Elements of culture contrastive linguistics

The papers in this volume document about a decade of teaching experience in the fields of linguistics and foreign languages (German, English as a foreign language) in different cultures (Saudi Arabia, PR China, Morocco). There is no attempt to introduce yet another branch of modern linguistics. Rather, the old theme of the cultural embeddedness of verbal (and non-verbal) behavior is discussed from various perspectives. All papers are based on a large amount of authentic data of culture-specific and intercultural behavior, gathered by participant observation, interviews, tests etc. in the different settings over a long period of time. The main objective is to contribute to an extensional definition of «culture-contrastive linguistics» by a discussion of descriptive and didactic issues in an empirical fashion.