Love expression in the United States and Germany

The study had the goal to compare love expression in the United States and Germany. The data offer insight into love expression as a cultural script and symbol of culture change, suggesting competing ways of using the locution “I love you” in the two cultures. Not only is verbal love expression less central in Germany, but for the German, the locution “I love you” is traditionally reserved for private disclosure of a formal love, governed by a communal imperative for feelings of meaningfulness. This is juxtaposed with an American desire for disclosing love in expressive ways and in a broad range of contexts, including nonromantic relationships. Globalization issues, such as the universal (expressive culture) versus the particular (reserved culture), are evoked, and the spreading in Germany of an expressive culture across a variety of settings suggested. Spurred by the use of telecommunication technology and often met with resistance, the tensions arising from these semantic and pragmatic changes in the use of love expression represent one of the interesting aspects of this paper.