Chapter 5
Practices of person reference in Chinese and German interactions
A contrastive analysis of “third person reference forms” in SMS,
WhatsApp and WeChat communication
Referring to persons in interaction is a central human
practice (Enfield 2007: 97), which
is located at an intersection where cultural, linguistic, and interactional
conventions meet (Levinson
2005: 433). In this paper, I will analyse practices of “third person
reference forms” used by participants in Chinese and German SMS-, WeChat-
and WhatsApp-interactions. Both Chinese and German speakers make use of a
range of different types of third person reference forms to laterally
address their co-participants. I will argue that third person reference
forms do more than simply refer to one’s co-participant: Speakers employ
these practices as a “social index” (Silverstein 1976: 37) to contextualise various social meanings
which would be hidden in cases of “referring simpliciter” (Schegloff 1996). In addition to finding parallels in
the use of third person reference forms in our Chinese and German data, I
also detect differences in the employment of forms of addressing one’s
co-participants.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Reference to persons in everyday interactions: Nominal forms of referring to addressed recipients
- 3.Third person reference forms in Chinese and German interactions
- 3.1Kinship terms
- 3.1.1Interactions between parents and children
- 3.1.2Interactions between siblings and cousins
- 3.1.3The construction of ‘metaphorical kinship-relations’ by using
kinship terms among non-kin participants
- 3.2Pet names
- 3.3Ad hoc descriptors and names
- 3.4Honorifics
- 4.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References