Influence of factors "language learning" and "staying in the country" on stereotypical perception of intelligence among Chinese and Russians in relation to each other

This article presents the results of a sociolinguistic experiment, the purpose of which is to identify the influence of the factors "learning a language" and "staying in the country" on the formation of heterostereotypes of Chinese and Russian informants regarding intelligence. The data were obtained in the course of a survey in which six groups of informants (20 people in each group) took part - three groups of Chinese and three groups of Russian informants: those who do not study the language of another country and have never been to it; those who study the language of another country, but have never been to it; those who study the language and have been to another country. As a result of the survey, 486 reactions were received from Chinese informants and 424 reactions from Russian informants regarding their opinion about the intelligence of the opposite ethnic group. Semantic and quantitative analysis of the received reactions showed that the structures of stereotypes regarding the intelligence of the opposite ethnic group differ among Chinese and Russian groups of informants. Language learning has an impact on the level of detail or degree of stereotyped representations of informants who have not been to the country, and staying in the country blurs the stereotypes accumulated on the basis of language learning.