The discussion of this week was about the discriminatory definitions that are found at the dictionaries and also about the discriminatory and degrading stereotypes that are shown in the Media. Do this definitions and TV shows generate discrimination?
Due to some technical problem, the video of this discussion is not available. I own the participants an apology, especially to the moderators of this discussion, who did a great job.
In any case, I sum up the course of the discussion in the following lines:
To start the discussion, the moderators show us some videos about the discriminatory definition about gypsies that is found in the RAE dictionary [video. click here]. Then the second part of the video was played. It was about the image that the Media show about gipsies, full of stereotypes and not so accurate with the reality.
Then the discussion was settled: Do this definitions and TV shows generate discrimination or they are just showing the reality as they claim?
Nobody was in favour of the second choice and some people positioned in the middle. They claimed that it depends on the person who read or watch such discriminatory things: there are some people who are easily influenced and some who are very critical about what they are reading or watching. Other thought that those definitions and TV shows are discriminatory, that make people feel humiliated and that have no accuracy with the reality.
They focused on the image that the Medias show about gypsies: a stereotype, in order to increase the audience. They though that these TV shows have more influence in the population that the definitions given in RAE dictionary. The girls from Mexico told us that they were not familiarized with this situation until they came to Seville. Then they look for the word “gipsy” in the dictionary and found the discriminatory meanings. They said that at the beginning they get influenced by this definition, but then they realized that those definitions were not accurate. So, while TV shows influence the population familiarized with the prejudices and make prejudices stronger, the RAE’s definition creates prejudices in people who didn’t know about them.
In conclusion, we have to be critic about what we watch and read, even if it is written in a dictionary, because people who write it can also be wrong or have prejudices.
This discussion was very interesting, everyone gave their opinion and the moderators did a great job. I apology again for the technical problems that made the video be unavailable.
