“Canada”, “New Zealand” and “Australia” Stereotypes Modeling Using Associative Experiment Data

Abstract

The article describes the results of the research of the content and the structure of the stereotypes “Canada”, “Australia” and “New Zealand” using the associative experiment data. The respondents were 76 people. The analysis of the experimental data was carried out at three stages: at the first one, the associative fields were built; at the second stage, the semantic groups were singled out to reveal the features of the stereotypes; and at the third stage, the reactions of the two age groups were compared. The semantic analysis of the reactions and their quantitative processing has helped single out the nuclear features of the stereotypes under study. According to the associative experiment data, the most frequent reactions to the word “Canada” were hockey, maple syrup, maple leaf, to the word “Australia”—kangaroo, spiders, to the word “New Zealand”—green. These images are included into the nucleus of the stereotypes under question. The semantic analysis of the reactions shows that the nucleus of the stereotype “Canada” contains such features as “symbols”, “nature”, “food” and “sport”. The nucleus of the stereotype “Australia” has “animals”. The nucleus of “New Zealand” consists of “nature”, “films” and “the positive emotions and evaluating”.