Linguistik und Kulturanalyse - Ansichten eines symbiotischen Verhältnisses

The present issue of "Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik" focuses on the relationship between language and culture on the one hand and linguistics and cultural analysis on the other hand. This introductory article unfolds some of the facets of these relationships in a programmatic way and outlines a concept of language which zooms in on the study of language as a cultural resource and communicating as a cultural practice. Besides discussing pertinent definitions of "culture" by scholars of cultural anthropology, we shall examine possible impacts of these definitions on a cultural notion of language. Furthermore, we shall show affiliations to concepts of language and culture developed by Herder and Humboldt in the late 18th and early 19th century and reshaped by Cassirer in the beginning of the 20th century. The article will also look into recent developments inside and outside linguistics (especially Ethnography of Communication, Anthropological Linguistics and Interactional Sociology) to trace out grounds for a new perspective on linguistics as part of the interdisciplinary field of cultural studie

Facetten einer Interaktionalen Onomastik: ‚Die Maus liebt dich!‘: Onymische Selbstreferenzen in der Interaktion

This paper, which seeks to contribute to the field of Interactional Onomastics (De Stefani 2016), addresses onymic forms of self-reference in computer-mediated interactions. Applying theoretical and methodological concepts developed in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, the study looks at onymic forms as communicative practices. In SMS and Whats- App exchanges, participants systematically deviate from the default use of the deictic pronoun and shifter ich (I) and mobilize a range of different onymic forms (e.g. personal names, kinship terms, pet names, ad hoc titles, categorizations etc.) as communicative practices when referring to themselves. I argue that these onymic forms, which go against the „preference for using a minimal form“ (Sacks/Schegloff 1979), do more than simply refer to the speaker/ writer: Participants use address inversions and third person reference forms (instead of the deictic pronoun ich) as „social indices“ (Silverstein 1976: 37) to contextualize various social meanings – which would be hidden in cases of „referring simpliciter“ (Schegloff 1996) – by means of the deictic pronoun ich

"Forms are the food of faith": Gattungen als Muster kommunikativen Handelns

Vor dem Hintergrund der wachsenden Bedeutung der Kommunikation in der modernen Gesellschaft wird die Auffassung vertreten, daß Kommunikation weniger zum 'rationalen Diskurs' beiträgt; vielmehr nimmt sie die Gestalt konventioneller kommunikativer Muster an, d.h. kommunikativer Gattungen. Auf den Forschungsbericht der sozialwissenschaftlichen Gattungsanalyse folgt die Vorstellung des vor allem von Thomas Luckmann vertretenen Ansatzes zur Erforschung kommunikativer Gattungen, der hier erläutert und ausgebaut wird. Dieser Ansatz geht von einer grundlegenden Funktion kommunikativer Gattungen zur Entlastung von Routineproblemen kommunikativen Handelns aus. Der Aufsatz erläutert dann, aufbauend auf entsprechenden empirischen Untersuchungen, die verschiedenen Analyseebenen kommunikativer Gattungen: Die Binnenstruktur prosodischer, lexikalischer, syntaktischer, rhetorischer u.a. Elemente; eine situative Realisierungsebene (interaktive, situative, konversationelle Elemente) und die Außenstruktur kommunikativer Gattungen (soziale Veranstaltungen, soziale Milieus und Institutionen). Der Aufsatz schließt mit einem Entwurf des kommunikativen Haushalts der Gesellschaft, der als Kern der Kultur angesehen werden kann. Auf der Grundlage der wachsenden Bedeutung der Kommunikation in der modernen Gesellschaft geht dieser Ansatz davon aus, daß kommunikative Handlungen nicht nur von sozialstrukturellen Faktoren determiniert werden; vielmehr bilden die vorgestellten Muster der Kommunikation ihrerseits wesentliche Mittel zur Konstruktion sozialer Wirklichkeiten.On the background of the growing significance of communication in modern society, this article claims that communication, rather than contributing to "rational discourse", is routinely moulded in conventional communicative patterns, i.e. communicative genres. After portraying the social scientific tradition of genre analysis, the action theoretical approach of communicative genres by Thomas Luckmann is presented and elaborated. It argues that the fundamental function of communicative genres is to relieve the interactants from routine problems of communicative action. The article then focuses on the different levels which constitute communicative genres, distinguishing between an "internal structure" (i.e. prosodic, lexical, syntactic, rhetoric features), an "intermediate structure" (i.e. interactive, situational, conversational) and an "outer structure" (i.e. social occasions, milieus and institutions) of genres. After discussing research on each of these levels we wind up by analyzing communicative budgets (which can be considered the kernels of culture) of whole societies. On the basis of the growing significance of communication, this approach shows how communication - apart from only being determined by social structure - is an essential means for the construction of social reality itself

Appeals to semiotic registers in ethno-metapragmatic accounts of variation

Discussions of folklinguistic accounts of language use are frequently focused on dismissing them because of their limitations. As a result, not a lot is written regarding how such accounts are done and how they ‘work’. This article examines how folklinguistic evaluations are achieved in interaction, particularly through appeals to semiotic registers (Agha 2007). It describes how in explaining their beliefs regarding linguistic variation, speakers frequently produce voicings with varying transparency. These rely on understandings of the social world and bring large collections of linguistic resources into play. They offer rich insights if analytic attention is given to their details because even when evaluating a single variant, whole ways of speaking, and even being, may be utilized. The paper explores in turn how analysis reveals the inseparability of variants, understandings of context and audience, the relationship between linguistic forms and social types, and the performance of social types via the evaluation of semiotic resources. In each section, discussion is grounded in extracts from interviews on Australian English with speakers of this variety of English. Cumulatively they show the primacy of semiotic registers in ethno-metapragmatic accounts.N/

Facetten einer Interaktionalen Onomastik: ‚Die Maus liebt dich!‘: Onymische Selbstreferenzen in der Interaktion

This paper, which seeks to contribute to the field of Interactional Onomastics (De Stefani 2016), addresses onymic forms of self-reference in computer-mediated interactions. Applying theoretical and methodological concepts developed in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, the study looks at onymic forms as communicative practices. In SMS and Whats- App exchanges, participants systematically deviate from the default use of the deictic pronoun and shifter ich (I) and mobilize a range of different onymic forms (e.g. personal names, kinship terms, pet names, ad hoc titles, categorizations etc.) as communicative practices when referring to themselves. I argue that these onymic forms, which go against the „preference for using a minimal form“ (Sacks/Schegloff 1979), do more than simply refer to the speaker/ writer: Participants use address inversions and third person reference forms (instead of the deictic pronoun ich) as „social indices“ (Silverstein 1976: 37) to contextualize various social meanings – which would be hidden in cases of „referring simpliciter“ (Schegloff 1996) – by means of the deictic pronoun ich

Zur Schnittstelle von Interaktionaler Linguistik und DaFZ : Kommunikative Praktiken in der Hochschulinteraktion am Beispiel universitärer Sprechstundengespräche

Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf ab, die Relevanz interaktionslinguistischer Analysen für die For­schung und Lehre im Bereich DaFZ aufzuzeigen und zu skizzieren, wie sequenz­analytische Methoden und Konzepte der Interaktionalen Linguistik mit Fragen der DaFZ-Forschung – im Bereich der Hochschulkommunikation – ver­netzt werden können. Auf der Basis der kom­muni­kativen Gattung universitärer Sprechstunden­ge­spräche werde ich in diesem Beitrag konver­satio­nelle Aktivitäten – insbe­sondere Eröff­nungs- und Be­endigungs­sequenzen – prä­sentieren, um zu verdeutlichen, wie Analysen authentischer Hochschulinter­akt­ionen für eine DaFZ-bezogene Interaktionsforschung ge­nutzt werden können. Im Anschluss an die empirische Studie erfolgt eine kurze Vorstellung der Plattform „Gesprochenes Deutsch: Authentische Interaktionen für die Forschung und Praxis im Bereich DaF und DaZ“, die sowohl der Forschung als auch der Lehre im Bereich DaFZ zur Verfügung steht