Corso di Laurea magistrale (ordinamento
ex D.M. 270/2004)
in Scienze del Linguaggio
Tesi di Laurea
Teaching Italian through
gender stereotypes
Relatore
Ch.mo Dott. Fabio Caon
Correlatrice:
Ch.ma Prof.ssa Giuliana Giusti
Laureanda:
Giovanna Castellaro
Matr. 962795
Anno Accademico
2012 / 2013
INDEX
1. INTRODUCTION ... 4
2. CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTION OF STEREOTYPES ... 9
2.0 Introduction ... 9
2.1 The biological theory ... 10
2.2 The cognitive theory ... 12
2.2.1 Men and women as “social animals”: what identity is and how it works... 12
2.2.2 Categorization ... 14
2.2.3 Meeting, knowing and comparing with the Others ... 15
2.2.4 National features ... 16
2.2.5 How stereotypes are created: inference... 18
2.3 The psycho-social theory ... 18
2.3.1 Critics to the cognitive and psycho-social theories... 20
2.3.2 Gender stereotypes: the case of Italian... 21
2.4 Conclusions ... 26
3. AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE TO DEAL WITH STEREOTYPES ... 27
3.0 Introduction ... 27
3.1 An intercultural approach to stereotypes... 27
3.2 The importance of cooperative learning ... 31
3.3 Structure of UDs and UdAs... 32
3.4 Conclusions ... 34
4. DEVELOPMENT OF THE UDs ... 35
4.0 Introduction ... 35
4.1 Learning context ... 35
4.2 UD 1: Woman ... 38
UdA 1: C’era una volta una ragazza ... 42
UdA 2: La regina contadina e il re... 52
UdA 3: Donne, oggetti e parole ... 62
UdA 4: Storie moderne: “Se non ora, quando?” ... 69
UdA 1: Immagini di uomo, immagini di donna... 84
UdA 2: Lavoro, maschio o femmina? ... 90
UdA 3:Stereotipi da donna e da uomo ... 99
4.4 UD 3: Family... 118
UdA 1: La famiglia ideale... 121
UdA 2: Nuovi ruoli ... 126
UdA 3: Cos’è l’identità ... 133
5. CONCLUSIONS... 139
REFERENCES... 141
1. INTRODUCTION
My interest in stereotypes began when I had the chance to work in a private Institute for the teaching of Italian language and culture in Venice. Students, coming from all over the world, were enthustiastic about the Italian culture, and the great majority of them had chosen deliberately to study Italian just for a matter of interest. However I could notice everyday that the things that first raised their interest were the very strong ideas that are usually associated with Italy: food, weather, arts, etc. Even negative stereotypes, such as mafia, had their appeal. Stereotypes were for them the first contact and knowledge with the Italian culture, and at the same time a source of motivation for them. I was initially considering stereotypes as something to be cancelled, but I soon realised that they were indeed a strong reference point for the students, and a potential resource for me as a teacher. Students learning Italian are not completely unaware of our culture; generally, they have already much information about it, even if incomplete and not systematic. The main problem is given by the non-authenticity of the information they possess. As Balboni (1994: 91) states, stereotypes are one of the sources of non-authenticity. However, if I considered stereotypes as a strategy of knowledge in the first steps of contact with another culture, I could use them to start a reasoning and get to some logical consequences.
This experience has been the starting point for working to my final thesis in collaboration with Anna Ferrari about the most common stereotypes associated to Italy for the XI Master Itals at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The thesis dealt with possible approaches to stereotypes when teaching Italian culture and was focused on some typical stereotypes associated to Italy (mafia, mammoni, dolce vita, paese dell’arte) with proposals of didactic materials. I have now the chance to develop the matter of stereotypes. I chose here to focus on the particular topic of gender stereotypes, as the categories of “woman” and “man” are common to all societies but at the same time they are peculiar in each single society. I chose to deal also with the category of “family”, because it is a concept associated to the categories of “man” and “woman” and describes some types of relations between genders.
The context of teaching considered here takes inspiration from some of the classes I observed during my teaching experience in Venice: people coming from all over the
world, especially from the USA and European countries. Many of them were here just for pleasure and planned to stay just some weeks, others had a precise reason to be here (eg. Erasmus exchange, purposes related to work). The context of learning is thus not a pure “Italian as a Foreign Language” learning context, because the students are fully involved in the Italian society while attending the courses, it is indeed in the middle between the Foreign Language and Second Language contexts1. The didactic action proposed here aims at students at a B1 level, wanting to reach a B2 level (for details, see 4.1).
In the Institute in which I was working, classes were composed by about 10 – 12 adults between the age of 20 and 60. Students could listen to audio recordings, videos and to use computers with Internet access. However, the students could use the Internet of their own, as almost all the students had a good economic situation, or they were Erasmus student having their own PC for reasons of study or had access to computers at university.
Chapter 2 is dedicated to the description of their mechanism, going through the theories of Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Henry Tajfel who thouroghly analyzed this phenomenon. The theories go through human instincts, social needs and behaviours, cognitive processes in order to analyse and explain the phenomenon.
Chapter 3 focuses on the approach and stresses the importance of an intercultural attitude in dealing with stereotypes. Teaching cultural contents is undoubtedly a difficult task, because it is easy to produce commonplaces. As Balboni (1994:91) states, even if the teachers realize that stereotypes must be fought, many times they are uncertain on how to do it.
The intercultural, communicative and cooperative approach chosen for my proposals helps interaction among students: as Milan (2008: 11) observes that such kind of approach improves knowledge of the others and the ability in dealing and coping with different ideas. The teacher should not propose – or impose - any other “thruth” on how
1
According to the Balboni’s definitions (1992; 125-126), Foreign Language (LS, Lingua Straniera) is the language studied exclusively at school and outside the country where the language is spoken; Second Language (L2, Lingua Seconda) is the language studied in the same country where the language is spoken. In the case of Second Language, the inputs come mainly from the daily life and brought to the lessons in class. Motivation is given by the effort of living and being integrated in society.
Italian women, man and families are, but just show a way through which an analysis of stereotypes, deconstruction and critical reconstruction of them is possible. Didactic materials sometimes highlight stereotypes, by emphasizing some negative or positive aspects. As Balboni (1994:91) points out:
Uno studio dei materiali didattici più diffusi dimostra come sia estesa questa schizofrenia: da un lato i dialoghi acquistano una presunta vivezza proprio per le “lamentele” che vi sono contenute su treni, poste, sanità, ecc.; dall’altro poche pagine più avanti le letture “culturali” presentano il Pendolino, la postacelere, i successi della medicina italiana, ecc.. Non si tratta di pluralismo di prospettive, ma di un atteggiamento contradditorio che richiede un continuo controllo da parte dell’insegnante.2
Therefore I have chosen to work on authentic materials in order to promote the analysis of objective sources and encourage confrontation of the students. The authentic materials chosen for these UDs try to be as varied as possible, presenting situations from many different points of view, considering that a better objectivity can be approached by the analysis of more differents shades of a phenomenon: multiplicity of sources must reflect the fact that reality is very varied, and that the identity of each person is forged on multeplicity. Although human mind simplifies society in homogeneous “social groups”, people have so many shades of personality that make them absolutely unique. Moreover, the teacher must keep control on the materials by guiding the students to a process of reasoning, reflection and debate. For this reason the main approach adopted is intercultural, communicative, but it also considers aspects of the affective humanistic approach3: the attention to all the aspects of human personality, not only the cognitive but also the emotional sphere. But knowing how to change
2
A research on the more common and used didactic materials shows how this kind of frenzy is widespread: on the one hand the dialogues acquire an alleged plausibility due to the “complaints” they contain on trains, post offices, heath service, etc.; on the other hand, after some pages, the “cultural” readings describe the Pendolino (the high-speed train) , the postacelere (the fastest service for sending postal parcels), the achievements of Italian medicine, etc. This has nothing to do with variety of perspectives, but it is a contradictory attitude that needs a constant control by the teacher. [My translation]
3
For definition of methods and aims of teaching approaches, see
perspective is also very important: being aware of our own ideas, but knowing how to understand other points of view. Relational abilities are thus important aims of the didactic action, as the means to reach a real cultural – and intercultural – proficiency.
Chapter 4 is dedicated to some proposals of teaching materials. Taking inspiration from one of the UDs contained in my master thesis about the Italian mammone, I chose here to deal with the topic of Italian families. Some strong stereotypes about Italy are indeed about young people living with parents procrastinating their indipendent life, or the idea of the traditional family – mother, father and many children. Consequently, I chose to deal with other two basic categories linked with the idea of family – man and women – considering their relation with the institution of family and the kind of identity attributed to these categories. It is important to consider the particular manifestation that these generalizations have in the Italian culture. How is the institution of family perceived? Is the Italian context linked to a traditional concept of the role of man and woman? At the same time, the categories of “family”, “man” and “woman” are of course common to all kinds of societies: inside each society they are exposed to generalisation and prejudice. Students are asked to carry out a double task: work on the stereotype itself and work on the specific stereotype regarding the Italian culture. This is the reason why it is necessary to adopt an intercultural approach: the focus is not only on the Italian context, since comparison with the cultures of origin of the students is essential. Along with the cultural perspective, the UDs contain also grammatical sections, as language is the expression of culture; they are as consistent with the logical development of the teaching sessions as possible. For example, when students are required to support their opinions, the grammatical section regards how to build a reasoned and logical speech by the use of connectors.
Stereotypes do exist and they are a kind of first information on other cultures or groups of people, but real and deep information can be achieved only by considering the many shades of phenomena .The aim of this work is:
- to analyse the mental phenomenon of stereotype;
- propose materials for language classes in order to go beyond the rigid and generalized contents of stereotypes;
- find out if the stereotype is a completely negative element or if it can be of some use for a more complex analysis of social groups;
- give to young / adult students the chance to face their knowledge on culture, and discover by themselves if such knowledge is superficial and too general;.
- propose the UD (for a definition of UD and UdAs see paragraph 5.1) a model presenting the process for deconstructing stereotypes. A UD is a repeated structure through which students can learn a method and exercise in facing cultural issues.
2 CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTION OF STEREOTYPES
2.0 Introduction
Many of us may surely have expressed some general assertions about a person or a group of people, that were not so familiar or were complete strangers to us. For example speaking about the French, we could have said that they are snobbish or that they are excellent cooks. Logical reasoning bring then to further considerations, such as the fact that population in France is over 61 million, and that it is clear that in such a big figure there must be someone hating cooking. When it comes to meet some French personally, we could perhaps realize that some of them could cook very well, while some others can’t at all. Furthermore, if we ever had the chance to live in France, we would discover how complex the French culture is, and the topic of good cuisine would be lost in the multitude of many other aspects forming part of a society whose culture is continually developing and thus not so easily classified inside rigid categories.
Stereotype can be defined as “a belief about personal attributes of a social category, or of specific social groups” (Villano, 2003: 9). The term comes from the Greek stereos = rigid, permanent, and tupos = print. The word stereotype was originally used in the XIX century to indicate the mould from which all the copies of a newspaper were created; following the metaphor, it is easy to understand how from a stereotype can derive a set of mental products with exactly the same features, as a set of identical newspapers are created from the same mould. Thus stereotype is like a unique and rigid shape: if applied to a group of people, it would include all the members in the same definition. Stereotype doesn’t describe the variety of a group of people, it is a generalisation that is not able to take into consideration all the single aspects if a complex phenomenon.
Walter Lippmann was the first who proposed the term, in 1922: most of all, his definition points out the trait of rigidity of generalizations on social groups and its illogical and incorrect content. The process of creation of stereotypes is thus considered “a distorted and misleading thought” (Villano 2003: 10), cancelling any individual peculiarity. Lippmann’s intuitions were the starting point for further research, including the one carried on by Katz and Braly in 1933, trying to define the content of
stereotypical beliefs. Their experiment was tried on a group of white students of the Princeton University and was based on the allocation of adjectives to specific national and ethnical groups. The majority chose the same adjectives to the same groups, and those adjectives were the confirmation of the stereotype linked to that group. They concluded that those opinions came more from dynamics among social groups and the influence of the mass media, than from personal experience; the trend was, then, defining before observing. One more time, stereotype is considered as an abnormal process of thought and, as Katz and Braly observe (1933: 289) produces distorted and fallacious observations.
After the Second World War however, other fields of research have been developed, starting to focus more on the mental mechanisms that are responsible for the creation of stereotypes and they tried to show also the normality of some cognitive processes. The three main theories are the biological theory, the cognitive theory and the psycho-social theory. The develop cronologically and they complete each other. However, the biological theory developed by Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt is the starting point, while the other two theories develop later and are in some way interdependent: one focuses more on the cognitive dimension (in other words, it considers mental processes), while the other, which can be defined “psychosocial”, considers also the importance of belonging to a social group and the social dynamics influencing the individual and common thought.
In 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 the main theories about the construction of identity are presented. 2.2.2 and 2.2.5 are dedicated to two main concepts for the explanation of the existence of stereotypes: categorisation and inference. 2.3.2 deals with the use of language and the way stereotypes are expressed by some spontaneous linguistic choices. The stereotypes taken into consideration in this work are national and gender stereotypes (sections 2.2.4 and 2.3.3).
2.1 The biological theory
Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the founder if the field of human ethology, brought the Darwinian theories into the field of social psychology. Charles Darwin, in the Origin of
the Species, states that groups of organisms belonging to the same species evolve gradually through a process of natural selection. Therefore, humans, as any other animal with instinct impulses, need to decide which are hostile groups and which are the groups with affinities with their own. According to instinct, they decide whether it is necessary to have a defensive behaviour or a collaborative one, in order to guarantee their survival. These two behaviours are opposite but at the same time, they complement each other: success in evolution would depend not on the prevailing of one aspect, but on their balance. The necessity of preserving one’s own existence has brought to the development of the ability of fast attributing characteristics to other individuals and to the groups to whom they belonged. The result is a pure instinct of fight, which would crystallize and then adapt to social contexts in societies becoming more and more developed.
One aspect of social psychology assumes that human behaviours are governed by the parameters of each specific social situation. According to Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1989), this adapting process requires complex neuronal mechanisms, such as determining which elements are associated among them and if this kind of association brings to a reward or to any positive consequence. The so created neuronal systems lead to the activation of specific instinctive behaviours, linked to the specific contexts that can occur. Also the instinctive activation of the stereotype is caused by this kind of chemical-biological process. Therefore two possible kinds of stereotypes can be originated: negative stereotypes, in recognising an enemy, and positive stereotypes, in deciding who can be a possible partner. This process is so rooted in human instinct and it is so vital for self protection that it has developed further to the last step of evolution, adapting gradually to society. This is one the possible explanations for the presence of stereotypes among human groups.
The first generic approach to individuals towards other individuals is given by the classification of “who is different” as friend or enemy. This consideration is, of course, extremely simplified, just to understand which the deepest reasons in the formation of stereotypes can be. We are considering, as a matter of fact, the Darwinian perspective about the process of natural selection.
However this theory considers only the phenomenon in the moment in which it was originated: a past and primordial social context where the urgency was the satisfaction
of primary needs, a situation thus very far from the present social dynamics where the most important needs regard the spheres of esteem, self-actualisation and inclusion in specific groups. For this reason other theories have been developed, such as the theories of John C. Turner, Henry Tajfel, Carolyn and Muzafer Sherif, which give more emphasis to the psychological and social dimension of the contemporary individuals.
2.2 The cognitive theory
The cognitive approach to the topic of stereotypes was developed after the Second World War and focus more on the psychological mechanism governing the stereotypes than on the content of stereotypes. The cognitive theory considers the human need of having personal and social identity and is based on the mental mechanisms of categorization (i.e. the mental process that allows the storage of big quantities of data) and inference, i.e. “the act of passing from one preposition, statement, or judgement considered as true to another whose thruth is believed to follow from that of the former” (Merriam Webster on line, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inference )
The scholar that most gave contribution to this theory was Henry Tajfel, a Jew from Poland who experienced stereotype and prejudice and survived the horror of the Nazi persecution and lagers. His research stresses on the cognitive part regarding the mechanism of formation of stereotypes and prejudices. He also considers the social aspect a crucial factor for these phenomena.
2.2.1 Men and women as a “social animal”: what identity is and how it works
Humans are not a complete just in their biological development, but they discover and complete themselves only in a second phase, when they discovers social relations. This idea is common in anthropology but also in other human sciences such as psychoanalysis, linguistics or sociology. Indeed, the most simple conclusion would be that human beings first develop their “biological equipment”, that is their cognitive faculties, and then they can move forward to the achievement of culture. On the
contrary, it seems that the human mind grows and moulds itself in a gradual and ever changing way thanks to social interaction. According to the theory of the biological incompleteness proposed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1987: 49-51), culture becomes part of the human being since the first moments of life and it is of extreme importance for the development of those mental structures which are vital for inclusion in a social context. The cognitive growth and the acquisition of one or more cultures are processes that start and then increase at the same pace, since the first day of life, because human beings are, according to Aristotle’s definition, “social animals” from the very first moment they see life. We immediately come in contact with others through emotions and thought, that in the first steps of existence are linked to basic necessities. We can’t do without culture: we can indeed define culture as a system of shared values inside a group of people. Therefore, a good interaction depends on the possibility of communicating in an effective way with the other people included in the group, through shared methods. It is thus a matter of surviving and this is something that belongs to instinct: the aim for a new born human is to belong to a group where is ensured of feeding, protection and care.
So far we have considered human beings just in the first part of their existence, to stress the fact that culture, rigidly linked to the social interaction where it is expressed, is crucial for surviving and thus it is an urgent need since the very first moments of life. Considering more refined needs, up in the hierarchy of needs proposed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1954: 15-22), above the urge for biological and physiological needs, protection and security there are:
• Belongingneess and love needs • Esteem needs
• Self-actualisation needs
The first two points are especially related to sociality, not as mere need for surviving as discussed above, but as a growing need for having an identity. The third and highest aim is the development and the self-actualisation, thus the attribution of a specific identity to the self, as individuals. To get to this achievement, there are two intermediate levels: on one hand is the ability to stay with other individuals and to feel part of a group (belongingness and love needs); on the other are self esteem, esteem from the other individuals and the achievement of a status and of respect (esteem needs). It is easy to
understand that when people try to get an identity, they do it according to the social context. A single person cannot be isolated from society, not even when the goal of self-actualisation has been reached, because self-self-actualisation is expressed by thoughts and actions that take place in society and have their effects on it.
Identity gives meaning to one’s existence, making individuals aware that they are different from any other. Therefore the word “identity” is something linked to the concept of “particular” and cannot include too a large variety and be something “universal. As Geertz (1987: 92) states:
We are incomplete, or not finite, animals, that complete and refine themselves through culture – and not through general culture, but through forms of culture that are extremely particular.
Therefore, to get an identity means to acquire specific cultural features, excluding any other characteristic. It is worth noticing that the word identity derives from the Latin word idem (same, identical): as people tend to emulate the behaviours that they consider positive, they end sharing some characteristics with those other people they come in contact with.
2.2.2 Categorization
The formation of an identity is linked with the human tendency of performing mental actions, one of these consists in dividing reality into some kind of boxes. The classical concept of categorization is explained by Plato and further explored and systematized by Aristotle in his Categories treatise. According to Aristotle, categories are entities characterized by a set of features shared by all the units included in the set. The set contains the conditions for the establishment of meaning. From the 1970s, the American psychologist Eleanor Rosch brings the concept of categorization in
psychology. Rosch (1978: 3) asserts that
two general and basic principles are proposed for the formation of categories: the first has to do with the function of category systems and asserts that the task of category systems is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort; the second has to do with the
structure of the information so provided and asserts that the perceived world comes as structured information rather than as arbitrary or unpredictable attributes. Thus maximum information with least
cognitive effort is achieved if categories map the perceived world structructure as closely as possible. This condition can be achieved either by the mapping of categories to given attribute structures or by the definition or redefinition of attributes to render a given set of categories appropriately structured.
Human brain tends to label, to make sets and to categorize. This is an operation that becomes automatic in every human being, but it happens also at a social level, because society has a background of information that is elaborated at a collective level. In the construction of identity two processes are involved: a more general one, consisting in the transmission of particular cultural parameters; and a more particular one, which consists in the contact with great quantity of detailed data, that need to be organised and catalogued, according to the parameters given by the society he or she belongs to, before choosing which kind of information defines one person’s own identity.
The choice of some features as opposed to others, is after all just a matter choice, in other words it is a selection among many different elements distinct from one another. Thus the process of definition of one’s own identity cannot be completed without comparing it to what is different from us. No one can do without the others while looking for an identity and any society is able to find a cultural identity without contacts with other cultures. On the contrary, the contact with what is different makes it possible to understand who you are: for instance, if there were not people with black skin, the “white” people would not be aware of the shade of their skin. The construction of identity is a never-ending process, which always needs comparing with the differences. The separation with what is different tends to be clear but will never be absolute. On the one hand, there is a natural curiosity for different entities, on the other there is a need of protecting one’s own identity tracing limits that must be as definite as possible.
2.2.3 Meeting, knowing and comparing with the Others
As illustrated in 2.2.2 dealing with categorization, when approaching to anything different, the cognitive system faces a huge quantity of data coming from what
surrounds us. The result is the mental creation of homogeneous sets. If we apply this concept to any physical object, it is clear how this process is perfectly natural. For example, let us consider the category “chair”, a word that indicates a group of objects where it is possible to sit on. When allocating the name “chair” to such objects, a process of abstraction has taken place. In other words when we define something as a “chair” it is because that object has a main and relevant function (“something where you can sit”); we do not care about all the other irrelevant details, such as its colour, if it is big or small, if it has got three or four legs, an so forth. It is natural to give a name to each category, because for a matter of mental economy it would be impossible to consider every single detail of any object we come in contact with.
The same process takes place in social contexts. The creation of categories is absolutely vital to assign identities to the self and to the others. Furthermore, when meeting a stranger, access to those mental categories helps make communication easier. For example, when we see someone wearing a uniform, it is natural to include him/her in the category “police” or “soldier” (depending on the kind of uniform, if we have enough knowledge to make the distinction, of course) that is someone whose task is to maintain public order. It would not be logical to think that he/she will use any weapon against us and this awareness will make us have a certain attitude towards this person. At a mental level, thanks to experience, all the stored information coming from the empiric world is organized and fixed in structures: they constitute logical webs, producing specific meanings – for instance, the connection between “armed person” and “person wearing a uniform” can generate the meaning of “policeman/policewoman” .
2.2.4 National features
The process of simplification of information at the social level is particularly evident in the case of categorization of national features. The main idea is that each national group has a sufficiently homogeneous culture, thus people belonging to each one of them present specific common features.
Indeed, as illustrated in 2.2.1 dealing with the topic of identity, the culture that gives the shape to our brain is transferred to us from the people surrounding us, from the
power of the socialization processes that produce and re-produce culture. This happens inside families, in other institutions such as schools, or it happens through the mass media. The result is a spiral where cultural identity is maintained. Having a precise identity is indeed crucial to feel included in that group and to be able to live within it successfully.
As we attribute to ourselves a group identity, it is also natural to think that also other people joining specific groups acquire a certain identity. According to this assumption, we tend to gather into categories what we think is part of a specific culture, simplifying it, and allocating some stigmatized traits to the bearer of that culture. In this way, the process of categorization becomes a precious tool for facing the external world successfully: when meeting a person with a different culture, this tool enables us to make suppositions, according to simple ready-made knowledge already stored in our brain, and set our behaviour, so that interaction is positive and effective. For example, if we know that the person we are speaking with is a Muslim, then this person is not supposed to eat swine meat, our pre-stored knowledge will prevent us from offering him/her that kind of meat at lunch, and potentially interaction will have better results.
The content of ethnic and national stereotypes was determined by the research of Katz and Braly (1933) through an adjective checklist procedure regarding ten groups, including Italians. This reseach was revisited in a research published in 2000 carried out by scholars of Iowa University (Madon, Guyill) and Rutgers University (Aboufadel, Montiel, Smith, Palumbo, Jussim). It was based on questionnaires to be filled in by Americans with different origins (Native American, European, non-European, African, Asian, Latino/as, other). The list of adjectives provided was completed with more adjectives and the groups considered were the same of Katz and Braly’s research (Germans, Italians, African Americans, Irish, English, Jews, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Turks). It was an assessment and update of Katz and Braly’s results and determined the stereotype about Italians to be “loyal to family ties”. Moreover, Katz and Braly’s research had described Italians to be “very religious”, according to the stereotype. One of the most strong generalization about Italy thus regards the concept of family, and the traditional roles attributed to family members according to religious beliefs.
2.2.5 How stereotypes are created: inference
Mazzara (1997: 69) defines inference as the “forecasting of the correspondence between traits that can immediately be observed and some other, less evident, characteristics” belonging to the psychological and personal spheres, regarding the moral qualities, the preferences or the behavioural tendencies of a person. Inference is indeed a sort of selection method of our interpersonal relationships: as a matter of fact we choose to interact with those people our cognitive system recognizes as having the characteristics we require.
When meeting the Others, sometimes few objective information is not enough to perform an effective communication. The most important part in interaction is indeed linked to its pragmatism, to the fact that the process originates positive feelings. Therefore, the mental mechanism of foreseeing who we are facing tries to go to its maximum extent, beyond the basic “objective” information attributed to the other person’s culture, until passing the boundary and attributing subjective characteristics. For instance, let us consider a person who “was born in Finland” and “speaks Finnish”. Let us also consider the fact that “Finland is a northern country” and that “ in Finland days are very short”. Until now, it can be said that these are objective observations. But the process of supposition can go further on, through connection of ideas, for example: “Finnish people don’t go out very often from their houses because it is too cold”, “young Finnish people don’t go out very often at night”, “Finnish people are introverted”. Here we started from neutral criteria of classification, passing gradually to less defined and less neutral judgements.
2.3 The psycho-social theory
As it has been discussed in 2.1, the biological theory alone is insufficient to explain human relations; in the same way the psychological theory cannot account exhaustively for the complex social relations in which stereotypes are generated. It could be said that the psychological theory just analyzes how every single mind works, but it does not
consider the dynamics of relationships among people and the fact that the content of stereotypes is built through those relationships.
In the last part of the 70s the psychological theory starts talking about social identity thanks to the contribute of Tajfel and his student John C. Turner. In the cognitive theory only the mental and individual process of building an identity as a collection, selection and organization of information is considered, while the emotional dimension at its highest extent is not.
People need to have a good image of themselves, as a starting point to develop their abilities in the social context they are included and fulfil their project of life according to their ideals. Each one is aware of being part of a specific group and is motivated to maintain a good reputation inside it. Belongingness determines identification: it is thus clear that any opinion regarding the group is also an opinion involving the self. Since judgements can be elaborated only through comparison, social psychology has defined the two concepts of ingroup and outgroup, in other words the social group one person belongs to and the group he/she does not belong to. The key hypothesis of the theory of social identity is that people tend to emphasize their positive opinion of the ingroup, in order to answer esteem needs of its members, activating as a consequence negative evaluation on the outgroup. Therefore, the mechanism activated here is the stereotypical one, internal-positive and external-negative, an opinion that each person shares with the other members of the ingroup.
The experiments carried on by Carolyn and Muzafer Sherif at the beginning of the 1960s have brought to interesting results, showing that the dynamics linked with the belonging to the ingroup and the comparison with the outgroup are very powerful. The experiment was conducted on kids attending summer camps. The participants to the camp were divided into groups. The organizers separated in different groups any small group of friends already formed, as for instance couples of friends, in order that the members of the camp groups did not know each other from before. Each group was characterised by specific elements, as for example a colour, meeting points, common spaces, common habits, and so on. These simple tricks were enough to spark off the ingroup / outgroup dynamics, that were actually very powerful, causing hostile behaviours among groups. The experimenters had planned activities that put the kids in competition, but after some time it was necessary to decrease the level of tension and
propose some activities to promote cooperation. For example, they faked an accident involving the van bringing the supplies, and the kids were asked to work together to rescue the vehicle gone off the road.
Another series of experiments were carried on by Henry Tajfel, to understand which the minimum conditions sparking off the preference for a group were. The experiment was tried on a sample of adolescents, divided arbitrarily into two groups. The students were asked to perform a task about the allocation of a sum of money to the other students. All the students knew their own belongingness, but no one knew which group the other participants belonged to: thus the only thing at stake (the minimum condition Tajfel wanted to test) was the awareness to belong to a group. In other words, the experiment did not activate group dynamics as interaction, mutual knowledge and understanding, sharing, and so on. The participants had to decide only how to allocate the money according to strategies. Tajfel found that the minority took decisions aimed at the maximum common profit, meaning that they wanted the organizers of the game to give the biggest sum they could to the whole group of people involved, without any preference for one or the other group. But the majority decided to distribute the sums of money in order to have the biggest difference between their own group and the other, or the maximum profit for their own group, even if it meant to renounce to the maximum profit in the amount of money that the whole group of participants could have achieved. In case of conflict between the decision of favouring just one group or both, usually the students chose to maintain a big difference in order to let their own group having the biggest gain.
2.3.1 Critics to the cognitive and psycho-social theories
Paragraph 2.3 explains how the psycho-social theory includes both the biological and the cognitive theories. Basic needs are survival and security. This is achieved inside a social group, whose characteristics become part of the identity of each person composing it. Complementary to the effort of determining one’s own social belonging is the action of recognising who the “enemies” are, or rather, the people who endanger the in-group in some way: threatening its existence or its rights, or simply its vision of the
reality and its cultural models, calling into question what is accepted as true or false. While the processes of inference and categorization are part of the pure psychological dimension, and are the mechanisms that make the classification of the self and of the other people possible. Stereotypes are the product of this kind of simplification: they are a tool for general knowledge, of classification, they are precious when approaching strangers, but they are also a defensive resource. It is clear also that each theorical explanation of how stereotypes work is focused on just one specific aspect of the phenomenon, but each vision is complementary to the others adding precious information to the explanation of a complex matter where all the causes are intertwined. However many critics have been made to the biological, cognitive and psycho-social theories, because in some way they tend to show that the formation of stereotypes and prejudices is something perfectly normal; thus that they are justifying them. However the point is not what the results are, but how these results can be used in order to understand and then control and delimit the phenomenon. In the particolar context of teaching Italian language and culture considered here, the study about such mental mechanisms must be brought towards the reflection about them and the creation of specific didactic materials.
2.3.2 Gender stereotypes: the case of Italian
As seen in paragraph 2.1, the struggle for being accepted is expression of the need of surviving. Since the first phases of life, children feel the necessity of being included in the environment they are born in order to ensure themselves assistance to their basic needs and psychological happiness. Since being accepted in a group means sharing a system of values with the other members, unconsciously people tend to imitate the ones they want to join in order to obtain acceptance and inclusion. Usually in our society children find themselves in a family managed by a mother and a father, so the distinction in gender appears something essential from the very first moment. Families expect children to behave according to their model, as Giusti (2011: 15-16) states:
volte correzione, fin dal primo giorno di vita e fanno direttamente parte di una costruzione culturale dell’identità che si tramanda da una generazione all’altra ed è rafforzata proprio dalla natura assolutamente pervasiva e inconscia degli stimoli (sia da parte di chi li offre, sia da parte di chi li acquisisce), di cui la lingua è uno tra i più significativi.4
The transmission of information and ideas happens through the powerful means of language. If I want to be included in a group, I will indeed adopt the linguistic variety used inside that group. The adoption of a high or low register, for example, can express the belonging to a rich and educated social group or to a poor and not so accultured one. Linguistic choices are adopted also on the basis of the sense of belonging to the categories of gender. As Santipolo (2002:129) states, girls tend to prefer the use of Italian instead of dialect more than boys, partlt due to the prevailing idea that dialect is unpolite and rough while girls are expected to be nice and be polite. According to a research done by ISTAT (2000)5, the choice of language is influenced by gender: women tend to speak only or mainly Italian inside their family (45,7% against 42,5% of men) and with friends (51,1% against 44,7%). This difference is bigger among the young and diminishes in elder generations. Men tend to mix Italian and dialect with friends (35,1% against 30,6% of women) and the difference between men and women is evident in people under 34. There is a more regular usage of dialect and a less marked difference as the age grows, while it is almost absent in people over 75.
Italian is a language characterized by gender inflection. In Italian all nouns have a gender. Generally, nouns ending in –a are feminine and nouns ending in –o are masculine. There are however exceptions: for example, la radio (feminine) or il capolinea (masculine). When the noun has a common form for the two genders (nouns ending in –e, as la pelle or il pane), the distinction is operated by the flexion of the articles and adjectives referring to the noun: la neve fresca, il fiore profumato, il preside
4
Not all kind of expectations are necessarily explicit (having a name, or rules, or laws regarding them) but they are built on behaviours acquired uncounsciously by imitation, influence from other people, sometimes correction of mistakes, since our first days of life. They belong to the process of building a cultural identity and it is strenghtened by external stimulus: people are unaware about these external influences both when they are the source and the receivers in the communication process. Language is one of the most powerful means of transmission of such external stimulus.
5
severo, l’insegnante attenta. While nouns of inanimate entities have a specific gender (e.g. la casa is not the feminine form of il caso, but they have two different meanings), nouns of animated entities can be declined in both the feminine and the masculine form. Nouns of animals usually have a marked form for the feminine (e.g. maiale / scrofa; or, in the case of gatto / gatta, gatta is used when it is necessary to stress the gender of the animal). Nouns referring to people (proper or common nouns) have two forms for the masculine and feminine and when the noun is ending in –e the gender is expressed by article and adjective agreement. In the formation of feminine and masculine nous for animated entities, italian has a symmetric structure. However, it is the use which is asymmetric, especially with nouns of jobs. Professions are indeed strongly connected with the idea of roles in society: at present some of them are hardly used in their feminine correspondent especially when describing jobs having to do with power, even if grammar would permit a regular formation (see, for example, magistrato, medico, ingegnere). Some nouns are regularly used both in their feminine and masculine forms, but the meanings attributed to the two words are different: for example, segretario describes a person working at a very high position, having decisional powers (for example, segretario of a political party), while segretaria describes a woman working in an office in a position of subordination, having tasks of assistance to a boss (es. segretaria in a law firm). Sometimes the feminine noun is already quite used, but some women prefer not to adopt it: see, for example, ministro (ministra), direttore (direttrice), and the already mentioned segretario (segretaria). There is no reason why the feminine form would imply inferiority, but this is just a social suggestion, that positions of power are a prerogative of men.
Sometimes there is ambiguity about the form to be used for the feminine: see the case of avvocato, which can become avvocatessa, avvocato donna / donna avvocato, or avvocata. Avvocata would be the most regular declination for this noun, however it is rarely used; while the suffix –essa is often used for the formation of feminine, but they usually sound ironic or even pejorative (except for some nouns like professoressa or dottoressa, which are already assimilated in the language). Confusion in defining a profession for a woman with a proper word also means being confused about her
professional identity. Avvocata, in this case, would be the proper feminine noun, but it “sound strange” just because it is not commonly used.6
Language describes society, but it also evolves with it. The case of nouns denoting jobs is emblematic of the fact that the professionality of women in Italy is changing, but at a slow pace and not without difficulties. If some nouns “sound strange”, it is because Italian native speakers are not accustomed with the ideas expressed by those words. A proposal for a non-sexist use of language has been made by Alma Sabatini in 1987, with her publication Raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della lingua italiana, included, even if not completely, in the website of the Ministero per la Pubblica Amministrazione e la Semplificazione. As Sabatini (1987: 97) suggests, the use of a word instead of another produces a change in the thoughts and attitude both in the speaker and in the listener: words are a materialization, a real action. Sabatini (1987: 107) suggests a different choice of words when speaking of groups of men and women: for example, when regarding a person, a population, or a group of people including both men and women, the Italian speakers often choose the words uomo, or the masculine form of nouns, fo example:
- uomo di Cro-Magnon - diritti dell’uomo - i Romani
- gli amici / i fratelli even if there are women in the group of friends or siblings She promotes some rules for a symmetric use of Italian, according to its grammatical rules. For example an asymmetric sentence would be La paternità di quest’opera è attribuita a Maria Rossi, where the word paternità refers to the masculine role of father, thus it is asymmetric if attributed to a woman: a better solution would be La maternità di quest’opera è attribuita a Maria Rossi (1987:104). Symmetry and equality is promoted for other cases too, such as the nouns of professions: Sabatini gives hints for a symmetric formation of nouns of jobs, as summarized by Giusti (2011:27):
- use nouns derived from present participles, adjectives ending in –e or similar words always in the feminine form (eg. la presidente, la vigile)
6
Most of the examples of nouns regarding the semantic field of professions are taken from Giusti, G. (2011), ed., Nominare per esistere: nomi e cognomi: pp. 15-16
- use the regular feminine form for nouns ending in –(i)ere (eg. infermiera, ingegnera)
- decline nouns derived from past participles, adjectiven ending in –a / -o and similar words with the suffix –a (eg. ministra, sindaca, soldata)
- avoid words formed with the suffix –essa except for those words already assimilated in language as professoressa and dottoressa
- use the suffix –trice, since it is highly productive, in deriving the feminine form from masculine nouns ending with –tore (direttrice, redattrice, rettrice)
- use the already common feminine equivalents without fearing that they can have a pejorative connotation of the masculine noun (eg. segretaria). Indeed, also masculine nouns present ambiguity between a “high” or “low” connotation. Equality in use of all words would be reached by an equal and common use of the two forms.
The perception of the roles of gender is very descriptive of a culture: it regards the parameter of politically correct vs politically incorrect, which changes from culture to culture. As in the following example described by Balboni (2007: 27), the political correctness can bring to situations that would hardly occur in Europe: when a man opens a door to let the lady go first, he can be regarded as sexist, according to the US concept of equality of genders. The Italian context is characterized by a clear differentiation between genders as it is shown in language; while in other languages, for example English, the difference is almost absent. Such difference in how languages express genders is a good topic for an intercultural approach. On the one hand, the students can observe the peculiarity of Italian in showing the difference of genders; on the other hand, they can do a comparison of the different languages spoken in class. Such comparison can highlight indeed different cultural perspectives, bringing to the students’ attention different points of view on the topic. In UD 2 - UdA 2, the attention is also focused on the fact that even if masculine forms are mostly used, there is a debate for a more equal use of language in the Italian society, especially in the semantic field of professional roles: for example the choise of using the equivalent feminine forms also for those words used mainly in the masculine, when the feminine would “sound strange”. It is interesting to let the students notice this need of a linguistic equality, as a mirror for equality in society,
in order to let them think about the way a culture is not something static but it can negotiate its parameters according to the influences with other cultures and its internal changes.
2.4 Conclusions
Stereotypes are originated from complex mental processes that have been explained by scholars in theories that are connected and complementary one to the other. The main concept regarding stereotype is that of generalization. Stereotypes are general and inaccurate concepts that represent a first knowledge of the outgroups, but potentially lead to prejudice.
The topic of political correctness vs political incorrectness is just one of the cultural parameters of a society. As Balboni points out (2007: 24-27), other examples are taboos, formal and informal attitudes, difference in the perception of concepts as space, time, or extralinguistic communication. Cultural misunderstandings may occur in many situations, but they are not predictable: in class, the students are thus asked to learn how to deal with difference in parameters, by reasoning on them. This can help them approaching each single communication event with a better awareness on the dynamics of cultural exchanges.
3. AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE TO DEAL WITH
STEREOTYPES
3.0 Introduction
Stereotype is a general knowledge characterized by rigidity, as seen in chapter 2. However, even if we “belong” to a culture, we do not however completely identify with it, due to contamination processes with other cultures. Moreover, tracing precise boundaries of a culture is impossible. The unpredictable experiences each one of us lives mark a path that is unique for each single person. The concept of stereotype is opposed to this idea of multiplicity and continuous exchange: while the boundaries of stereotype are neat, the idea of continuous development of a collective and individual identity imply that any boundaries can be trespassed. Experience and contact with situations presenting different aspects of reality will bring us to a higher level of cultural knowledge.
This chapter proposes a framework for didactics: the intercultural approach, aiming to trespass the boundaries of cultures and to deconstruct the stereotype; cooperative leaning methods, in order to promote social interaction; the adoption of UD and UdA models as learning structures leading to analysis and reflection on contents.
3.1 An intercultural approach to stereotypes
When we talk about interculture, we are dealing with an approach but not with contents. Culture presents such a quantity of facts that it is impossible to teach them thoroughly and completely. Moreover culture is not static, it changes ceaselessly according to the developments in society and to the contact with other cultures. As Balboni (2007: 16) states, interculturalism is impossible to teach, for qualitative reasons, because culture is changing continuously, and for quantitative reasons because considering the number of different cultures in this worlds, it is impossible to consider all the cultural problems exhaustively. Indeed, the situations that can produce cultural misunderstandings are not predictable in every detail. According to Balboni (2007: 16),
it is not a matter of description, but of giving a model that can produce and inspire behaviours. What is thus the meaning of intercultural education? It is about leading the students to an “intercultural behaviour”. Interculturalism is not renouncing to ethics and beliefs to assimilate other cultural references: it is about respecting your own identity and learning how to respect the identities of people of other cultures. It is important to be aware that cultures have always been contaminated, and the cultures of the contemporary world are the products of countless exchanges. Also our single identities are products of our everyday experiences and interactions, thus it is important to be aware of this process.
As Celentin and Serragiotto explain7, the intercultural perspective includes schemes for interpreting reality, parameters and conceptual structures aimed to a critical and constructive attitude when meeting a different culture. The targets of intercultural education are:
- educating people who are able to put themselves in other people’s shoes, in terms of cultural feeling8;
- promoting flexible minds, able to give meaning to communicative facts according to the social and cultural context in which they take place;
- teaching to be open, curious and interested in different cultures. In an intercultural perspective, the steps proposed for facing stereotypes are:
- Recognise the stereotype. The stereotype is presented at the beginning, as a starting point for further examination. It becomes a means for elicing previous knowledge of the students, and for a first comprehension of the inputs, so that the students can rely on knowledge they already possess.
- Analyse the stereotype. The topic is enriched with details, in order to give tools to the student for widening their perspective.
- Deconstruct the stereotype. Is it the only possible perspective? Or are there any other things or situations to be considered? In the moments dedicated to reflection, the students come in contact with other aspects of a topic, considering thus more points of views than the one given by the stereotype.
7
http://venus.unive.it/filim/materiali/accesso_gratuito/Filim_didattica_it_prospettiva.pdf
8
The Italian verb used by Celentin and Serragiotto is decentrare: literally, it means shifting something from the centre. In this context, it means to change perspective.
- Put the stereotype together again. Through reasoning, the students elaborate and become counscious of the variety, and try to cope with it. It is the moment to negotiate previous knowledge and exchange views with other people. Cooperation here has an essential role (for cooperative learning methods, see paragraph 3.2).
The key word is deconstruction of concepts and relational schemes. According to Nanni (2001: 17-18), deconstruction aims at learning that our point of view is partial, learning how to accept other points of view and educating to the concept of history as a ever-changing process od social dynamics.
Thus intercultural ability is about being aware of our own personality and identity and at the same time letting it grow and improve through exchange with other elements. We are free to choose what can be part of our identity, according to our beliefs, but at the same time it is crucial to be aware that the other people has the same right to choose. The contact with someone different from us must not represent a danger, but an opportunity of being more aware of our personality and of the choices we are free to take. If we are able to manage contamination, we have the chance to let our identity become richer and less static. Therefore, learning to manage contamination means learning how to accept differences and let them become part of us, in other words it means learning how to learn.
It is not only a matter of learning another culture, it is above all being aware of the importance of social dynamics and complexity in interpreting reality. Society is made of all the people part of it, or better, it is made of all the people we meet. Our perception or reality is built on the basis of the information collected thanks to the exchanges we experimented. Information is then processed on the basis of our subjectivity. Our subjectivity is however the result of a continuous development. As Caon (2006: 18) points out:
La cultura d’appartenenza è una costruzione soggettiva, un’autopercezione del proprio originale modo di vivere e reinterpretare norme, valori e abitudini di una società. Essa non è descrivibile in maniera definita e conclusa poiché ognuno di noi costruisce la propria
appartenenza nell’intersoggettività, nella relazione con gli altri ed è innanzitutto espressione delle conoscenze che assimila e delle esperienze che fa.9
The notion of culture as “indefinite and not closed” is essential. If we consider this, not only we lay the conditions for a real growth in our personality and increase of personal knowledge, but also we learn how to give space to the personal development of the people surrounding us. It is about being able to make choices, put ourselves in the condition of listening and learning by the others with respect for their views, decide what can be part of us and what is to be left aside without any sort of prejudice: otherwise, we would be lockened in the cage of a rigid and unchangeable concept of culture.
When we speak about ideas regarding national identity, we unavoidably involve some part of the personal identity of every single student in a class group. It is normal that a substantial part of each one’s own identity is rooted in the sense of belonging to a group and also in dynamics of confrontation and competition among groups (Mazzara 1997: 79). If on the one hand some mental processes are mechanical and unavoidable, on the other hand they cannot be absolutely justified, as in the case of prejudice. However, the difference between what are mental mechanisms - that can be categorized as natural mechanisms of our brain - and the use of such mechanisms must be set clearly (Mazzara 1997: 79). In the experiments carried on by the Sherifs (see Paragraph 2.3), it was already clear how tasks of cooperation had positive effects in quietening a situation of social conflict. Paragraph 3.2 will deal with the importance of cooperative attitudes in a class where there are students belonging to different cultural groups, to put together and compare points of view and go beyond differences.
9
The culture we belong is a subjective construction, a self-perception of our personal lyfestyle and of our way of assimilating rules, valuesn and habits of a society. Culture cannot be enclosed in precise boundaries, because each one of us build his/her identity through the relations with all the people we meet. It is, first of all, the expression of the knowledge possesed and experiences made. [My translation]
3.2 The importance of Cooperative Learning
Cooperative Learning methods are a training in intercultural abilities, because they bring interaction to its maximum extent. The model of interaction required by the structure of the CL activities is based on “positivity” that, as explained in Deutsch (1972: 276), is a condition in which there is a positive relation between the individual and the collective goals.
“Positive interdipendence” thus promotes personal growth, respect and cultural development both of individuals and the group, being a network in which every person can offer space to the others by letting them enter in its cultural domain: in the same way, every person can get more space (intended as a spece were it is possible to move and get new information) interacting and sharing with the others. Relational abilities are essential to do this, and they are thus a aim in Cooperative Learning.
According to the guideline proposed here, stereotypes are not to be described by the teacher but they are to be worked out directly by the students, in order to make them acquire a specific ability in dealing with any kind of generalization. Stereotypes are social products thus their deconstruction can be reached through social practice. Frontal lessons are to be reduced to the minimum, while the teacher must promote those activities that bring the students interacting. The teacher must mediate the whole process, being not the one describing the contents of stereotypes but guiding the students in learning how to deal with any kind of stereotype. Cooperative Learning activities are consistent with this kind of approach, because they promote exchange of opinions, they favour contamination above mentioned. While competitition would favour the imposition of points of view of the strongest people or groups, cooperation aims at putting together efforts in order to reach a common purpose. As Caon (2008: XXI) states, the Cooperative Learning method appeals to strategic elements that are consistent with some of the principles of intercultural education, such as a shift in the point of view, the development of empathy, the importance of results achieved together but, most of all, the importance of the activities carried out together. Inside cooperative groups linguistic interactions are very frequent, but also the students need to listen to each other, in order to carry out the common task. The ability of listening to people is important to help empathic attitutes, and empathy is the experience of understanding
another person’s condition from his or her perspective. Working together in a cooperative environment not only help people to learn how to manage relations and exchange of opinions, but also help to strengthen individual identity: in a group where a common task is to be achieved, people must learn how to balance their own ideas with the other people’s positions. It is not however possible to use only Cooperative Learning methods, because students need some moments for processing information and ideas on their own, in order to be able to share them with the others (Caon, 2008: XX). Real learning and confrontation take place only when people are able to put together individualities inside group dynamics. The teacher must mediate the whole process, being not the one describing the contents of stereotypes but guiding the students in learning how to deal with any kind of stereotype.
In the UDs proposed in section 4, activities of Cooperative Learning are situated towards the end of each UdA. At the beginning there are activities that ask the students to work on their own and face with their own abilities. They have thus the chance to get gradually involved in the topic, first collecting all their thoughts and knowledges about it; it is also the moment for them to face stereotyped concepts in their mind. The cooperative activities are proposed when the stereotype has already arisen: the students are then asked to compare their different opinions and thoughts.
3.3 Structure of UDs and UdAs
The materials proposed are organized in UdAs (Unità di Apprendimento) as subsections of the UD (Unità Didattica), each aiming to specific results. The model of the UD is proposed by Balboni (1994: 66-69) as a project of 7-8 hours, organized in phases, going from motivation, to global comprehension, to a deeper analysis, to reflection, to fixing of contents, to the last phase of testing.10
While each UD is dedicated to a specific topic (“donna”, “uomo e donna”, “famiglia”) and, as asserted in Balboni (2002: 104), is a more general framework, the UdAs are the steps constructing the UD and they are more specific. UdAs are described in Balboni
10
The phases, as listed in Balboni, 1994, are: motivazione, approccio globale, analisi, sintesi, riflessione,
