How Should I Respond to Them? An Emergent Categorization of Responses to Interpersonally Communicated Stereotypes

Abstract

Political correctness defines stereotypes as inappropriate to communicate. However, responses that interpersonally communicated stereotypes receive in conversation may collaboratively produce a different meaning about the appropriateness of stereotype use. The current research reports two studies that explore responses to interpersonally communicated stereotypes and the role these responses play in the perpetuation of stereotypes. This project contributes qualitative research in intercultural communication that exposes a variety of tolerant response types available to communicators and demonstrates how these responses are managed interactionally in ways that show tolerance for communicated stereotypes.

Keywords:

• Stereotypes
• Political Correctness
• Face
• Discourse/Conversation Analysis
• Membership Categorization

Notes

Study one is dedicated to Patrick Velez by the first author for his help, patience, and guidance with this project.

1. For a more thorough review of literature on stereotypes, see Kurylo (2013).

2. The research is not intended to and is nor able to make claims related to the accuracy or inaccuracy of stereotypes in general or in any single stereotype in particular.

3. Pseudonyms are used for all participants mentioned in this research. All accounts from participants that are quoted in this paper are reproduced exactly as they were written, including any grammatical errors.

4. Fourteen of the dropped accounts described cognitive stereotypes that were not communicated. Six described stereotypes that were communicated in interactions that occurred over a year prior to the data collection and were, therefore, not recent. One was not based on a first-hand experience.

5. “Goomba” is an East Coast New York dialect slur for an Italian American.

6. The results of the study are not intended to or able to speak to the frequency with which response types occurred in the data in any generalizable way.

7. Two of the recordings include the second author (herein JR); both take place in 2008, years prior to this paper’s project.

8. The research does not attempt to argue which stereotypes do or do not exist in any cultural knowledge base and instead takes its cues for what constitutes a stereotype not from the researcher’s perspective, but rather from (1) the participants talk and response (2) from MCDs that reflect stereotypes in the ways we have described regardless of the content of any single stereotype.

9. The Japanese and German utterances are spelled as they were pronounced.

10. It is not the intent or the ability of this study to speak to the frequency with which any single response type emerges in the data. Rather the goal is to identify emergent response types to create a preliminary taxonomy of responses that has not been discussed in prior research, and to examine how people actually respond to stereotypes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anastacia Kurylo

Anastacia Kurylo (PhD, Rutgers University) is president of Fortified Communication Consulting (FortifiedCommunication.com). She has taught communication-related topics for 15 years at numerous colleges, including Marymount Manhattan College, New York University, Pace University, Rutgers University, and St. John’s University. She specializes in diversity and inclusion strategies that examine how stereotypes are casually communicated in business contexts. She has edited Inter/Cultural Communication: Representation and Construction of Culture published with SAGE and authored The Communicated Stereotype: From Media to Everyday Talk published with Lexington Press.

Jessica S. Robles

Jessica S. Robles (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) is a lecturer in Communication at the University of Washington. She has taught at the University of Colorado, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Washington. Her research focuses on interactionally, relationally, and culturally situated morality as a communicative practice and takes a discourse analytic perspective to the role of difference in local communicative challenges. She recently coauthored the second edition of the book Everyday Talk: Building and Reflecting Identities with first author Karen Tracy.