In our families, our blood relatives have named categories, and have social relations (or not) with us. Find out how your informant categorizes (that is, labels) his or her blood relatives (not given names, but aunt or brother, etc.). What are the social relationships? Are their social obligations between relatives? If so, what are these? Do different relatives have different obligations?.
My informant, Peter Ahn, categorizes his blood relatives very differently than Americans would categorize their blood relatives. Since Peter is Korean, the Korean culture is different from American culture. First of all Peter categorizes his family in two different categories. Well not every single family member, but he categorizes his aunts and uncles, and grandparents in two different categories. However, I will start the list of my informant's categorization with the parents. First of all, he labels his mom as "oma,"" he labels his father as "ahpa."" Next is the categorization for brother and sister, the categorization is different for males and females. If one were a male, such as my informant Peter, he would have to call his "older- brother "hyung,"" and he would have to call his "older- sister "nuna- (if he had a sister). If one were a female, such as I, I would have to call my "older- brother "opa,"" and I would have to call my "older- sister "uni."" These categorizations of "older- siblings are to be said as respect to elders. However, both the female and male would have to call their younger siblings "thongseang- or by their first name. The next categorization is aunts and uncles; this categorization is different because there are different labels for the aunts and uncles on the mom's side from the dad's side. For the mom's side Peter would have to call his aunts "emo,"" and the uncles "emobo."" For the dad's side Peter would have to call his aunts "cunn oma,"" and for his uncles he would have to call them "cunapa.
