Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

JEZIK U UPOTREBI / LANGUAGE IN USE
The third research question focused on the kind of attitudes expressed by
the students. Each identified concept was coded for the overall attitude expressed
(neutral, positive or negative). The concepts that were neutral, not emotionally
loaded, were, understandably, found to be much more frequent than the positive
or negative ones. But more importantly, the items coded as positive turned out to
be by far more frequent in the corpus, irrespective of the thematic category and
the context they occurred in. The items coded as negative were identified exclusively
in relation to prejudice and discrimination, and to a lesser degree in relation
to stereotyping in general, and less frequently still as related to the concept of
nationalism. We interpret this as an indicator of the students’ very positive overall
attitude to intercultural communication and cultural diversity.
In addition to this, we analysed the total number of negative, neutral, and
positive words used in the corpus to describe specific cultures (Serbian, American,
British etc.). The number of neutral terms was again the greatest, but virtually
no negative words were identified that could be interpreted as expressing the
student’s negative attitude towards the culture described. Negative words were
used in the context of illustrating other people’s views, and invariably followed
by a criticism of such views. It is particularly important for us that positive attitudes
were not expressed only towards English-speaking cultures, which could
be expected of English language and literature majors, but also towards other
cultures, close and distant, local, regional, or European. The attitudes expressed
towards subcultures were also neutral or positive.
Of course, one could argue that since these journals and essays were produced
as part of a course in which the aim of promoting intercultural competence
was stated explicitly, and were graded for the final mark, the students could have
expressed opinions they knew would be judged more favourably by the instructors,
and not their honest views. Although the possibility of instructor bias indeed
represents one of the main weaknesses of this study, first, it was also stated very
clearly during the course that students’ ideas, views, and opinions would not be
judged or assessed, and second, this was an elective course, probably chosen by
students inclined towards such ideas. Therefore, we believe that the observed attitudes
were authentic.
At least the manifest ideas in students’ writing showed an extremely positive
overall attitude to cultural diversity and intercultural communication, a negative
attitude to cultural prejudice and discrimination, and a high awareness of
even the subtle dangers of cultural stereotyping. In this light, Byram’s statement
proved to be true with our students – that ‘[L2 l]earners can acquire the skills of
critical analysis of stereotypes and prejudice in texts and images they read or see’,
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