Answer:
What is meant by achievement vs ascription?
I recently had a conversation when a German friend of mine described a family member as “My father’s sister”. Thinking she was momentarily missing the word “Aunt”, I offered the correction only to be corrected myself. She told me she knew the word “Aunt” but the women she was referring to had no relationship with her and had not earned the title. In my family the titles of “aunt” and “uncle” aren’t a matter of merit but birth and I had difficulty imagining it being any other way, but through my intercultural training experience I was able to make better sense of it.
