More Stereotypes

Hello, viewers, readers, or listeners
This installment includes another dosage of everyones favorite subject. No, not ape fights, but stereotypes. Richard Dryer writes a chapter called The Role of Stereotypes in which he breaks down a quote from Walter Lippmann. "We can begin to understand something of how stereotypes work by following up the ideas raised by Lippmann- in particular his stress on stereotypes as (i) an ordering process, (ii) a 'short cut', (iii) referring to 'the world', and (iv) expressing 'our' values and beliefs" (pg 11). Dryer breaks up the rest of the chapter into the i's above. By an ordering process he meant that a society has a need to describe itself in any way possible. Unfortunately, this descriptive process can lead to something along the lines of a stereotype. The idea of stereotypes being a short cut is really like saying it is a condensing of multiple ideas into an everyday term. So, when you say something like "drunk Irish" there are more social terms being throw around. When Dryer was talking about stereotypes as a reference to the "world" I believe what he was saying is that certain stereotypes appear as a function of understanding for all to see. Dryer mentions how this is easily seen in fiction and like the short cuts there are many more things at play. Finally, Dryer talks about stereotypes (how many times am I going to write stereotypes for this class?) as as expression of values. This means that this shows how one group determines the stereotypes for one other group. Expression of values is like a circle theory or like a snake biting its own tail. You create a stereotype for one group, and you learn about that same group from that stereotype.

One book actually came to mind when thinking of the expression of values portion of the chapter.


For those who do not know what this is it is simply a book talking about the necessities of being a man in a simple alphabet form (A is for this, B is for that, etc). This book plays into a lot of the stereotypes that circle around men and how they should act. This book also portrays women in a fashion of.....well, typical stereotypes put to an extreme level. While it is meant to be comical (actually I'm not sure if it is. The author is quite odd to put it lightly) it does point out a many issues that were common stereotypes that were once (and can still be) considered right about men and women.

This book was written by what you could call a famous internet star named Maddox whose website is http://maddox.xmission.com/. I felt the need to intentionally not activate the link simply because its content (seriously though, this is offensive stuff. If you do go, go with a mind wide open.)
image from http://www.alphabetofmanliness.com/