The Basic Concepts

Since this study aims to describe the stereotyped representation of the foreigner in Egyptian cinema, this chapter will introduce the fundamental terms that form the basis of the thesis, i.e. ‘representation’ and ‘stereotype’ in media studies. I will then move on to discuss some notions that constitute my study’s theoretical frame and help describe and understand linguistically such stereotyped representation. These notions are ‘register’,

‘simplified registers’, ‘foreigner talk’, ‘broken language’ and ‘interference’, within the frame of linguistic variation and its typology. Finally, I will introduce the corpus of this study. I will explain the process of selecting, processing and transcribing this corpus, together with all difficulties encountered during its compilation.

1.1.1 Representation

The Dictionary of Media and Communications (Danesi 2009: 253) defines as

‘representation’ as:

the way in which someone or something is portrayed or depicted in media, a way that generally possesses an underlying view. The ways in which media represent events, situations, and people are construed to either mirror or construct reality. Moreover, research has shown that events that are showcased on TV or on Internet are felt as being more significant and historically meaningful to society than those that are not.

Similarly, Kroon (2010: 559) emphasizes representation’s semiotic function, defining it as “the process by which creative works assign meaning to the images they depict; the relationship between actual places, people, events, and ideas and the resulting media content; describing using imagery.”

In assigning meaning to the ideas they stand for, representations rely on existing and culturally understood signs and images, on the learned reciprocity of language and various signifying or textual systems. They are the concrete form (signifiers) taken by

core of cultural and political life. Nevertheless, representations inevitably involve a process of selection in which some signs are privileged over others (Hartley 2004: 202).

Accordingly, media representation accuracy is questioned. However, and according to Hartley (2004: 203), “rather than looking for accuracy, it is perhaps more useful to understand the discourses that support the image in question.” We will come back to that question later in this chapter when discussing the accuracy of the ‘stereotype’ being “a common form of media representation” (Kroon 2010: 559).

In intersubjective relationships, representations play an essential social role. As a matter of fact, Dyer (2002: 1) emphasizes that “how social groups are treated in cultural representation is part and parcel of how they are treated in life […] How we are seen determines in part how we are treated; how we treat others is based on how we see them;

such seeing comes from representation.”

1.1.2 Stereotype

As a cultural model through which we perceive, interpret, and describe reality, the

‘stereotype’ is necessarily linked to representation (Amossy 1984: 689). The term

‘stereotype’ is used in different theoretical disciplines, but in each respective field it refers to quite heterogeneous phenomena (Schweinitz 2011: 3). Defining stereotyping has been problematic—there are tens, if not hundreds of definitions in the literature, although they are mostly based on the general idea of stereotypes as knowledge structures that serve as mental ‘pictures’ of the groups in question (Stangor 2009: 2).

The term ‘stereotype’ derives through the French stéréotype from the Greek στερεός (stereós), ‘firm, solid’, and τύπος, ‘type, impression’ (Webster 1872: 703), for a method of printing using solid plate. It was around 1850 that ‘stereotype’ began to refer to ‘an image perpetuated without change”, i.e. to refer to the image itself rather than the printing method (Rosenthal 2010: 35). Thence, the term also implies monotonous regularity—

each page printed from a stereotype is always the same (Hartley 2004: 215–6).

Through the field of social psychology, Walter Lippmann brought the notion of stereotype into the public sphere. He dedicated a whole section to investigating the nature of stereotypes and their socio-psychological and cognitive functions in his renowned Public Opinion (1922: 79–156). According to Lippmann, stereotypes are

an ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things.

We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members. We know the way around. There we find the charm of the familiar, the normal, the dependable. (Lippmann 1922: 95, emphasis original)

Stereotype precedes the use of reason; it is a form of perception and imposes a certain character on the data of our senses before the data reach the intelligence. It stamps itself upon the evidence in the very act of securing the evidence (Lippmann 1922: 98–9, see also Mitchell 2005: 20 and McKee 2001: 594).

Lippmann (1922: 96, see also Schweinitz 2011: 8–9) considers stereotype to be of an ambivalent nature: stereotypes, on the one hand, are not neutral, but they are the fortress of our tradition, and behind their defenses we can continue to feel ourselves safe in the position we occupy, on the other hand. Stereotype may be so consistently and authoritatively transmitted in each generation from parent to child that it seems almost like a biological fact and the systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society (Lippmann 1922: 93, 95). Similarly, Mitchell (2005: 296) asserts that

We all know that stereotypes are bad, false images that prevent us from truly seeing other people. We also know that stereotypes are, at a minimum, a necessary evil [emphasis original], that we could not make sense of or recognize objects or other people without the capacity to form images that allow us to distinguish one thing from another, one person from another, one class of things from another.

While attempting to grasp a reality that is diversified and complex by definition,

“stereotype would act as a screen and therefore as an obstacle; in this sense it would be the opposite and the negation of representation.” Stereotype is not merely a cultural model but, rather, it represents a hyperbolic figure of that model. Through exaggeration, it exacerbates and distorts the general rule. It displays itself in the margin of excess where forms become fixed and hardened (Amossy 1984: 689–90, see also Mitchell 2005: 296).

Or, to put it in the words of Kroon (2010: 559), it “does not represent reality as much as it re–presents reality.” Dialectically, stereotyped representation is, by nature, non-representative.

In fact, usually the stereotype was described as ‘inaccurate’ and ‘negative’. We can see that in many of its basic definitions: “stereotype is a fixed impression, which conforms very little to the fact it pretends to represent, and results from our defining first and observing second” (Katz & Braly 1935: 191, emphasis original); “stereotype is an exaggerated belief associated with a category” (Allport 1954: 191); “stereotypes are oversimplified assessments applied as generalizations, constituting a form of biased prejudgment” (Danesi 2009: 277); “usually applied to negative impressions or pernicious representational techniques” (Hartley 2004: 216); and “generally offensive to the group depicted” (Kroon 2010: 649). However, and as McKee (2001: 594) points out, the use of

‘stereotype’ to mean ‘negative’ or ‘inaccurate’ cannot be supported in film theory—for who decides what is ‘positive’ and what is ‘negative’ for a particular group?

Instead, the inaccuracy appears to be an inherent character of the stereotype. It can be explained a number of ways. First, stereotypes are a form of ordering the mass of complex and inchoate data that we receive from the world through generalities, patternings, and

‘typification’ (Dyer 2002: 12). This ordering process results in “losses and distortions in the representation of reality,” caused by reduction on the one hand and the effects of stimuli classification (generalization / dichotomization) on the other (Schweinitz 2011:

35). Second, stereotype typically claims to be an adequate representation not of a particular person but of certain aspects that all members of a group have in common (McKee 2001: 592).

Yet, it does not describe every member of the group, no matter how accurate our belief is. It is, therefore, just plain wrong to base judgments of individuals on category level knowledge (Nelson 2009: 2). Third and last, sociological theory suggests that we place people into types—groups—before we gather enough information about them to understand them as individuals (McKee 2001: 592–3). In addition, stereotypical ideas about foreign cultures and people depend largely on culturally transmitted illusions instead of ‘hard facts’. Such ideas reveal more about the respective group or society authoring the stereotype than about the actual topic (Schweinitz 2011: 35).¹

Further, Lippmann (1922: 95–6, see Schweinitz 2011: 7), has regarded stereotypes as systems for creating and maintaining identity. According to the understanding of the term

1 For more discussion on the accuracy of stereotypes, see Lee et al. (1995).

in sociology and social psychology, stereotypes primarily describe conceptions concerning social or ethnic groups and their members, usually “images of the Other (heterostereotypes)” or, less often, “images of the Self (autostereotypes)” (Schweinitz 2011: 43). They represent our relationships with our groups and our cultures (Nelson 2009: 4) and represent an important form of social knowledge; they exist as cognitive structures (Nelson 2009: 3, see also Schweinitz 2011: 4). Stereotypes, in short, are functional entities, indispensable phenomena that ultimately shape every form of cognition and communication (Schweinitz 2011: 96). In other words, Dyer (2002: 14) affirms:

The effectiveness of stereotypes resides in the way they invoke a consensus. Stereotypes proclaim, ‘This is what everyone—you, me and us—think members of such-and-such a social group are like’, as if these social groups were spontaneously arrived at by all members of society independently and in isolation. The stereotype is taken to express a general agreement about a social group, as if that agreement arose before, and independently of, the stereotype. Yet for the most part it is from [emphasis original] stereotypes that we get our ideas about social groups.

In order to get to such consensus and to maintain the stereotype, two means play vital roles. On the one hand, there is language, which is the primary means by which we share information about others, thereby ensuring our beliefs survive over time. Language is indeed a powerful tool for the transmission of beliefs about individuals and groups.

Language, too, may influence social cognitive processes, so that it influences the cognitive inferences that people make. Yet, social cognitive processes dialectically impact upon language use as well (Douglas et al. 2008: 189–90).

On the other hand, as a popular medium, the cinema reflects the knowledge of the world, ideas, attitudes, and expectations of the individuals that it addresses and, conversely, plays a substantial role in communicating and distributing corresponding ideas and attitudes—including those that can be understood as stereotypes (Schweinitz 2011: 11). And stereotypes, again dialectically, represent one of the most common ways in which to discuss and make sense of films (McKee 2001: 592). Lippmann already drew attention to the essential role the cinema plays to ‘visualize’ the stereotype: “in the whole experience of the race there has been no aid to visualization comparable to the cinema”

(Lippmann 1922: 91). This is because, unlike other media such as newspapers and photographs, “on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and

then imagining, has been accomplished for you […] The shadowy idea becomes vivid”

(Lippmann 1922: 92).

Finally, I would like to conclude with the definition of ‘stereotype’ that I will adhere to in my study:

Instead of moving the concept away from its social psychological origin, we will consequently modify the linguistic definition of stereotype as a semantic concept and bring it closer to the concept of social psychology.

Thus, we can define a stereotype as the verbal expression of a belief which is directed towards social groups or single persons as members of these groups. This belief is characterized by a high degree of sharedness among a speech community or subgroup of a speech community. The stereotype has the logical form of a judgment, which ascribes or denies certain properties (traits or forms of behavior) to a set of persons in an (logically) unwarrantably simplifying and generalizing way, with an emotionally evaluative tendency. (Quasthoff 1978: 6, emphasis original)

Furthermore, and in a narrower sense, the term is used in sociolinguistics to refer to

“a linguistic variable which is a widely recognized characterization of the speech of a particular group, which may or may not reflect accurately the speech of those it is supposed to represent” (Crystal 2008: 452) or, in other words, “a particular type of linguistic variable containing a variant that is recognised (or misrecognised) by some members of a speech community such as a variant […], an uniformed and frequently cultural-biased overgeneralisation about sub-groups (and their language or dialect) that may or may not be based on a small degree of truth” (Swann et al. 2004: 297–8).

According to Schweinitz (2011: 31), the distinctive features of stereotypes are “a heightened affinity for demonstrative, clear performance through formulaic reduction of complexity […] and an increased tendency toward repetition, in which the given form manifests an especially high degree of stability, homogeneity, and inertia [emphasis original].” He summarizes the main characteristics of stereotypes, in their many different approaches and individual definitions within the social sciences, as follows:

(1) the relatively permanent mental fixtures of an individual (stability); (2) intersubjectively distributed within certain social formations, for which they assume the functions of consensus building and standardization (conformity); therefore, (3) they do not, or only seldom, rely on personal experience but are primarily socially communicated (second-hand nature); in addition, (4) they are limited to the simple combination of a few characteristics (reduction) and (5) accompanied by strong feelings (affective coloration). Finally, (6) functioning automatically, stereotypes

are considered to substantially interfere with the processes of perception and judgment, which they influence and even determine (cliché effect).

Regarding the function of stereotypes, the term is therefore generally associated with making judgments, and (7) stereotypes are often ascribed the status of inappropriate judgments (inadequacy). (Schweinitz 2011: 5, emphasis original)