Angleščina v medkulturnem položaju, 5. 3.

2019

THEME 2: OTHERIZATION

▪ TO OTHERIZE: View or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and
alien to oneself. ‘referring to them in these terms strips them of their identity and otherizes
them as foreigners’
▪ This theme explores a major inhibition to communication → How easily, we trap ourselves
by constructing and reducing people to be less than what they are.
▪ Discipline perceptions for successful communication.
▪ The weight of responsibility is on ‘us’ to understand ourselves, rather than on essentialist
categories of ‘them’.

I. COMMUNICATION IS ABOUT NOT PRESUMING

Falling into culturist traps
✓ Experience: The Smith Family (p. 21, 22)
✓ Deconstruction: reducing others according to a prescribed stereotype
▪ The four interconnected concepts: STEREOTYPE, PREJUDICE, CULTURISM and
OTHERIZATION.
▪ The man made observations: austere clothing, wooden furniture, a large family → the
image of the Amish presented in the movie Witness. Is it natural to these templates?
Are we rational enough to work objectively with these templates?
▪ The foreign Other: any different nationality, religion, political alignment etc. On the
other hand, we have interest, which can similarly be religious, political, gender …
Emergent evidence would be based on what can be learned with deeper
understanding → interest is always with us! When reducing, we ignore the group’s
complexity in favour of a preferred definition. The man had stereotypes about the
family based on the movie Witness – if he simply observed what he saw in situ, he
would have a more complex picture of them!
▪ Culturism: the ‘foreign Other’ can be said to share between them something cultural.
The problem is that ‘we’ can very easily take this too far and allow the notion of
‘culture’ to become greater than the people themselves. → reification: to imagine
something to be real when it is not → essentialism! Whatever the family did, the man
would perceive it as something Amish do, when they do sth that does not fit the
explanation – did they lose their culture then?
✓ Communication:

Avoid falling into the culturist trap of reducing people to less than they are – in the same way as we
must avoid racist and sexist traps!

Prepared by Nastja Vogrinc, 2. MJP

Adapted from: Holliday, A., Kullman, J. and Hyde, M. (2004). Intercultural communication. London: Routledge.
 Angleščina v medkulturnem položaju, 5. 3. 2019

II. CULTURAL DEALING

What we project onto each other
✓ Experience: Tourists and business
✓ Deconstruction: 2 main concepts: a middle culture is set up when people from different
background meet – they interact within it, it is influenced by respective complexes of cultural
baggage // middle culture influences what people see of each other – otherization.
▪ Middle cultures of dealing → overlapping cultural entities → the small cultures of the tourists
+ the villagers while they are trading with the tourists: contact with each other and which act
as the primary source of information for each other.
▪ Further influences (cultural resources): François: village’s or family’s proximity is impacts on
him // Agnes: being European, because she is with the group.
▪ The tourist culture and the trading-with-tourists culture are more temporary and yet specific
to the activities in hand: the tourists are behaving differently then at home, they fore new
cohesiveness; the village trading culture will have different characteristics to the culture of
the village itself (language use, currencies, codes of politeness – tuned to the foreign
costumers), The trading-with-tourists culture may be seen as an extension of the village
culture (which is not confined exclusively in the essentialist sense!).
▪ The model of multiple cultures: For François, it is the culture of trading with tourists which
brings him into contact with Agnes, leaving the social influences behind. When F & A meet,
they form new culture and see each other’s behaviour directly → the basis upon which they
perceive is different! → otherization becomes rampant (stereotypes they produce although
the behaviour is changed: gigolo, loose immoral) → What mistake have they done? They both
ignored the fact that each of them is involved in an intense moral struggle precipitated by the
strangeness of the situation in which they find themselves.
▪ What we see in a person’s behaviour and what they say about themselves interacts both with
the cultural resources they bring with them and the new culture they encounter. cultural
resources they bring with them and the new culture they encounter.
▪ Identity on the cusp:
Projection onto an unfamiliar What we see in a person. Resources from a familiar
culture. culture.

✓ Communication:

Be aware that what happens between yourself and others is influenced very much by the
environment within which you are communicating and your own preoccupations.

Become aware of our own preoccupations in order to understand what it is that people from other
backgrounds are responding to.

Prepared by Nastja Vogrinc, 2. MJP

Adapted from: Holliday, A., Kullman, J. and Hyde, M. (2004). Intercultural communication. London: Routledge.
 Angleščina v medkulturnem položaju, 5. 3. 2019

III. POWER AND DISCOURSE

We must be careful what we say
✓ Experience: Understanding supervisor
✓ Deconstruction: What mistakes that Jeremy have you noticed? How does Jabu feel?
▪ BEING PATRONIZING: observations based on previous experience (Are all South Africans
alike?), making her ‘special’ inhibits her ability to integrate, he rationalizes her
shortcomings in terms of her culture – inferiority? deep interest in her culture –
exoticness? + USE OF LANGUAGE! The problem of over-generalizing.
▪ FALSE SHARING: Is Jabu was German, would he make references to tribes, marriage
practices? → difficult to pin down because he could equally make militaristic references
to Germans.
▪ He mentions the work ‘tribe’? What are your thoughts, notions when you here that term?
▪ CULTURIST LANGUAGE: We might not be aware language’s influence on revealing our
‘hidden’ ideologies. → Political correctness: what are the two negativities of PC?
Unguarded language is in danger of normalizing a potentially very destructive way of
speaking and thinking about others (discipline!!!).
▪ CULTURISM – RACISM: What is Jeremy doing? Reducing Jabu to less than she is. Can he
be called a sexist? A racist?
✓ Communication:

Avoid being seduced by previous experience of the exotic.

Monitor our own language and be aware of the destructive, culturist discourses we might be
conforming to or perpetuating.

IV. TERMINOLOGY
inhibition, to inhibit a feeling that makes one self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed
and natural way
perception, to perceive the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the
senses
bias (n.) inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in
a way considered to be unfair.
complexity the state or quality of being intricate or complicated
reify, reification make (something abstract) more concrete or real
overlap extend over so as to cover partly
precipitate cause (an event or situation, typically one that is undesirable) to happen
suddenly, unexpectedly, or prematurely
preoccupation, preoccupy the state or condition of being preoccupied or engrossed with
something
patronize, patronization treat in a way that is apparently kind or helpful but that betrays a feeling
of superiority
presume, presumption suppose that something is the case on the basis of probability
perpetuating make (something) continue indefinitely

Prepared by Nastja Vogrinc, 2. MJP

Adapted from: Holliday, A., Kullman, J. and Hyde, M. (2004). Intercultural communication. London: Routledge.