Can you find stereotypical depictions of multilinguals in these scenes? Who are these
stereotypical characters and how are they portrayed? (include lines whenever
necessary)
The first thing I noticed is that speaking multiple languages can be depicted as fancy.
For example, the man and the woman in the restaurant are considered wealthy as
soon as they began to communicate in another language than English. Subsequently,
they even got adressed with „sir“ and „madame“.
Secondly, the teacher which is shown as a rather lazy person who does not care
about the students‘ education but solely about him having time to relax, instantly
associates the tattoed bald guy in his class with „the next con“ which means that he
refers to him as a future prisoner. Furthermore, he classifies the guy named Dong
right away as an immigrant due to his looks.
Another example for stereotypical prejudice is the conversation between Dong and
Kimmy. He accidently titled Kimmy a „street girl“ which was a serious and maybe also
quite insulting accusation to her.
Why do you think did the creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock include the character
Dong in the storyline and/or in the show?
I think he got included into the storyline mainly due to entertainment reasons, e.g.
confusing words and their meanings which sometimes produce quite humorous
situations. On the other hand, he exactly represents the stereotypical and prejudice
thinking numerous Americans have about Asians referring to his accent, his name, his
unauthorized stay in the United States as well as associating that Dong has to do
something with Chinese food.