The Study Of Thai Learners’ Usage Of Chinese Address Forms

Address form plays an extremely important role in daily communication. Theselection of address usually influences the effects of communication directly.Therefore, this study of Chinese address aims to investigate how Thai learners useChinese address, and probes into the features of Thai learners using Chinese address,as well as analyzes the features to unveil the influence of mother tongue, linguisticenvironment and social cultural factors.In this research, observation, questionnaire, interviews and other empiricalmethods are used in data collection in order to find out the practical usage of Chineseaddress. First, the frequency of Chinese addresses in dialogues of TV drama aregenerated for statistics purpose. Usage scopes of address and the influencing factorsare analyzed in the perspective of social relationship. In order to observe thesituation of Thai learners using Chinese address and find out the difference ofChinese address usage between Thai learners and native Chinese speakers，questionnaire and interview method are adopted in this research. In addition, thisresearch also investigates the Thai learners in non-Chinese context to analyze theinfluence of linguistic environment upon address learning and command.The investigation of TV dramas on commonly-used Chinese addresses includecommonly-used terms, occupation terms, kinship terms and so on. Different addressesare bound by different features and limitations. For instance, the usage scope ofcommonly-used terms is very wide, but is limited to a certain degree in actual usage.Occupation terms include profession term and position term. The former has strongpertinence because not all occupation terms can be used as address, while the latter ismainly used to indicate the relation between superiors and subordinates. For remoterelation or in formal occasion, occupation terms can be used as address. Kinship termshave various forms and strong collocation capacity. The different kinship terms andthe variant forms of kinship terms are chosen according to different address target.The statistics result shows that Thai learners using Chinese address have thefollowing characteristics: first, addresses used by Thai learners are very muchsimplified. Second, the fluency of “sir” and “miss” by Thai learners is very high. When they have difficulty addressing others，they have a higher tendency to use“sir” and “miss” according to the gender of the listener. Third, Thai learners usefixed addresses for people of different occupations. They address a small businessowner as “boss” and a taxi driver or a technician “master”. Fourth, Thai learnerswith a high level Chinese speaking are still interfered by mother tongue. Theyaddress friends’ father and mother as “father/dad” and “mother/mom”. Fifth, Thaistudents do not adapt well with the generalised address of “doctor” and “teacher”.They do not agree with the fact that all medical personnel can be called “doctor”.The more remote an occupation is from the education sector, the term “teacher” isused lesser.The investigation result also indicates that there are differences in the usage ofChinese address by Thai learners in Chinese and non-Chinese context. The maindifferences are as follows：First, the usage of kinship term by students in non-Chinese context is obviously lower than those in a Chinese context. Thai kinship termis extended and over-generalized, but no mother tongue effect is found from thephenomenon. It reflects the learning rules of Thai learners learning Chinese address.Second, students in non-Chinese context, especially students without Chineselanguage foundation almost do not know how to address a stranger. Some people optfor second person pronoun to address stranger directly. Hence it is obvious thatChinese address is a difficult learning point for Thai students in Chinese languagelearning. This proves the importance of linguistic context in language learning.Moreover, many similarities and differences are found between Thai address andChinese address. The differences mainly include commonly-used term and kinshipterm. For instance, besides following name, occupation term,“/khun33/” in Thai cancombine with kinship term to make an address form in Chinese, which is a respectfulform of address and is widely used even among friends and between husband andwife. It suggests the degree of politeness of Thais. As for the differences on fictivekinship term, Chinese kinship terms are mainly paternal kinship terms whereas Thaikinship terms have no distinct paternal and maternal difference. However maternalkinship terms are more commonly used comparatively. This reflects the differentfamily structures, kinship system and marriage customs between China and Thailand.