Personality & Impressions

The topic presented in Construction of Racial Stereotypes in English as a Foreign Language textbooks was one that that is relatively new to me. The study explored how the images in textbooks, which represent English culture, shaped students' and teachers' impressions of the target foreign-language culture. The students and teachers thought that the United States is portrayed as the land of White elite, Blacks are represented as poor or powerless while Whites seem wealthy and powerful, and race is divided by continent. Whites were portrayed as powerful because they were usually wearing suits, or nice clothing, while blacks were not dressed that way. The physical positioning also played a factor in how races were perceived. It shows men as playing a larger role in society. The continent dividing is incorrect because no one country is made up of one race. There is diversity on every continent, whether it is more easily seen or not. The pictures create a certain discourse for the English-speaking countries that is not positive in my thoughts. It represents a White elitist nation. The images do not properly represent English-speakers; they represent Hollywood’s view on the topic. The first time I thought about illustrations in books was when I took a Children’s Literature class. Our teacher taught us that some books have come out with new editions that represent race more equally. For example there was a book in which white children were seen playing in a playground in the first edition. In the second, they added children of color where there were no children before. People may not think about how they are portraying English-speakers, but they need to be conscious that it is in a positive light.

            Personality and its social construction was one of the topics of Intercultural Communication. One of the fundamental assumptions of the common-sense view of personality is that it is stable across situations and over time. I disagree with this because as we grow as people, our personalities change, just as the rest of us do, like our bodies and knowledge. We also change our personality depending of the situation that we are in. We might be shy around new people, but outgoing around our friends. Because of this, personality is socially constructed. However, we should not judge people’s personalities based on first impressions. We do not know their whole story just by looking at them. There can be more going on in their lives than they display. As Burr states, personality exists not within people, but between them. This is well-represented in the example that people would not be considered friendly, caring, etc, if they were living on an island by themselves because they would have no one to interact with. Therefore, relationships construct personality. The other part of the book examined how society constructs the foreign “Other”. A major source of prejudicing, as told in the stories, is the information from the national media. We are fed information from the television, radio, and press. When we are in educator positions, we are in roles that allow us to be a source of knowledge to our students, who may be new to the country. If this is true, instead of teaching the language in order to live and work in the US, educators need to empower their students to express their identity. We need to be more aware of the images in our society that influence how we see other people. Whether we know it or not, everything we do is a portrayal of our culture and personality. Therefore it is important that we are conscious of what we are doing and see things from an outsider’s perspective. As an educator, we have the opportunity to open student’s minds to other possibilities and encourage them to express themselves as opposed to an identity created by society.