Cultural Stereotypes and Foreign Language Education: a Corpus-based Analysis of Kazakh Cultural Lexis and Its Translational Representation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article investigates how cultural stereotypes embedded in English-language representations of Kazakh culture intersect with English as a Foreign Language learning in Kazakhstan. While research on stereotypes in language education has largely focused on learners' perceptions of target-language communities, this study addresses an underexamined reverse vector: stereotypes that operate through English-language renderings of the learner's own culture. Drawing on a corpus of fifteen Kazakh cultural units onyms, honorifics, social institutions, and culturemes collected from journalistic, academic, tourism, and AI-generated sources, the study identifies five recurrent stereotyping patterns (exoticization, assimilation, semantic reduction, erasure, Orientalist spectacle) and the six translation strategies that produce them. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, investment theory, Critical Applied Linguistics, and Intercultural Communicative Competence, the article argues that these patterns constitute a structural variable in learner motivation and identity investment, and proposes a set of stereotype-aware pedagogical tasks.
Source: Вестник науки
Author: Raissova A.K.
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7165828367