Chapter 5. Practices of person reference in Chinese and German interactions

Abstract

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.