Die kommunikative Konstruktion von Kultur: Chinesische und deutsche Anredepraktiken im Gebrauch

Abstract

AbstractAs a result of the structuralistically-based distinction betweenlangueandparole, with its bias towardslangueand its emphasis on the detection of universals, the questions of language in authentic contexts, linguistic diversity, the social construction of reality and cultural conventions have been neglected and have even been treated as „irrelevant for linguistic research“ (Ehlich 2006) in „mainstream linguistics“. However, promising new lines of research on language, communication and culture are emerging, which „constitute language’s latest pendulum swing back into the world of culture“ (Enfield 2013). This article contributes to recent developments within Anthropological Linguistics and, thus, to the study of language as a cultural resource and communicating as a cultural practice. On the basis of a contrastive analysis of Chinese and German SMS-communication, this paper aims at investigating practices of addressing related and non-related co-participants by means of kinship terms. The analysis reveals how communicative practices are related to cultural conventions. I will argue that intersubjective communication not only represents the natural habitat for the construction and modification of cultural formations, but it also constitutes the empirically observable site of everyday constructions of culturality.