Social Meanings in German Interactions: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Second-Person Pronoun Sie

Abstract

The German 2nd-person pronoun Sie was used as a communicative resource to investigate social meanings in the talk of German native speakers. Two types of data were used for the analysis of social meanings: (a) transcriptions of semistructured, in-depth interviews conducted with 50 German native speakers of varying gender, age, and occupation and (b) field notes from participant observations taken of naturally occurring interactions in public and private spheres over a 10-month period in and around the town of Landau, Germany. A total of 25 social meanings were found to be salient in the talk of the German interlocutors. The results were then used to test the adequacy of 2-, 3-, and even multidimensional explanatory models of social meaning that continue to dominate the current literature. Due to the apparent in-adequacy of current models in their representation of both the complexity and distinctiveness of social meanings, the call is made to turn to more interpretive, ethnographic approaches for the discovery of meaning systems. This study suggests the practical utility in examining speakers' and hearers' own situated interpretations of their experiences of communicative forms as a means of revealing the rich nuances of social meaning often hidden in our present-day parsimonious models.