ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature and functions of stereotyping and prejudice in intercultural encounters. Early accounts argued that stereotyping might be beneficial because it helps people simplify complex cultural information and thus ease intergroup communication. More often than not, however, outgroup stereotyping, or, in its extreme form, prejudice/racism, is harmful to successful intercultural communication and intergroup relationships.
The chapter draws on a large corpus of informal group sharing sessions where non-local exchange students and Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students discuss their experiences of meeting the cultural Other. Examples show how students make stereotypical, sometimes prejudiced/racist, claims about the Other. They use stereotypes to exclude cultural Others; they discursively create preferred ingroups and dispreferred outgroups, and they do it to enhance ingroup identity and reinforce ingroup–outgroup distinctiveness. The students do it either overtly by claiming there is something alien, and thus inherently wrong, about the Other, or covertly by means of subtle linguistic means which allow them to voice prejudiced views and yet present themselves as tolerant and open-minded. The chapter concludes by discussing how recent sociopolitical developments have reinforced nationalism and ethnocentric discourses; a development that has arguably made it more legitimate to make prejudiced claims about the Other.
