Culture and Context Shape the Conceptual Structure of Kinship Terms
This study examines how culture and situational context shape the conceptual structure of kinship terms, using free classification tasks with Mosuo and Han Chinese high school students across three social contexts: full-moon celebrations, weddings, and funerals. Results show that while both groups emphasize "intimacy of relatives" and "generational rank" as classification criteria, the Mosuo—reflecting their matrilineal culture—additionally distinguish "caregiver/care-receiver" roles and emphasize the status of maternal uncles and nephews. Han Chinese participants, reflecting patrilineal cultural traditions, further consider "gender" and "nature of the relationship," emphasizing daughters-in-law and grandchildren. These findings indicate that kinship concepts possess both core, culturally invariant features and context-dependent features. The authors conclude that culture (macro-context) and situational context (micro-context) jointly influence kinship term classification by activating specific conceptual features and guiding the selection of classification criteria, supporting a contingency model of social concept categorization.
This page publishes the bibliographic record and the project's summary. The scanned article text belongs to its publisher and is shown to readers under a research-use policy; it is not reproduced in this record.