Philosophy
Stereotypes and Scripts
Stereotypes and Scripts is about language that facilitates oppression. My past and current research is at the intersection of language and oppression, and specifically, about the way everyday language use reinforces and encodes stereotypes. This book stems directly out of my current research, which focuses on a specific kind of language that is used in stereotypes: generic sentences, like ‘boys don’t cry,’ ‘women are nurturing,’ and other expressions of the form Fs are G. The first half of this book is primarily about the ways stereotyping language can be used to denigrate, oppress, or otherwise harm. The second half is about how the same linguistic mechanisms that entrench stereotypes can be used to resist and undermine those harms.
The introduction of the book gives an overview of generics, social scripts and their role in creating and maintaining stereotypes. Generics are sentences that express generalizations about a particular group or kind, “birds fly” and “ducks lay eggs.” Normative generics: expressions, like “boys don’t cry,” “women are kind and nurturing,” “children are seen and not heard” convey something over and above the descriptive reading; they seem to be saying that boys shouldn’t cry, or that it is right for boys not to cry. I argue that generics both introduce and reinforce stereotypes about social kinds.