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The notion of stereotype in

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Posted on 22 May 2013 by Elena L. Vilinbakhova — 5 Comments Search
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Elena L. Vilinbakhova
St. Petersburg State University Go

1. Introduction

Originally, the word stereotype derives from two Ancient

Greek roots: στερεός ‘solid’ and τύπος ‘impression’. It was Posts
first used by the French printer Firmin Didot in 1796 as a
Original articles
typographical term. Later, it became a part of everyday
language (in the beginning, it was used mostly in the form of Conferences and
workshops
an adjective stéréotypé ‘stereotyped’) to describe repetitive
situations that lacked originality or spontaneity. Jobs and funding

Publication
In 1922, it was introduced into the social, cultural and
announcements
psychological studies by the American writer Walter
Lippmann in his book “Public Opinion”. He saw stereotypes Queries and
as pictures in our heads which simplify reality: “[stereotypes] discussion

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may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a Follow
picture of a possible world to which we are adapted” (Ibid.).
RSS

Nowadays, the notion of stereotype is widely used in Twitter

different areas, and even in linguistics, there are two major
Facebook
traditions of understanding it. The first approach defines
stereotype as a fixed form, fixed expression, or even fixed
text. According to the second approach, stereotype is seen
as a fixed content, a fixed mental image of a person, an
object or an event. Both definitions of stereotype share the
same characteristic of stability, but it is either the stability of
form or the stability of content (сf. the terms formal vs.
semantic stereotype (Bartmiński 2005), Sprachstereotype
‘stereotype of speech’ vs. Denkstereotype ‘stereotype of
thought’ (Gülich 1978), stéréotype de langue ‘stereotype of
language’ vs. stéréotype de pensée ‘stereotype of thought’
(Schapira 1999), etc. My focus here will be on semantic,
rather then formal, stereotypes.

2. Putnam’s theory of stereotype

Stereotype was first regarded as a subject of linguistics in

the studies of the American philosopher Hilary Whitehall
Putnam and discussed in his papers “Is semantics
possible?” (1970) and “The meaning of «meaning»” (1975).

Putnam suggests that the description of meaning for natural

kind terms like water, lemon, tiger and electricity (that
includes grammatical and encyclopedic information about
the subject) should be enriched by a stereotypical
component. Putnam takes the definition of stereotype from
ordinary parlance, where it is understood as “a conventional
(frequently malicious) idea (which may be wildly inaccurate)
of what X looks like or acts like or is” (Putnam 1975: 249).

The notion of stereotype is associated with two points of

Putnam’s theory: linguistic obligation and division of
linguistic labor. Linguistic obligation concerns the
information in stereotypical component (like yellow color for
lemon) that should be known to all language users with the

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required minimum level of competence to communicate with

others. Division of the linguistic labor implies that some
members of the linguistic community (experts, in Putnam’s
terminology) are more competent than others to determine
the characteristics that an object should satisfy to be named
with a word x. Experts and common language users make
an agreement about certain terms: taking into account the
purposes of the linguistic community, they choose a number
of features to be used in everyday language (as colorless,
transparent and tasteless for water), while other features
are left for experts’, or scientific, knowledge (as H2O for
water). Putnam argues that ordinary speakers’
understanding of words doesn’t have to be complete and
objective to satisfy their communicative purposes, and
stereotypes as social tools are no less important than
scientific definitions.

3. Stereotype vs. prototype

Since then the notion of stereotype has been discussed in

various aspects. For instance, it was often compared with
the notion of prototype introduced by E. Rosch
approximately at the same time as Putnam’s theory.
Because the theory of prototype was more widespread and
better known than Putnam’s approach, stereotype was
sometimes regarded as a synonym of prototype (cf. Lyons
1995: 96), leading to the confusion of both notions. Indeed,
both approaches have something in common: they
emphasize the value of certain features that account for the
most typical (or normal), though not all, members of the
category (like striped for tiger, or fly for bird). These features
do not necessarily distinguish one category from the other,
so their combination is more a positive than a differential
description. However, as Dirk Geeraerts (2008: 24) notices,
there is an important difference: “prototypicality is basically
a psychological notion, whereas stereotypicality is a
sociolinguistic notion”. Geeraerts (1985; 2007) also
suggests that both theories could be successfully combined
and used by lexicographers to describe various types of
dictionaries – professional (experts knowledge only),

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standard desk (stereotypical information) and large-scale

(both types of information) dictionaries.

4. Stereotype as an object of study

Furthermore, stereotypes are regarded as objects of study

and investigated on linguistic data from one or several
languages (cf. Dabrowska 1999, Bartmiński 2005, etc.).
Bartmiński suggests taking into account three types of data:
system of the language, experimental surveys and folklore
texts. Other sources include different corpora and Internet
search engines. The most popular subject of such
investigations, especially in Russia, are ethnic stereotypes.
There are even some dictionaries of stereotypes, for
instance, The Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols
(Bartmiński & Niebrzegowska 1996) on Polish language
data and Russian Cultural Space: Linguistic-Cultural
Dictionary (Bril’ova et al. 2004) on Russian language data.

5. Stereotype as a tool of study

Stereotypes also proved to be helpful in the explanation and

analysis of various linguistic phenomena. One example of
such application of Putnam’s theory are nominal tautologies
like War is war or A husband is a husband. R. Gibbs and N.
McCarrell (1990: 129) argue that “people’s stereotypical
attitudes toward the people, activities and objects referred to
by the noun phrases in nominal tautologies should play an
important role in the use and acceptability of these
colloquial expressions”. They experimentally show that
tautologies with human roles (boys, mothers, teachers, etc.)
are seen as more acceptable and easy to understand than
tautologies with concrete objects (carrots, beds, hats)
because the former have “stronger” (more detailed and
emotional) stereotypes. Tania Autenrieth (1997) and Jörg
Meibauer (2008) regard the second noun phrase in
tautology as predicative and suggest that stereotypical
knowledge about the properties of the subject should be
applied (A car is a car means that a car have a stereotypical
property of a car relevant to the conversation, for instance
‘cars are harmful to the environment) (Meibauer 2008: 445).
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Next, the notion of stereotype is found in the studies of

associative anaphora (cf. Fradin 1984; Kleiber 2003).
George Kleiber gives the example, We entered a village.
The church was situated on a hill, and comments on the
definite article in the second phrase: “within the relationship
between church and village the latter serves as a functional
stereotypical localization for the former” (Kleiber 2003: 44).

Finally, Jean-Claude Anscombre, who elaborated on

Putnam’s theory of stereotypes, applies it to French
constructions N à N like moulin à vent ‘windmill’ and
adjectives with negative prefix in- that lack positive
antonyms like *mense / immense ‘immense’, *coloré /
incoloré ‘colourless’, etc. (Anscombre 2001). He argues that
(un)acceptability of a particular construction N à N or the
(un)grammaticality of such adjectives depends on the
linguistic community’s stereotypical knowledge about the
referred objects. Stereotypical properties of an object seen
as common and regular (like wings of a plane and an
engine of a car) are assumed by default and should not be
mentioned in discourse, therefore *avion à ailes ‘plane with
wings’ or *voiture à moteur ‘car with engine’ are
unacceptable; the same applies to the property of having a
color, so the adjective with such meaning is superfluous.
Similar ideas are found in the monograph of A. V.
Golovacheva (2000) based on the data from Russian and
West Slavic languages.

6. Conclusion

In sum, the notion of stereotype came into language studies

not so long ago, but it has already been applied to various
branches like lexicography, semantics and pragmatics, and
has good chances to be integrated in modern linguistic
theories.

Note: This post draws in considerable part on (Vilinbakhova

2012 and Vilinbakhova In Press); more details and
references can be found in those works.

References
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Anscombre, Jean-Claude. 2001. “Dénomination, sens et

reference dans une théorie des stéréotypes nominaux”.
Cahiers de praxématique 36.43-72.

Autenrieth, Tania. 1997. Tautologien sind Tautologien //

Pragmatik. Implikaturen und Sprechakte [ = Linguistische
Berichte. Sonderheft 8]. E. Rolf (ed). Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag. 12-32.

Bartmiński, Jerzy. 2005. Jazykovoj obraz mira: očerki po

etnolongvistike [Linguistic Image of the World: Essays on
Ethnolinguistics]. Moskva: Indrik.

Bartmiński Jerzy & Stanisława Niebrzegowska (eds.). 1996.

Słownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych [The
Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols]. Vol. 1.
Kosmos [Cosmos]. Part 1. Niebo, światła niebieskie, ogień,
kamienie [Sky, celestial bodies, fire, stones]. Lublin.

Bril’ova, Irina S. et al. (eds.). 2004. Russkoje kul’turnoje

prostranstvo: lingvokul’turnyj slovar’ [Russian Cultural
Space: Linguistic-Cultural Dictionary]. Vol. 1. Moscow:
Gnozis. = Брылёва И.С. и др. (ред.). 2004. Русское
культурное пространство: Лингвокультурологический
словарь. Т.1. М.: Гнозис.

Dabrowska, Jarochna. 1999. Stereotype und ihr

sprachlicher Ausdruck im Polenbild der deutschen Presse:
eine textlinguistische Untersuchung. (= Studien
zurdeutschen Sprache, 17). Tübingen: Narr.

Fradin, Bernard. 1984. “Anaphorisation et stéréotypes

nominaux”. Lingua 64.325–369.

Geeraerts, Dirk. 1985. “Les données stéréotypiques,

prototypiques et encyclopédiques dans le dictionnaire”.
Cahiers de Lexicologie 46.27-43.

——— . 2007. “Lexicography”. The Oxford Handbook of

cognitive linguistics. Ed. by Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert
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Cuyckens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1160-1174.

——— . 2008. “Prototypes, stereotypes, and semantic

norms”. Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation,
Cultural Modals, Social systems. (= Cognitive linguistics
research, 39) Ed. by Gitte Kristiansen & René Dirven, 21-
44. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gibbs, R. W., McCarrell N. S. 1990. Why Boys will be boys

and girls will be girls: Understanding colloquial tautologies.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. Vol. 19.125-145.

Golovacheva, Alexandra V. 2000. Stereotipnye Mental’nye

Structury i LInguistika Teksta [Stereotypical mental
structures and linguistics of text]. Moskva. = Головачёва
А.В. 2000. Стереотипные ментальные структуры и
лингвистика текста. М.

Gülich, Elisabeth. 1978. “Was sein muß, muß sein.”

Überlegungen zum Gemeinplatz und seiner Verwendung.
Bielefelder Papiere zur Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft
7.1-41.

Kleiber, George. 2003. “The possessive via associative

anaphor”. From NP to DP: The Expression of Possession in
Noun Phrases. (= Linguistik Aktuell, 56). Ed. by Martine
Coene & Yves D’Hulst, vol. II, 43-71. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.

Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Public opinion. New York: Harcourt

Brace. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?
fk_files=1463400

Lyons, John. 1995. Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Meibauer, Jörg. 2008. Tautology as presumptive meaning.

Pragmatics and Cognition. Vol. 16. 439-470.
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mainz.de/linguistik/mitarbeiter/meibauer/publikationen/pub-
aufsaetze/sonderdruck%20tautology.pdf

Putnam, Hilary. 1975 (1970). Is Semantics Possible? Mind,

Language and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 139–152. http://ru.scribd.com/doc/72522092/Hilary-
Putnam-Is-semantics-possible

——— . 1975. “The meaning of “meaning” ”. Mind,

Language and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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of-Meaning-Putnam

Schapira, Charlotte. 1999. Les stéréotypes en français:

proverbes at autres formules. Paris: Ophrys.

Vilinbakhova, Elena L. 2012. Stereotip v linvistike: ob’ject ili

instrument issledovanija? [Stereotype in linguistics: object or
instrument of linguistic study?]. Problemy yazyka [Problems
of language]. Ed. by Dev’atkina et al. 19–28. Moskva. =
Вилинбахова Е.Л. 2012. Стереотип в лингвистике:
объект или инструмент исследования? / Проблемы
языка. Под ред. Е. М. Девяткиной и др. М. http://iling-
ran.ru/library/sborniki/problemy_jazyka.pdf

Vilinbakhova, Elena L. In Press. Stereotype in linguistic :

History of the study. Yazyk i rechevaja deyatel’nost’
[Language and language behavior]. Ed. by Vadim B.
Kasevich. St. Petersburg.

How to cite this post:

Vilinbakhova, Elena L. 2013. ‘The notion of stereotype in

language study’. History and Philosophy of the Language
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Tagged with: Hilary Putnam, linguistics, prototype, semantics, stereotype
Posted in Article, Linguistics, Semantics

5 comments on “The notion of stereotype in language study”

EduardBarbu says:
22 May 2013 at 10:54 pm

Thanks for the article!

I am interested in the difference between stereotypes and
prototypes. You say :
quoting Dirk Geeraerts that “prototypicality is basically a
psychological notion, whereas stereotypicality is a
sociolinguistic notion”. This comment does not offer a
criterion to differentiate prototypical from stereotypical
constructions.
Why are they different? If I am going to list a set of
prototypical properties for some concepts :(dog, horse,
apple) and then the set of stereotypic constructions for
the same concepts do I obtain different lists of
properties? How much overlap is and why there is
difference?

Reply

elenavil says:
23 May 2013 at 3:00 am

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10/22/2018 The notion of stereotype in language study | History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences

Thanks for your comment. The quote from Dirk Geeraerts

indicates the difference of perspective on constructing
prototypical and stereotypical properties – the former are
salient for our acquisition processes (they are easy to
remember, acquiered first by small children, etc.), while
the latter play an important role for the given linguistic
community and include cultural-specific features. Dirk
Geeraerts mentions that prototype and stereotype can
easily coincide when the most salient features from
cognitive point of view are also most important for a
linguistic community.
However, it seems that there are still some more
differences. First, stereotypes include not only
descriptive, but also evaluative features. For instance,
the stereotype of a rat in Russian linguistic society
includes a property of being ugly and unpleasant, while
the prototype is more neutral and concentrates on its
appearance, behaviour, etc.
Next, some categories have more than one stereotype:
we have an idea of ideal and of ordinary exemplar (for
instance, ideal husband that often brings flowers, spends
a lot of time with kids, etc, vs. ordinary husband who
spends all evening watching football and doesn’t like
shopping), and prototype as the best exemplar of the
category will most likely coincide with ideal image.
An interesting discussion about the differences between
stereotypes and prototypes favouring the stereotype
theory can be also found in [Allan 2001: Chapter 10]
Allan, Keith. 2001. Natural language semantics. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers.

Reply

Michael Silverstein says:

3 July 2013 at 2:37 pm

This post seems to follow Wikipedia in some of its

material. A “stereotype” was a particular duplicated
photographic image in the late 19th c., an artifact viewed
through a special viewer.
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Putnam’s prototype is an individual entitiy, an extendable,

while his stereotype is a intensional entity, a “concept” as
it were of a completely different order. Rosch and other of
the Berkeleyites do not seem to understand the
distinction between the two, which is, of course, essential
to the “causal theory of reference” and the way that
intensionalizing an extension, for example in a baptismal
moment, is central to the growing of a sense for a lexical
item a token of which has been used to extend an
individual object. Where such intensionalizations come
from is, of course, the central issue of concept-formation.

Reply

elenavil says:
6 July 2013 at 2:54 pm

Thanks for your valuable comment specifying the

information about typographical use of the term and the
intensionalization issue.
The understanding of prototype as a (real) object and
stereotype as a concept certainly makes the distinction
between the two very clear (this approach is also
described in Hurford, Heasley 1983 and Schwarze 1985).
The fact is that E. Rosch’s and G. Lakoff’s “conceptual”
interpretation of the term prototype became more
widespread (or even stereotyped) in language studies,
and now it cannot ignored in the discussion of prototype-
stereotype relations.
Hurford J. R., Heasley B. 1983. Semantics: a
coursebook. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Schwarze Сh. 1985. Lexique et compréhension textuelle.
Constance, Sonderfoshungbereich, 99.

Reply

Emma says:
14 April 2015 at 1:28 pm

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10/22/2018 The notion of stereotype in language study | History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences

Thanks for your article. It is useful for me. At the first

time, I knew the stereotype in linguistics by my professor.
I was excited to it. I come from Vietnam. I have studied
linguistics especially Vietnamese for 9 years. I am
interesting about scocialinguistics. My thesis’s Ph.D is
about negotiation in comunication between buyer and
seller in Vientam traditional market. I realised that they
alway use a lot of stereotypes. I am studying for that.
If can, I would like to know your email because surely I
have many questions which want to ask you. Once again,
thank you so much

Reply

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