Stereotypes are active rhetorical tools people deploy to blame, justify, and exonerate

Evidence

Although it is vital to consider social and structural relations between groups in society, issues of relative status and system justifi cation, as foundations for the formation and reproduction of stereotypes, one also needs to thoroughly engage with how stereotypes are discursively constructed in everyday and elite communications for particular and context-dependent rhetorical ends. As Augoustinos and Walker put it, ‘stereotypes are fl exible and dynamic representations which are constructed in situ, within a specifi c relational context at a particular point in time’ ( 1998 , p. 635). It is especially when one contemplates the link between stereotypes and social structure/status-driven relations between groups that one needs to explore and understand the nature of stereotypes as discursive and rhetorical constructions that people use ‘to do things’, such as to blame, justify, exonerate, etc. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 200

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the performative view of language from the Communication as Culture chapter — communication as action rather than mere transmission.

Related

• Stereotypes form, stabilize, and change through communication, not just individual cognition. (similarity 0.81)
• Stereotypes serve an ideological function of justifying the status quo. (similarity 0.78)
• Stereotypes are cultural products rather than products of personal intergroup contact. (similarity 0.78)