A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Raising of Awareness through Virtual Experiencing
​(C-RAVE)

Building on methods developed under RAVE, C-RAVE aims to explore how socio-linguistic stereotypes are constructed in a different cultural context, namely in the multi-ethnic and matriarchal African state Seychelles. The project is funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation. 

Stereotypes and prejudices are culturally bound. What is considered a "good or bad" characteristic in one culture are not necessarily deemed the same in another. In order to understand our own patterns of behaviour and view others with more open eyes, cross cultural and intercultural perspectives can be enlightening. It is in this light C-RAVE is to be understood. 

C-RAVE builds on RAVE, where the overall aim is to develop efficient methods to illustrate how sociolinguistic founded prejudices and stereotypes affect how we judge others. C-RAVE expands the original RAVE framework to include a cross-cultural dimension, with the aim to improve the framework of the project by exploring how it can be used in different cultural contexts, and in order to enable us to demonstrate and raise awareness on how culture-specific factors affect (linguistic) stereotyping. 

​Under C-RAVE, we carry out case studies based on the original RAVE framework in collaboration with our partner university, University of Seychelles, and the Ministry of Education in the Seychelles. The Seychelles has been chosen as we have a long-standing partnership, and further, the ethnic and gender structures in the Seychelles are interesting and radically different from those in Sweden.

More specifically C-RAVE examines two dimensions of linguistic stereotyping, gender and ethnicity. We explore:

• how responses to the same material differ between two cultural contexts (Sweden and the Seychelles), and
• how methods can be developed for using the above findings as a starting point for raising awareness about how stereotyping is culturally bound and how it may differ from culture to culture.

​C-RAVE makes the most of the theoretical and methodological work carried out under RAVE, and the C-RAVE case studies have been conducted after their counterparts in RAVE using similar respondent groups and set-ups. C-RAVE also includes an intercultural element. By showing students cultural differences in responses and reactions to the cases in the discussion workshops, we have been able to raise awareness on how cultural context plays an important part in stereotyping. Collaborative workshops on the topic have also been conducted in the Seychelles and in Sweden.