependence on turning our experiences into words and then processing those words as if they are the same thing as the experience they so poorly reflect is our primary mental disease.

"Oh, there must be more to life/
than stereotypes"

Blur

;)

And, erm, I think in an attempt to actually answer your question... the kind of thing you talk about seems prone to miscommunication to me, because how can you know that the person you are talking to has the same understanding of the code word as you?

Well said. I think that is the coolest thing I have read in years.

He has a way of doing that. I agree, Art.

I agree. Words are words- they are man-created and have given us the power to create such things as stereotypes, not to mention misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and emotional strings we tend to attach to these words. I don't talk much, because I want to feel and be in the experience as fully as I can, and I don't let words affect my experience with misconceptions, judgement, or offensiveness. Given, I can't go around completely communicating telephathically with everyone, because we have all created such a distracted, noisy environment with words- but I do listen behind the words that are said. Like I said, they're just words.
I know may seem like it's steering off topic, but stereotypes are words in which people have put images and ideas to- and those images and ideas are all different. Just if you were to say you saw a "hick" today, you may picture a dirty, tobacco-chewing man w/crooked teeth, being quite obnoxious while another would picture a tight-jeaned man with tucked-in button-up shirt, cowboy hat & boots or even a raggedy- dressed, foul-smelling woman with crooked teeth....the list could go on.....

The Sapir-Warf Hypothesis. Words determine our reality. Read up on it, its standard Anthropology.



Edit: Apparently I couldn't remember how to spell "Whorf"

Edit #2: Finally got the real spelling...I was right about Warf, wrong about Sapir.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis will get you there.

Thanks, Yzerman.

well then...

http://toolsforwriters.org/writingwi...hawnaDiasDraft

even MORE reason for Bill Cosby to speak out...

EDIT:

Absolutely, Cynthetic. This sort of thing is the number one consideration in my thought process as regards anything involving human beings and our minds. Without these insights and constant internal reminders of the traps, we are simply lost in our disconnected ideas of what is and is not "real".

In an attempt to order a complex world, humans develop mental shortcuts for processing information. Evolutionarily speaking, if you had to stop and think every time you encountered an object or a person, by the time you figured out if they were dangerous or not, you could be dead. So we put things into mental categories, and when we encounter something similar to what we've encountered before, ZIP! it goes into its proper file in our consciousness.

Raeanna, I think what you're talking about is less "stereotyping" per se than this kind of mental shortcutting, although there's a fine line.

Positive or negative shortcut depends on the context and on the audience. If you say the word "American" it conjures up a different picture depending on whether you live in the U.S. or in, say, Yemen. If you say the word "hero" it brings up a different archetype depending on whether you're male or female, Western or Eastern, etc. "Blonde" might conjure up a ditz to some people, but it also might conjure up for me memories of my beautiful blonde girlffriend, or conventional notions of beauty and purity. Chances are it's both/and, not either/or.

I think the thing to note is that, as ART says, this kind of stereotyping/shortcutting is nearly inevitable given the poor metaphor that language is for actual experiences/objects. Unless you can somehow short-circuit the process of automatic mental shortcuts (it's possible, just difficult: see the concept of "reframing") it's inevitable that people are going to take the path of least mental resistance.