Week 8 Reading Response

Cultural Representions: Culture and Teaching Materials

SUMMARY:

Holliday et. al; A 3.1 and 3.2

Section A 3.1 discussed the the problems that media representations create with respect to intercultural communication. The authors provide us with a vignette of a Canadian teacher struggling with communicating with a refugee as a result of her perception of him being tainted by both media and professional images. The authors recommend that an individual "bracket popular representations" and rather 1. "be aware of the media, political, and institutional on our own society which lead us to see people from other cultural backgrounds in a certain way" and "See through these images and fictions when we encounter people from other cultural backgrounds, and always try to consider alternative representations."

Section A 3.2 deconstructed some real-life examples of essentialization and otherization. The authors talk about how "dominant discourses can be so naturalized that people become unaware of them". Essentialism ties very much into this notion as well. The authors suggest that we should:

"Be aware of dominant discourses which are easily perpetuated by the media, and which lead us to think-as-usual that familiar images of the foreign Other are normal."

"Be aware that even images projected by sensitive, intellectual sources can seduce our own sensitivities and intellects into thinking they are true."

Lastly the authors mention about sensationalism:

"Although sensationalism in the media is something we know about and guard against, we need to appreciate how deeply it exists in our traditional views of the foreign Other."


Holliday et al; B 3.2 and B 3.3


Section B 3.2 discusses social constructionism and social representations. The authors explain that our perceptions of the world might be said to be socially constructed. They state that social representations have an historical dimension. There are four key assumptions, according to the authors, they are:

1. A critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge
2. Historical and cultural specificity
3. Knowledge is sustained by social processes
4. Knowledge and social action go together

The authors finally explain in this section how to interpret and explain cultural representations.

Section B 3.3 examines representations in the media. Particularly, how these representations can be misleading for a multitude of reasons. Noam Chomsky argues that the news media provides us with 'a very narrow, very tightly constrained and grotesquely inaccurate account of the world in which we live'. Through the texts in this section, numerous authors critically challenge media discourse as being essentializing in nature.


Tyer-Mendes 2010: Construction of racial stereotypes in EFL textbooks

This article discussed the problems surrounding sample images used in EFL text books. The author researched EFL teacher and student attitudes toward images used in EFL textbooks. The responses were surprising to the researchers. They found that the subjects were responsive to the power-imbalance issues implied through the use of these images. The subjects articulated what the researchers were suggesting about the images. Finally, the researchers suggested ways of encouraging educators and students to critically think about the images presented in textbooks, and try to problematize the implications of these photos.

RESPONSE

These readings were interesting because they take another aspect of intercultural communications and critically dissect how these aspects (Media and professional images, textbook images) influence our perceptions of cultures different from our own. You never really think about where your ideas about those from different cultures come from. Sometimes, its from conversations you have with others (but you need to remind yourself that an individual does NOT represent the culture group you associate them with), and more often, it is from the media that we get our preconceived notions about different cultures. We often let the rhetoric of these discourses influence our notions of other cultures. Some times we don't even notice or are aware of the influence. This is especially problematic because we take these assumptions for granted. For example, an individual might think that a Mexican's favorite food is tacos (or nachos).  Where does this notion come from? It is hard to say. But for an EFL learner, it might be even more difficult to decide what to believe, especially if they are not thinking critically about the typical assumptions we make in intercultural discourse. We, as future educators, have a responsibility to encourage critical thinking skills about the images and representations that the media portrays to us.