Contribution to the panel: Towards a Culture-relevant Interpretation of Utterances or Conversations

 

“We’re family”: kinship term generalization in Chinese Ph.D. research seminars

Xinren CHEN, Juanjuan REN

Nanjing University

 

Abstract:

It is not uncommon to use kinship terms to address a person without genetic or affinal relationship in Chinese social encounters, a phenomenon described as the use of “fictive kinship terms” (e.g. Braun 1988; Norbeck & Befu 1958), “the extended use of kinship terms”(Dickey 2004), or “kinship term generalization” (e.g. Pan 1998). Previous studies (e.g. Chen 2009; Pan 1998; Pan & Liu 1994; Wu 1990; Zhao & Xu 2009) on the phenomenon are mainly focused on the characteristics and functions of the addressing practice, confined to certain specific generalized kinship terms (GKTs for short), and the use of GKTs in some Chinese dialects or certain Chinese literary works. This study examines the phenomenon in Chinese PhD research seminars, an academic setting not yet heeded to in the literature. Based on the analysis of the data collected from a number of sessions of pragmatics and applied linguistics PhD research seminars, it attempts to showcase the use of GKTs in the specific genre of Chinese academic setting and explore the inflow of family-centered Chinese cultural values into the highly institutional context as well as some complicating factors. It is hoped that this study may enrich the picture of address form studies on the one hand and promote the understanding of how contemporary Chinese family-bound values may serve as a type of culturally-specific resource for doing relational work in institutional contexts on the other.

Key words: address forms; kinship term generalization; Chinese PhD research seminars; academic setting; family-bound social culture

 

References

Braun, F. (1988). Terms of Address: Problems of Patterns and Usage in Various Languages and Cultures. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

 

Chen, J. P. (2009). The generalization of kinship term “elder-sister” in A Dream of Red Mansions. Journal of A Dream of Red Mansions, 2, 304-318.

 

Dickey, E. (2004). Literal and extended use of kinship terms in documentary Papyri. Mnemosyne, 57(2), 131-176.

 

Norbeck, E., & Befu, H. (1958). Informal fictive kinship in Japan. American Anthropologist, New Series, 60(1), 102-117.

 

Pan, P. (1998). A study on the generalization of kinship terms. Applied Linguistics, 2, 34-38.

 

Pan, W., & Liu, D. Q. (1994). The use of kinship terms in non-kin communication. Journal of Nanjing Normal University (Social Science), (2), 108-111.

 

Wu, Y. (1990). The usages of kinship address forms amongst non-kin in mandarin Chinese: The extension of family solidarity. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(1), 61-88.

 

Zhao, Q., & Xu, X. D. (2009). A case study of unbalanced fictive use of kinship terms in Northeastern Dialect and Shanghai Dialect. Journal of Jilin Normal University, 37(1), 54-56.