A Research On The Variation And Change Of Address Forms To Elders In Yiyang Dialect

The increasingly accelerating proces s of urbanization, frequent personnel mobility and updating way of information ex change have brought ex traordinary impact to the language development. The contact between regi onal dialects and Putonghua has become m ore and more extensive. The im pact and penetration of Putonghua to regi onal dialect s has become more evident and changes in regi onal dial ects show gr eat diversi ty and symbiotic depende nce.Address forms to elders in Yiyang Dialect are especially distinctive, whose variation is parti cularly obvious.Based on the previous resea rches on address forms and language contact, and under the guidance of the theory of language variat ion, thi s thesis analyses t he variations of address forms to elders in Yiyang Dialect. The research s ubjects contributing to this study are 180 Y iyang local s, and the resea rch methods adopted in this thesis are interviews, observations,ques tionnaires. All the data collected are anal yz ed quant itatively through GoldVarb X and Excel(2007).This resea rch focus ed on the following three aspect s: 1) What kinds of variations are there in address forms to elders in Yiyang dialect? 2) What are t he overall sociolinguistic patterns of variations in address form s t o elders in Y iyang dialect? 3) What are t he att itudes of Yiyang locals towards this kind of change?The research found that address form s to elders in Yiyang Dial ect are significantly ge tting closer t o Putonghua.Some commonl y used address forms to elders are gradually changing or even have died out.Throughout all the changes of a ddress forms to elders in Y iyang dialect,change from yaya(??)to baba(??)occurs most,basically only persons above 50 ye ars still call his father yaya(??),closely followed by change from manman to gugu.While change from duoduo to gugu or yi occurs least.The changes of addre ss forms to elders in Yiyang di alect are affected by Put onghua and the l angua ge attitude of t he users,also affected by social factors including age,gender,educa tional background,occupation and occa sion,am ong which occupat ion is the most significant fac tor.Student is the m ain group employi ng post-alternation address forms.Gener all y speaking,the higher education a personge ts,the yo unger t he age is,the more formal the occasi on is,the more post-alternation address forms can be found.The variations of address forms to el ders in Y iyang dialect can reflect the changes in social cul ture and humani stic values. On t he one hand it can hel p people deepen their understanding of address forms to elders in Y iyang dialect; on the other hand, i t can enrich the research es on dialect variation of soci al linguis tics t hrough resea rching address forms to elders in Yiyang dialect.