Volume 12 - Issue 64
/ April 2023
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.64.04.7
How to Cite:
Bilotserkovets, M., Fomenko, T., Krekoten, O., Berestok, O., Klochkova, T., & Lushchyk, Y. (2023). Challenges and strategies for
intercultural communication: A case study on national and gender stereotypes in postmodern women literature. Amazonia
Investiga, 12(64), 73-82. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.64.04.7
Challenges and strategies for intercultural communication:
A case study on national and gender stereotypes in postmodern women
literature
Виклики та стратегії міжкультурної комунікації: дослідження про національні
й гендерні стереотипи у жіночій літературі постмодерну
Received: February 1, 2023, 2023 Accepted: April 12, 2023
Written by:
Marina Bilotserkovets1
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4692-3444
https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/rid/W-6414-2019
Tatiana Fomenko2
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3048-7097
https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/rid/V-4642-2018
Olena Krekoten3
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4611-1673
https://publons.com/researcher/AAK-2224-2020
Olha Berestok4
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7912-9592
https://researcherid.com/rid/V-4039-2018
Tetiana Klochkova5
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1173-6211
https://www.webofscience.com/wos/V-7289-2018
Yuliia Lushchyk6
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4306-1949
https://publons.com/researcher/V-8883-2018
Abstract
The paper was aimed to investigate the problem
of national and gender stereotypes’ influence on
the choice of strategies for intercultural
communication between ethnically or culturally
diverse people. The case study took place in the
course of trainings, for students, who left for
abroad in the wake of the state of emergency, but
continued their studies in the university online.
The authors applied comparative literature
analysis and sociocultural interpretation of the
texts of the novels “Fear and Trembling” by
Amelie Nothomb and “Good News from the Aral
Sea” by Irena Karpa to explore what national and
gender stereotypes had been reflected in
postmodern women literature, as one of the
1
PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine.
2
PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine.
3
Senior Lecturer, Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine.
4
Senior Lecturer, Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine.
5
PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine.
6
PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine.
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forms of mass consciousness and sociocultural
discourse embodiment. It was revealed that
various societies possessed prejudices against
foreigners no matter their educational or
economic level, while the stereotypes concerning
women were completely different in discovered
environments; conflicts and failures in
intercultural communication caused by
stereotypical perception cannot be solved when
people apply assimilation, opposition or
subversion as communication strategies.
Nevertheless, empathy, integration and
transformation of stereotypical patterns of one
culture to the foreign one could result in fruitful
interaction and enable people’s adaptation to life
in a foreign society.
Keywords: gender stereotype; intercultural
communication; national stereotype;
sociocultural discourse; postmodern women
literature.
Introduction
In the beginning of 2022 the state of emergency
forced millions of citizens’ fleeing from
homeland to save their lives. Many students,
mostly female, left for abroad, but continued
their studies in the university online. Academics
of the university arranged a special course of
trainings, which was designed to facilitate
intercultural communication of students in a
foreign country, since young women’s entering a
new social environment demanded maintaining
contacts and relations with the natives of a new
country.
Intercultural communication is a communication
of people in which the methods of
communication or the functions of speech events
are not identical. There are differences in their
implementation and interpretation in certain
situations. Intercultural communication involves,
beside the command of a language, the
knowledge of psychology, material and spiritual
culture of another nation, because the ignorance
of national and cultural specifics of behavior
leads to communicative failures and negative
assessments of the situation (Fomenko et al.,
2020). Discrepancies in the worldviews of
culturally diverse people, embodied in their
stereotypes, are accompanied by conflicts
between conservative moods and modern
tendencies of certain segments of the population,
between generations, between people of different
countries and nationalities, between men and
women. Most scientists are inclined to think that
conflict is one of the elements of interpersonal
(intergroup) interaction, however, in the aspect
of inter-national conflicts, the concepts of nation
and gender become dominant. In the process of
communication people perceive each other
through the prism of their own culture and
standards. At this level, there is a position of the
naturalness and correctness of someone’s own
culture and the unnaturalness and non-
acceptance of the interlocutor’s diverse
communicative culture, considering the customs
of their own group as universal; their own norms
and values absolutely true (Jenifer & Raman,
2015; Gut et al., 2017). These challenges
precondition the need for new acceptable
strategies of efficient communication between
culturally and ethnically diverse people.
The paper is targeted to investigate challenges
and strategies for intercultural communication,
which were revealed in the course of trainings by
its participants through the study of novels “Fear
and Trembling” by Amelie Nothomb and “Good
News from the Aral Sea” by Irena Karpa. The
objective of the article is to explore national and
gender stereotypes and the ways they impact
intercultural communication by comparing,
analyzing and interpreting the texts of the novels.
Bilotserkovets, M., Fomenko, T., Krekoten, O., Berestok, O., Klochkova, T., Lushchyk, Y. / Volume 12 - Issue 64: 73-82 /
April, 2023
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Literature Review
The notion of “stereotype” can be distinguished
as a fixed, overgeneralized belief about a
particular group or class of people; an opinion
about their personal qualities, which can be
overly generalized and inaccurate (McLeod,
2015). Stereotypes allow an individual to
perceive, “classify” other people according to
their belonging to one or another group, socio-
economic class, or according to their physical
characteristics (gender, age, skin color, etc.)
(Koenig, 2018).
The term itself was introduced to define the
prevailing prejudice against the event or its
evaluation, which united certain strata according
to the same perception of reality (Lavlinskiy,
2016). Stereotypes provoke an overly
conventional view of people, form expectations
and attitudes towards others, contribute to a
simplified perception of people and reality
(Hentschel et al., 2019). Stereotypes are realized
and acquired by an individual in the course of
socialization in the group to which he/she
belongs (by parents, friends, teachers, mass
media, etc.). Moreover, even the individual’s
own ideas about himself/herself can be closely
related to stereotypes. A stereotype as a concept
is a tool that enables identifying and
understanding an object or a situation without the
necessity for a person to make his/her own
decisions, responsibility and opinion. Actually, it
is “…an intertextual reference to archaic, mostly
atavistic stamps, … the hidden attitude of the
psyche to believe and accept before knowing and
testing it from one’s own experience…” (Suprun
et al., 2022, p. 373).
National or ethnic stereotypes are defined as
generalizations about representatives of
ethnically diverse groups, that are featured by
increased emotional stability, but do not always
adequately reflect the real features of the
stereotyped group. The reason for the formation
of stereotypes is the striving to protect values
that fix concepts, knowledge, skills, and norms of
behavior, that is typical for members of a
particular ethnic group (Fomenko et al., 2020). A
gender stereotype is a simplified, stable,
emotionally colored type of behavior and
character traits adherent to men or women.
Gender stereotypes act as an agreements in the
society about the interaction of “masculine” and
“feminine” dimensions. On the one hand, they
support interpersonal and intergroup
understanding and cooperation, as they ensure
the stability of ideas in the society. On the other
hand, gender stereotypes can negatively affect
self-realization of men and women, act as a
barrier in the development of individuality
(Haines et al., 2016).
As a form and means of seeing the world,
stereotypes embody a complex worldview,
which consists of certain cognitive and
evaluation modes, specific forms of perception
and behavior that are imposed on their carrier by
the mass consciousness (Zagorodnova, 2018).
Being predominately cultivated in mass
consciousness and represented in its multifaceted
forms, such as mass media, namely literature,
television, cinema, social networks, etc., various
stereotypes should be traced and examined to
evaluate their impact on dominating narratives in
postmodern society. In this point literature is of a
special interest, as it is a “comprehensive content
linking art, in particular the art of words,” that
reflects the tendencies of the modern world. It
enables a person to express his/her own position,
ideas, aspirations, expectations and dreams.
Literature indisputably influences the life of
society and contributes into the recognition of the
sociocultural discourse of all those changes that
the postmodern society cannot avoid (Zubenko &
Sytnykova, 2020, p.197).
Amelie Nothomb’s novel Fear and Trembling is
an autobiographical work. She wrote the book in
1999, devoting it to one year of life in Japan and
work for Yumimoto Corporation (Rámila Díaz,
2012). Irena Karpa’s novel Good News from the
Aral Sea was published in 2019. It is also mostly
autobiographical and contains true stories of real
women (Tkhoruk, 2019). Both novels were
written by women authors and present women as
the protagonists, so they are reviewed as the
pieces of women’s literature. The peculiarities of
women’s literature are distinguished by two
approaches to determining its specificity. The
first one is based on the assumption that the
peculiarity of women’s prose is defined by the
specific women’s experience, which is expressed
by the author at the level of issues, themes and
ideological direction of the work (Kryvoruchko
et al., 2021). Proponents of the second approach
tend to see the specifics of women’s prose in the
remarkable sound of a female voice in the text,
i.e., at the level of writing (Michalska-Bracha,
2018); a number of different parameters, in
particular, the concept of female personality,
“feminine” style of writing, stipulation of female
experience, the predominance of a feminine type
of imagery (Holmes, 2016). With the beginning
of the postmodern era, women writers began to
revise cultural stereotypes. Postmodern women
literature is considered to be a direct reaction to
the stereotypes of mass consciousness as its inner
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essence is denying the narrative of realist
discourse, cause-and-effect dependence of plot
lines, and psychological conditioning. So, it is by
no means satisfied with everything stereotypical,
constant, which generates a standard,
prematurely expected reaction. Self-worth of the
author’s voice, autobiography, polyphonic
monologism, sincere intonation of confession,
psychologism (even psychoanalysis) of heroes,
the need for dialogue with the national modernist
feminist literary heritage – all these are signs of
postmodernist artistic practice (Saunier, 2015;
Alsanafi & Mohd Noor, 2019).
Methodology
The participants of the course of intercultural
trainings were students, who left for abroad in the
wake of the state of emergency, but continued
their studies in the university. 78 females, aged
19-24, representatives of various faculties,
voluntarily joined the work in trainings, read the
novels, shared their insights and experiences,
created a mapping for efficient communication
strategies, trained their skills of intercultural
communication and interaction. The case study
was vectored to answer the following questions:
1. What national and gender stereotypes were
described in the novels “Fear and
Trembling” by Amelie Nothomb and “Good
News from the Aral Sea” by Irena Karpa?
2. Do the stereotypes influence the choice of
communication strategies in the intercultural
environment?
The comparative analysis of literary texts was
aimed to find out contradictions and typological
coincidences (analogies) within the literary
sources, belonging to different time-frames,
languages and cultural traditions. The study of
stereotypes, forms of explicit and implicit
content, cultural influences, interliterary
perception, mediation functions of literary tools
involved the application of general scientific
methods, such as deduction and induction, and
more specific methods of dialectical reflection
and systematic analysis.
The method of text interpretation enabled the
study of the stereotypes as cultural concepts, that
have not only linguistic expression, but also
ethno-cultural specificity. It is essential, as
despite their nature, stereotypes reflect the
society to which the author belongs, not only in
the images of a particular culture, but also a
particular language. Thus, works of art created by
representatives of a particular culture become
sources of information about national concepts
and the specifics of verbalization of universal
concepts, taking into account the “exit” to the
geopolitical, ethno-psychological, historical and
gender aspects that are outside the literary work
(Valuyskaya, 2017).
Results
Most participants of trainings admitted that both
novels presented a predictable situation, where a
foreigner, who was unable to complaint with
social and cultural standards being very different
from her/his own, played the major part.
The plot of the novel Fear and Trembling by
Amelie Nothomb was based on the relationship
between two main characters, – Belgian Amelie
and Japanese Fubuki Mori. The female
characters were in opposition of Western and
Eastern cultures (European and Japanese), that
was reflected in the contrast of customs, social
laws and features of individual self-
consciousness.
Initially the Belgian Amelie was sincerely
fascinated by the the Japanese culture, traditions
and way of life. However, having come to work
for the company, the young girl faced a strict
system and rules extremely different from the
European ones. She found it very hard to get used
to the situation. The main character made many
mistakes because she wanted to assimilate, to
become a “real Japanese”. When she wanted to
pretend being a traditional Japanese woman
during a tea ceremony, it got the boss back up, as
the “white woman” did not have to speak
Japanese. It was difficult for Amelie to
understand why her command of the language,
being an admission condition, caused the
conflict: “Perhaps the Japanese brain is capable
of forcing itself to forget a language. The
Western brain doesn’t have that facility”
(Nothomb, 2001, p. 2).
The participants noted that the inability to
acknowledge the two cultural worlds was an
indirect reason for the conflict between Amelie
and her boss Fubuki Mori. This revealed the
author’s concept of national stereotype – Fubuki
disrespected Amelie because she was a foreigner,
not perceiving her apart from her own
chauvinistic prejudices. And Amelie assessed
both Fubuki’s life and the whole of the Japanese
society, based on the European worldview. The
psychological conflict representing the whole
confrontation of different worlds, their
opposition, “moves” the plot of the novel: it was
because of Fubuki’s negative attitude towards
her subordinate, that Amelie, the secretary,
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becomes a “toilet cleaner” and was subjected to
humiliations. Amelie evoked both sympathy and
respect by the readers, because even as she
descended the career ladder, she retained her
national dignity and inner strength (Bakaeva,
2015).
Irena Karpa’s novel Good News from the Aral
Sea is dedicated to Filles de l’est (French) – girls
from the East. This phrase is used in France to
refer to all women from Eastern Europe –
Ukrainian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, etc. (Karpa,
2019, p. 141). It is rather pejorative and
derogatory: when the French say “Girls from the
East”, they immediately imagine either an “elite
escort service girl”, or a house cleaner or a bride
via the Internet. However, the training
participants pointed out that the stories of four
Ukrainian immigrants did not fit this stereotype
at all. The former Femen (a really existing
feministic organization) activist Masha found
political asylum in Paris; the former teacher Rita
got a prestigious job and financial independence.
After leaving the University of Vienna, Bohdana
hid from her parents in France and looked for
new impressions. The musician Chloe fled to
France hiding from justice.
Like the Nothomb’s heroine, at first, they were
greatly impressed by the culture of the country
where they found themselves: “Masha truly
wanted to be a real Parisian. She also eagerly
posted baguettes, cups of coffee on the terrace,
hats, vegetable stalls in the market and rabbits on
the lawn near the Invalids” (Karpa, 2019, p. 45).
But gradually they realized that the glossy facade
of bright life hid the contempt for immigrants:
“The French, who suddenly fell ill with
Ukrainophilia after the Maidan, ... rarely refused
to eat or drink for free and often considered a rich
friend with an awkward accent to be a “mon
client russe” (French, My Russian client) – never
mind whether he or she was Croat, Georgian or
Ukrainian” (Karpa, 2019, p. 81). They often
came across unveiled aggression – “Here we, the
legitimate French have nowhere to work –
shouted bistro-pasha, and you, Eastern European
emigrants, try to scramble ahead!” (Karpa, 2019,
p. 121).
They permanently felt separated from the French
society remaining only foreigners from an
unreliable country. Ukrainian immigrants
realized that they “… would never be like them
[the French], even if … found a French job and
paid taxes properly” (Karpa, 2019, p. 433).
Nevertheless, Irena Karpa’s heroines tried to
integrate into the authentic life of the French,
attending bohemian parties and family dinners,
visiting squatters, getting acquainted with
Muslim immigrants and French aristocrats.
Eventually, each of them found ways to earn for
decent living, got social connections, won
appraisal in the society, based on their personal
and professional qualities by making the French
overcome their own ethnic stereotypes. Having
experienced disappointments, depression and
confusion, the main characters of the book
achieved national self-identification and self-
esteem. The training’s participants revealed that
Irena Karpa’s heroines attempted to understand
culturally diverse people, see their grounds and
reasons, find analogies with their own culture.
The author used the technique of allusion,
comparing the most famous Ukrainian dish,
Borsch, and Madeleine cake from Marcel
Proust’s works, as triggers that evoke nostalgia,
childhood memories, national self-awareness
(Smith, 2016): “Borsch. Ukrainian Madeleine
cake” (Karpa, 2019, p. 378). The insights of the
trainings’ participants concerning challenges in
intercultural communication and strategies to
confront them were generalized in Table 1.
Table 1.
National stereotypes issues in a foreign society
N
Challenge
Strategy
1.
Inability of immigrants
to complaint with social
and cultural standards
Notomb’s novel
Assimilation. The admiration for the foreign culture,
the attempt to assimilate into it, to become a part of it.
Karpa’s novel
Integration. The fascination with the foreign culture is
coming along with own national self-identification and
self-esteem.
2.
Local people’s
chauvinistic prejudices,
contempt for
immigrants
Notomb’s novel
Opposition. Assessement of the way of life and the
whole of the Japanese society, based on the European
worldview.
Karpa’s novel
Empathy. Attemps to understand position, grounds
and worldview of the culturally diverse people.
Source: Authors own conception
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All participants acknowledged that a significant
place in both books has been given to gender
issues, regarding them as socio-gender
characteristics of sex with its inherent features of
lifestyle, actions, plans, aspirations, etc., that
stipulate not only individual features of men and
women, but also determines the relationships
between them.
Taking place in a male-dominated environment,
the contradiction between two women, Amelie
and Fubuki Mori, is rather misogynistic,
predetermined by gender stereotypes. Amelie
represented a Western person who had cultivated
the trend of women emancipation. Immersed in
the daily life of another country, its way of living,
peculiarities of mentality, the main character was
surprised to discover differences in attitudes
towards women, prohibitions, inviolable moral
rules (Saunier, 2015). She was horrified by the
position of women in the Japanese society: “Do
not hope for joy, your pleasure will hurt you. Do
not hope for love, it is not worth it, you will be
loved for what you seem, not for what you really
are. Hope you will work. Given your gender, you
have little chance of reaching the heights, but
hope to serve your company. Work will bring
you money, and it will not give you any pleasure,
but it may attach more importance in case of your
marriage – because you are not so stupid as to
think that you can be chosen for your real value”
(Nothomb, 2001, p. 111).
Playing on the contrast of European and Japanese
women’s self-consciousness, Amelie Nothomb
also resorted to subversion. The writer
deliberately took Fubuki’s image beyond the
stereotype she described. The training’s
participants noted that Fubuki is portrayed as a
woman who had achieved incredible professional
success, but in order to realize her goals in a
patriarchal and far from feminizing society, she
had to take on some masculine functions and put
her career above family values, which was
completely unusual for Japanese women. The
cult of men in Japan implied a meager role of
women in decision-making, and therefore
women were not entrusted with responsible work
and did not assume freedom of thought (Rámila
Díaz, 2012). Talking more of responsibilities of
Japanese women than their rights, the author
criticized the severity of the society: “If you’re
not married by the time you’re twenty-five,
you’ll have a good reason to be ashamed; if you
laugh, you won’t look dignified; if your face
betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse; if you
mention the existence of a single body-hair,
you’re repulsive; if a boy kisses you on the cheek
in public, you’re a whore; if you enjoy eating,
you’re a pig; if you take pleasure in sleeping,
you’re no better than a cow and so on”
(Nothomb, 2001, p. 111).
Similar patriarchal demands on women,
presented as traditionally Ukrainian ones, though
in an openly sarcastic way, were investigated by
the training’s participants in I. Karpa’s novel:
“Faithful and devoted working women can
successfully cope both with the work and the
household. Because if you do only one thing in
Ukraine, you are considered to be incompetent,
stupid or lazy. We need to keep up with
everything. To crown it all, you should take care
of your husband. Children – of course. But a Man
is your leading star and the greatest value”
(Karpa, 2019, p. 50).
The participants stressed that none of the
heroines wanted to fit this stereotype. Bohdana,
who announced that idea, rebelled against her
pre-arranged role of a “woman-guardian of the
family hearth”. For some time, Rita had been
playing a traditional Ukrainian female role,
living with an abusing husband, that led her to a
loss of self-esteem and total frustration in life
(Krupka, 2021). Chloe was in a way an
androgynous character; her description
emphasized the masculine traits of personality
and appearance that resulted in her marginalized
position in the traditional Ukrainian society.
Masha actively defended women’s rights by
participating in Femen, an organization known
for its extreme performances. Thus, participants
concluded that Irena Karpa also used the
technique of subversion – games with a
stereotype – on the gender representation of her
heroines.
Living in France, the Ukrainian protagonists
enthusiastically discovered the worldview of the
French women, their ability to respect and
appreciate their own gender identity: “A French
woman wants to be beautiful or even just spend
free time reading a book. Facing the need to cook
new dishes for her sweetheart, she makes the
reservation in a restaurant under her name but on
his credit card. As far as a Ukrainian woman,
estimating that her sweetheart can get sick with
heartburn eating in a restaurant, is inspired
spinning a million plates in the kitchen –
downloads a new cooking app and happily claps
her hands: “Trap! I am so happy!” (Karpa, 2019,
p. 312). They highly evaluated the desire of
French women for freedom including financial
one: “… the idea of becoming again financially
dependent on her husband caused her panic”
(Karpa, 2019, p. 442); their ability not to hang on
other people’s opinions, not to be ashamed of
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their potential, age or appearance: “The French
call it ‘to be or not to be classy – and for those
who are not classy, it does not matter how much
clothes cost” (Karpa, 2019, p. 288).
So, the training participants traced the
transformation of certain patterns of the
Ukrainian protagonists’ native culture to the
French one, despite the fact that in a foreign
society completely different domestic
stereotypes dominate. Furthermore, it was due to
their ability to transform own stereotypes that
they managed to adapt to the life in a foreign
society. Text interpretation of the novels
concerning gender challenges and strategies of
their solvation, resulted in data presented in the
Table 2.
Table 2.
Gender stereotypes issues in a foreign society
N
Challenge
Strategy
1.
Misogynistic conflict in
the society with a
masculine culture
Notomb’s novel
Subversion. Taking on some masculine
functions to confront a meager role of
women; open criticism
2.
Emancipated views on
the position of women in
the French society
Karpa’s novel
Transformation of certain patterns of their
native culture to break stereotypes and go
beyond their limits
Source: Authors own conception.
Discussion
When representatives of different cultures
initiate communication, it is quite likely that
certain problems will arise, associated with
contradiction in these cultures, namely:
misunderstanding, prejudices, demarcation,
resentment or mental or social isolation. In this
sense, stereotypes influence migrants’ choice of
communication and adaptation strategies in the
foreign cultural space (Lavlinskiy, 2016).
If a migrant chooses an assimilation or a
subversion strategy, personal identity tends to
approach a diffuse, “blurred” identity with
uncertain life goals, low self-esteem, lack of
inner integrity and coherence (Blynova et al.,
2020). Personal identity acquires signs of mature
positivity when a migrant integrates into the
foreign cultural space, he/she is inclined to show
empathy to culturally diverse people and the
ability to transform own stereotypes. These
strategies can help to overcome the framework of
a person’s cultural identity, so he/she no longer
remains a “stranger” in new cultural spaces and
can find a new self-esteem in relation to new
cultural groups. As a “foreigner” perceives the
elements of another culture, his/her self-esteem
shifts from an exclusively cultural to an
intercultural state. This intercultural identity is
flexible and quite mobile because it is no longer
based on belonging to the original or foreign
culture (Bilotserkovets et al., 2020).
The comparative analysis of texts of the novels
under review has revealed that national and
gender stereotypes are inherent in any culture,
they are originated from a particular culture, and
then influence the minds of people, hindering or
helping to build intercultural contacts.
Regarding the role of national or ethnic
stereotypes in intercultural communication,
researchers emphasized that peculiarities of the
cognitive process categorization of culturally
diverse people enabled the reconstruction of the
ways how people perceived themselves and
others (Gut et al., 2017). National stereotypes
provoke expectations about representatives of
another culture in the process of communication
or a certain situation, they may reflect some
realities, but in general they are not identical
either with the national character or with the
representation of the worldview of this people.
Racial and ethnic stereotypes are manifested at
the level of individual behavioral reactions,
which leads to neurotization of an individual and
society as a whole. They belong to the category
of stereotypes that discriminate against members
of national, racial or ethnic minorities, singling
out the following four stages of portraying racial
and ethnic minorities in the mass media: non-
recognition, ridicule, regulation, respect. Non-
recognition characterizes the complete exclusion
of racial and ethnic minorities from television
and the press. Ridicule means the glorification of
the dominant group of their own image by
humiliating and stereotyping minorities,
portraying them as incompetent or uneducated.
Regulation is depicting minorities, who appear as
defenders of the existing order (for example,
police, detectives, spies). Respect features giving
national and racial minorities the full range of
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roles (both positive and negative), inherent in
most heroes (Jenifer & Raman, 2015).
Sociocultural text analysis enabled authors to
single out the typical stereotypes about women
and femininity: objectification of the female
body, infantilization, “glass ceiling”, the image
of the “woman-guardian of the family hearth”
(Chornodon et al., 2022). The objectification of
the female body points out an important fact of
gender stereotypes, that women are often
portrayed as young beauties, whose duty is to
remain always young and attractive to please
men. At the heart of this critical attitude is the
idea that a woman should not allow herself to
grow old. This is aparently evident in advertising
– in the field of mass media with the most
stereotypical gender images (Saunier, 2015).
Infantilization of women introduces the
transmission of femininity as the manifestation
of virginity, vulnerability, naivety. In this regard,
women are always victims of violence. Having a
“glass ceiling” on the way to career success is a
phenomenon characterized by the difficulty of
women to reach higher positions in their careers,
which are usually occupied by men (Abbas et al.,
2018). The image of the “woman-guardian of the
family hearth” portraits women who dedicate
their lives to their husbands and families,
performing unpaid reproductive work
(Chornodon et al., 2022). Thus, the inferiority of
women is often rooted in society’s worldview
and cultural heritage, which is one of the
fundamental pillars of the mentality. In different
parts of the world, society’s attitude towards
women is characterized by violence, devaluation
and rejection of their own “I” due to the desire to
be accepted by others; some other societies are
marked by the acquisition of a crumb of rights
and freedoms for long periods of time, which, in
general, do not improve the situation (Alsanafi &
Mohd Noor, 2019).
Formed on the wave of the struggle for women’s
emancipation, postmodern women literature
revealed itself as a social, philosophical, human
rights, aesthetic revision of logocentrism, that is
based on male worldview and thinking. There are
progressive trends in postmodern women’
literature even in the traditionally patriarchal
societies to portray women. The women-writers
are striving to remove the social, cultural, and
religious bonds that are imposed upon them by
convictions and taboos of their own culture as the
only comprehension of life and reality, as they
“… move away from a system that desires to
control and mistakes its own viewpoints for the
truth” (Amin, 2015, p. 11). Nevertheless,
postmodern women’s literature in Eastern
Europe, namely in Ukraine is characterized by
“post-feminism” as a young trend without clear
programming (as opposed to feminism), based on
a woman’s right to choose between a career or
family or a combination of both, and a reluctance
to subordinate her life to puritanical and
misogynistic ideologies. It is a sociocultural
space in which women (especially the younger
generation) perceive gender equality as
something that is rightfully theirs (Dragojlovich,
2017; Revakovich, 2012).
Conclusions
Comparative analysis of texts of the novels “Fear
and Trembling” by Amelie Nothomb and “Good
News from the Aral Sea” by Irena Karpa, carried
out in the course of intercultural trainings, was
focused on the sociocultural discourse that
reflects the mass consciousness of other
countries, attitudes and stereotypes of the
nations. The participants admitted that while all
societies still have prejudices against foreign
migrants and regard them being inferior to
themselves, no matter their educational or
economic level, the stereotypes concerning
women are completely different. Thus, the
apprehension of the concept of “stereotype” only
in a negative sense is becoming more and more
disputable. Being aware of the traditions and
customs of another culture, a person can facilitate
his/her adaptation to a new linguistic or cultural
environment. She/he will be free from
misconceptions about the rules of conduct in an
unfamiliar society, will not try to transfer own
stereotypical standards of perception to the
environment.
Interpretation of the novel “Fear and Trembling”
by Amelie Nothomb has revealed that it
describes protagonists’ inability to overcome
ethnic and gender stereotypes. Stereotypical
perception of culturally or ethnically diverse
people had imposed assimilation, opposition or
subversion as communication strategies by
interlocutors that doomed their intercultural
contacts to failure. Nevertheless, the novel
“Good News from the Aral Sea” by Irena Karpa
showed heroines who were inclined to
overpower their national and gender stereotypes
through the need to develop such an identity,
which goes beyond the boundaries of ordinary
cultural identification and is characterized by a
high degree of interculturality. Empathy,
integration and transformation of stereotypical
patterns of one culture to the foreign one
facilitate intercultural communication and
interaction of people in a foreign environment.
Volume 12 - Issue 64
/ April 2023
81
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