Culture and Language - Essay Example

Culture and Language There is an intersection of language, culture and education in the society. Children’s books and videos as artifacts serve to perpetuate stereotypes. They bring deficit views of culture and language. Bodley (16) believe that language and culture motivate stereotypes. The aspect behind it is that when children are born, the language and culture they are exposed to decide their cognitive structure. The thinking structure of those children born in civilized places with civilized language and culture are more intelligent than those born in remote areas that do not have civilized language and culture.

Such children tend to think primitively. The assertion is that members belonging to the same racial group have similar characteristics. Therefore, those who come from uncivilized cultural and language background possess the same features of illiteracy. On contrary those from civilized society are more intelligently. It thus leads to contemporary deficit thinking (22).The artifacts of videos also contribute to the stereotypes in deficit of language and culture. Different video clips have different messages.

There are those that can talk about slavery. Take for instance if the a white child is watching the video that the blacks are being mistreated through beatings and abused with obscene language, the child will imitate the behavior. Whenever the child encounters with the black children, he/she will always look at them in the negative perspective abusing them in the in the same way he/she saw in the video. The above incidence is a clear instance that stereotype of race. It does not only stop there, it goes even beyond developing the superior complex over the black’s culture and language (43).

Work CitedBodley, John H. Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System. Lanham, Md:AltaMira Press, 2011. Print.