A Study Of Reference And Intention Of Terms Of Address In A Dream Of Red Mansion: From And Integrated Approach Of Cognitive Linguistics And Pragmatics

By taking an integrated approach of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, we have made a systematic analysis on the reference and the intention of the terms of address in the masterpiece A Dream of Red Mansion. At the end of the study, some conclusions have been drawn, which include: 1) the reference category of the terms of address in the book is a dynamic one, for the dynamicity is influenced by the ethical values held by the people then, by the social activities the people participated in, and by the addressers'subjectivity; 2) the reference and the intention of terms of address are inseparable, the realization of the latter is based on the former, while the semantic extension of the former is driven by the latter; 3) the intention of terms of address is associated with communicative tasks, embodying politeness principles, and executing illocutionary force; 4) the psychological mechanism of processing the reference and the intention of terms of address can be convincingly explained by the cognitive approach.The literaure review of the dissertation firstly focuses on the traditional studies of the Chinese kinship terms, then summarizes the more recent studies of the Chinese terms of address based on their deictic properties, and finally it shifts to the studies of the terms of address in A Dream of Red Mansion. The review indicates that it is very necessary to define the concept of the Chinese terms of address, and to adopt the latest linguistic approach to conduct the research.In the following part, after the analysis of the different roles and functions that the appellation terms and terms of address play, different definitions are tentatively proposed: appellation terms refer to"linguistic expressions which reflect the roles people play in one social relationship", while terms of address refer to"linguistic expressions which are used to address the people who participate in any speech activities either directly or indirectly". Based on the definitions, the author determines the category members of the terms of address in A Dream of Red Mansion to be studied: person pronouns, kinship terms and other social appellation terms.Based on Rosch's Prototype Theory (1973, 1975), Langacker's Cognitive Reference Point model (1991, 1993, 2001) has been widely applied to explore and describe a wide range of linguistic phonomena, like possessive structures, thematic structures, deixis, and metonymy, and has proved to be theoretically convincing. Accepting Langacker's view that reference reasoning is a very fundamental image-schematic ability and"we ought not to be surprised to find it manifested at multiple levels of conceptual and grammatical organization, even within a single expression"(Langacker 1993: 25), we construct an integrated approach of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics aiming to interpret the reference and intention of terms of address in the novel A Dream of Red Mansion, which incorporates the revised Cognitive Reference Point model, the construaling factors, the speech act theory, and politeness theories.In the light of the integrated approach, we explored and described the reference domain of the terms of address in A Dream of Red Mansion, first person pronouns, then kinship terms, and finally other social appellation terms. The findings are as follows:1) The person pronoun system at that time was not so evolved as it is nowadays. The first person plurals"women"and"zanmen"had different references at that time, the former was similar to the exclusive usage of the English counterpart"we", and the latter the inclusive usage of"we". The second person singular"nin"appeared four times only in one song, but not in any daily utterences. The third person singular and plural only employ"ta"and"tamen"respectively. Metonymic sense referential shift usage of person pronouns occurs only in plurals mapping singulars, but not the reverse. Besides, metonymic usage also occurs in singulars mapping other singular persons, mainly, second person mapping the third person, and the third person mapping the first person and the second person. Person pronouns have the tendancy of decategorization, for example, used as utterence markers. The limitations of the development of the person pronouns reflect the constrainsts imposed by the notions of social hierarchy on the choice of the terms of address.2) Semantic extension of kinship terms is pervasive. Kinship terms can be used to address someone who has no kinship relationship with the addesser, regardless of age and generation, as far as doing so will help maintain addressee's face. In the course of semantic extension, kinship terms for males and for females are asymmetric, so are the kinship terms for paternal and maternal families, e.g. the term of"yiniang"and"guniang". The polysemy of the reference of kinship terms provides the addresser with more choices to express his or her intentions, meamwhile, creates more difficulties in the addressees'interpretation. For example, in the interpretation of the degradation or upgradation of kinship terms, the addressee has to adopt the appropriate cognitive perspectives.3)With the exploration of other social relationship terms, we coined a new subcategory: titles for family status. These titles remain independent. Different from kinship terms, they are opaque to some degree, and do not indicate the relationship between the addresser and the addressee. Different from titles for officals, their grading depends on the addressees'family status. The default cognitive reference point for this new subcategory is the family's servants. The titles for family status are the products of interaction of extension of kinship terms and titles for officials.4) As to other social relationship terms, the specialized terms are much more developed than general terms. For compensation, each subcategory has its own general terms, and this provides convenience in the choice of terms of address.This integrated approach of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics has also been applied to analyzing intentions of different kinds of terms of address in A Dream of Red Mansion. Here are the findings:1) Conceptions of addressee-addressing, self-addressing and other-addressing refer to perspectives in the interpretation of terms of address, rather than to appellation terms. Due to the different perspectives, the same terms of address may imply different intentions. Social distance between addresser and addressee can be measured by two standards; one is the different relationships they hold, the other is the different roles they assume in the same relationship. According to the former standard, we construct a social distance sequence of terms of address, i.e. names < person pronouns < kinship terms < titles for family status < titles for other social relationships.2) On interpreting the addressers'intention of the terms of address they adopt, we strongly recommend the view of pragmatic distance proposed by Wang Jianhua (2001) and the factors employed by Brown & Levinson (1978) to calculate the degree threat to the addressees'face. The integration of these factors are workable.3) With the attempt to realise the communicative intention, the addresser should choose the felicitous terms of address from the felicitous subcategory, rather than simply choose one term of address benefitial to the addressee from one subcategory. The Chinese politeness principle of"social appropriacy by self-denigrating and other-respecting"(Gu, 1992; He, 1995) demands that the polite address be the felicitous terms from the felicitous subcategory.4) The interpretation of terms of other-addressing is more complicated, since the addresser has more considerations when addressing the third party in the situation, one key factor being that the hearer may evaluate his or her self image in the addresser's mind by the standard the addresser address the third party. On the other hand, the addresser can realize more communicative intentions targeted at the hearer by addressing the third party.The conclusion part summarizes the main research findings as well as points out the implications of the current study, together with suggestions for the future studies.