Abstract

The concept of ›stereotype‹ is used in a variety of disciplines with changing meanings. They intersect – up to synonymity – with neighboring notions suchas ›prejudice‹, ›cliché‹, ›image‹, ›phrase‹, ›common place‹ and ›prototype‹. Stereotypes are related to semantic features such as stenciled simplifi cation, generalization and caricaturing, biased presumption, far-reaching infl exibility as well as independence of experience, habitualisation and emotionally tinted evaluations. They are usually located in the area of preconceptional cognition, but sometimes (especially within linguistics) on the level of semiotic and especiallylinguistic manifestation. Their ambiguous functional status oscillates among apperceptive economy, linguistic schematizing and the (dangerous) coining ofpredispositions to act. All this is exposed in detail in the present article after the reconstruction of the linguistic history of the term.