A Comparative Study Of Chinese And Thai Appellation Between Family By Bajin And Four Reigns By Kukrit Pramoj

Appellation is one essential part of the language system,one important medium for people to communicate with each other,and first information delivered to counterparts in our daily-life interaction.They are capable to reflect relations between both sides in communication,to understand the identities,ages,occupations and status of other people,to pay their respect at the same time,and also to react speakers' thinking and emotion.According to production,using,and sense,the appellation of each language consists of the vary characteristics.In process of forming and developing,they are always been restrained by conditions in each ethnic group,as language users,ethnic cultural background,and living customs.These factors easily cause misunderstanding conversations and communicative effect.Chinese and Thai languages are all the members of the Sino-Tibetan language family,but each of them is in the different branches(as Thai is a member of Tai group of Tai-Kadai language family).Due to the influences of traditional cultures,the appellations in Chinese and Thai languages are both different and similar."The Family" is a novel based on China in the early 1920s,written by Chinese author Ba Jin;"The Four Reigns" is a Thai historic-event novel written by Thai author M.R.Kukrit Pramoj.These two novels' stories provide Chinese and Thai historical cultures,plenty of the appellation systems which have unique characteristics."The Family" by Ba Jin and "The Four Reigns" by M.R.Kukrit Pramoj have been chosen as a case study.The research methods include categorizing Chinese and Thai appellations in the novels;observing using-appellation situations;finding out the similarities and differences of Chinese and Thai appellations;summarizing and discussing on the significance and value of the study.This study consists of five chapters as below:Chapter 1:Introduction.This chapter has included to overview the definition of appellation,the significance of this study,current study on Chinese and Thai appellation,methods and innovative points.Chapter 2:A brief introduction to the Author's works.This chapter has included the overview of Chinese and Thai appellations.Chapter 3:The main part of this paper.Observing Chinese and Thai appellations in "The Family"and "The Four Reigns".This chapter would categorize the appellations found in the novels,make a comparative analysis,summarize the using rules,and reveal the similarities and differences.Chapter 4:Examining cultural background of appellations in "The Family" and "The Four Reigns".This chapter has included comparing how the cultural connotations have influenced on the appellation using,and revealing the cultural factors in the differences of these two novels.Chapter 5:Investigating how the similarities and differences of Chinese and Thai appellations have influenced on Chinese-Thai translation and teaching Chinese as a second language.This chapter has included examining problems and strategies in translating Chinese and Thai appellations,providing the proper solutions,and also investigating the overview of teaching Chinese appellations,proposing some suggestions for teaching well.In the conclusion part:This part would summarize the study,and prospect for the future development of Chinese and Thai appellation study.The results indicate that the family appellations in Chinese emphasize the Chinese kinship systems,the distinction between patriarchal and non-patriarchal,between junior and senior,and between blood relations and relations by marriage.In case of the family appellations in Thai,it is indefinite in paternal and maternal lines,but Chinese and Thai kinship appellations are similar in respecting for seniority.The social appellations in Chinese,it quite emphasizes the regulation of leader-member relations and elder reverence and sincerity;the social appellations in Thai also highly value seniority and superiority.Besides that,in social communication,people must pay respect to others,thus the appellations have been used with whomever(non-known or non-kinship)to respect their seniority.Some of Chinese and Thai appellations cannot use one-to-one correspondence to compare.Increasingly,personal pronouns in Thai are much more than in Chinese.That is one reason why there are often mistakes taken in two-way appellation translation.