A Culturological Study Of Stereotype

Stereotype is that people use a simple cognitive method to mold the other groups ornationalities with same characteristics into a fixed image. However, owing to thefunction of media, people usually regard stereotype as a negative cultural phenomenon,and the researches of stereotype usually focus on the comparison of different cultures.Movie as an important media has a significant influence on people’s cognitive process.Movie can let people form general impressions of the out groups and these impressionsgradually develop into stereotype. Especially those American movies have global market,and they play an inestimable function on the formation of stereotype of people around theworld. The thesis takes the cases of the presentation of Chinese cultures in Americanmovies. The thesis conducts a research on stereotype based on culturology. The aim ofthe thesis is to let people have a more distinct cognition of stereotype and to let peoplefind some new and unnoticeable characteristics of stereotype. The thesis can also letpeople in the world have a sufficient understanding of Chinese cultures.The thesis adopts qualitative analysis---text analysis as the main research method tohave the research on American movies. The thesis finds four classical American moviesas the research text. These American movies contain a great deal of Chinese cultures. Thethesis uses Hofstede’s dimension of cultural variability as theoretical foundation toanalyze the stereotypes of Chinese culture in American movies. The thesis has ananalysis and discussion through individualism&collectivism, power distance,uncertainty avoidance, masculinity&femininity, and long-term orientation&short-termorientation. The thesis mainly solves the following three research questions: first, howdoes the stereotype reflect in the scenes? Second, whether stereotype is a compilingprocess of culture? Third, what attribute does stereotype have? The thesis will unfold itsanalysis of the classical cases that have chosen from the American movies based on thesethree research questions.Through the analyzing of stereotype of Chinese culture in American movies, theauthor gives the answers to these three research questions. The thesis comes to three major findings. First, stereotype is set in the scenes. The scenes reveal various cultures topeople. Through these cultures people will form stereotypes. Second, stereotype is acompiling process of cultures. When people meet a new kind of culture, they regard thenew culture from their perspective. Stereotype is in a continually dynamic state. At last,stereotype has community attribute. Stereotype is the cognition of other cultures. Duringthe formation of the stereotype, people inevitable add their own criterion to the newcultures.