An Analysis On The Correlation Between Social Status And Verbal Behavior

Language is a part of society rather than a separate entity, which is used as a significant tool of communication and thought by people. Affected by social factors, people with various social backgrounds use language in various ways. The social factors that have an influence on the use of language are called social variables by sociolinguists; class is one of the major social variables (Dai Qingxia,2004). The Chinese old saying, you are what you say,(人有三六九等,话有五花八门) rightly reflects the fact that people’s use of language is affected and characterized by the class that a speaker belongs to. As a result, the studies related to correlation between social status and verbal behavior can help people of different classes know each other better and to communicate smoothly.In the past, scholars have analyzed the correlation between verbal behavior and social status from perspectives of sociolinguistics and pragmatics. In this thesis, the author, from a new perspective-prototype theory, studied this correlation reflected in address form level and lexical level, with the data collected from American movies and serials. Firstly, the study divides address forms into family address forms and social address forms; based on the data collected from Gossip Girls season I and II on three sublevels of family address forms, family address forms between members of the same generation, to elders and to younger generations, the author analyzed the correlation between social status and family address forms with prototype theory. As to social address forms, the author mainly analyzed the correlation between social status and it from the level of the nonreciprocal pattern in address form system put forward by Brown and Ford with prototype theory. Secondly, prototype theory was applied to analysis of this correlation reflected in lexical level, which contains two levels: words belonging to the basic level categories and use of formal words and informal words. What’s more, two maxims of politeness principles put forward by Yu Shenghuan were applied to analyze correlations between social status and politeness principle based on the American serials and movies. Lastly, the author analyzed correlations between social status and topics,In this thesis, the author studied correlation between verbal behavior and social status from aspects of address form, vocabulary, politeness principle and topics, and reached the following conclusions.The correlation reflected in address forms:as for prototype of family address forms to the same generation and to younger generations, there is no difference between people of various social statuses generally; as for family address forms to elders, people of higher class have more typical members than people of lower class; prototype of address form to people of higher class tends to polite, respectful and formal address forms; when the addressee belongs to lower class, speaker prefers casual, convenient and sometimes even a little humiliating address forms as prototype; the change of prototype of address forms to higher or lower class is started and decided by people of higher class.The correlation reflected in lexical level:the basic level categories classified by people of higher class contains more members than by that of lower class, since they have different perspectives; when speaking to people of higher class, formal words are more frequently used. Conversely, when it comes to people of lower class, informal words are commonly used.The correlation reflected in politeness principle:people of higher class are more polite than those of lower class when they talk to the people of their social statuses respectively; when speaking to people of higher class, people tend to observe politeness principle; when it comes to people of lower class, politeness principle is likely to be violated.The correlation reflected in topics:people of higher class frequently focus on the topics about money and power; people of lower class frequently started conversations focusing on family, emotion and housework; there are more optional topics for people of higher class than for that of lower class.The innovation in this thesis lies in the analysis of the correlation reflected in address form level and lexical level respectively from a new view of the prototype theory. This serves as a new angle to interpret the correlation between social status and verbal behavior, to make people of various social status understand each other better so that they can communicate smoothly.