The Interpersonal Meaning Of English And Chinese Composite Address Forms

The study of address forms is an old yet modem research topic,running through almost the entire history of language development.It has also experienced big changes in research purposes and research methods alongside the development of philology,cultural anthropology,linguistics and sociology.Composite Address Forms(CAFs)are widely used in daily life as well as journalistic reports,interviews,and literary works,penetrating in wide spectrum of areas in social activities.They are very important in constructing discourse stance and in mirroring interpersonal meaning,particularly appraisal meaning,thus conducive to perceiving deeper the personal image and personality traits of a character in literary works and to promoting language teaching and translation practice.However,the previous research works have virtually neglected the significance of Composite Address Forms in negotiating and constructing appraisal and other interpersonal meanings.With a view to being innovative in research content and method,this paper has set up its own theoretical framework based on Halliday's works on interpersonal meaning and Martin and White,s research on appraisal and built up its own research corpus composed of both English and Chinese literary works.The author takes the CAFs mainly from the corpus as its study subject and their interpersonal meaning,especially their appraisal function as its research focus.It intends to answer three major questions:(1)what are the fundamental components of CAFs and their basic ways of composition and frequency in use and what are the differences and similarities between English and Chinese CAFs?(2)What are the interpersonal meanings of English and Chinese CAFs and how are the meanings expressed and realized?(3)By what contextual factors are the choices and the uses of English and Chinese CAFs affected and conditioned?The answers to these questions will help us give a systemic description of the fundamental components,the compositional structure,and the interpersonal meanings of English and Chinese CAFs.The careful analyses of the CAFs in constructing interpersonal meanings,in expressing moods and feelings,and in social appraisal,will offer helpful references for teaching English and Chinese language and culture,appreciating English and Chinese literary works,teaching Chinese to foreign language learners and translation practice.The English corpus for statistic analysis consists of the first chapters)of 33 works among"BBC's All Time Top 100 Best Novels" and two additional Plays,totaling 214,926 words in which 3358 English CAFs are found while the Chinese corpus consists of the first chapter(s)of or some complete short stories of 23 works from Asiaweek's "21th Century Top 100 Chinese Novels" and two additional plays,totaling 214,567 words in which 1995 Chinese CAFs are found.Based on the comparative study of CAFs from the above data,the paper explores the structure and semantic functions of English and Chinese CAFs and how register,genre and social ideology restrain and influence their actual use in discourse under the contextual framework established by Martin.Through the analysis it has reached the following findings and conclusions:(1)English and Chinese CAFs,as both important means of construction and expression forms for interpersonal relationship,not merely mirror interpersonal relationship but also involve in the negotiation and construction of interpersonal meanings.Through various combinations of different components,English and Chinese CAFs exert different interpersonal functions such as reference function for distinction,descriptive function,affective function and appraisal function.English and Chinese CAFs,prevalent in literary works and stories and other genres due to their rich structural and semantic varieties,play a significant role in negotiation,construction and reflection of interpersonal relations in social activities.(2)Though English and Chinese CAFs share much similarity in the overall means of composition,discrepancies are shown in the composite productivity of the respective core components and affixed components as well as their respective forms of expression.English and Chinese CAFs are generally composed of six major core components and six major affixed ones that form myriads of CAFs through basically four ways of composition.The six major core components are also the main basic address forms,including pronouns,general terms of reference,specific terms of reference,names,kinship terms,and affective address forms;the six major affixed components are the elements which cannot function independently as address forms but should be affixed to the core components in order to generate new CAFs and which include demonstratives,adjectival/possessive pronouns,numerals,general adjectives(indicating quality,color,type,etc.),descriptive phrases,and affixes.By way of modification,combination,both modification and combination intertwined,and occasionally some peculiar ways,the major core and affixed components form into countless CAFs.By modification,namely by adding modifiers to the core composite elements,either English or Chinese CAFs may express various interpersonal meanings with various properties,intensity,stances and appraisals.Through the combination of core address terms and sometimes together with modifications,the English and Chinese CAFs may build up their expressive force and affective or appraisal stances.The statistic data show that there are differences in the frequency of use between the four different types of CAFs in both English and Chinese texts.The address forms generated by modification take up the vast majority,anounting to 81.63%and 77.29%in English and Chinese texts respectively,those generated by combination or by both modification and combination are much fewer,both ways taking a bit above 8%in either English or Chinese texts,and the CAFs with special structures are the least among the four,taking up 1.22%and 5.81%in English and Chinese texts respectively.The CAFs generated on the basis of core and affixed components and the basic four ways have rich and various forms yet relatively stable structures,realizing different interpersonal meanings,i.e.for differentiating persons shared with some similarities,for mirroring different relations between people,for conveying particular affective flnction or appraisal meaning,and for negotiating and constructing interpersonal meanings.(3)The use of both English and Chinese CAFs are influenced and conditioned by both English and Chinese socio-cultures in the process of taking a stance,mirroring or constructing interpersonal relations.The socio-cultural factors that affect the choice of different English and Chinese CAFs are basically in conformity with the Stratified Model of Context set up by Martin,a four-layer realization model that is presented as such:ideology?genre?register?language,the arrow "?"indicating that the factor(s)on the left is(are)expressed by the one(s)on the right or the factor(s)on the right is(are)the express form(s)of the one on the left.Among the three variables of register,tenor is the most influential factor concerning the use of English and Chinese CAFs.Other factors may also play an important role,including textual formality,the semantic relation of power and solidarity between speakers/writers and hearers/readers,the speaker,s tendency of politeness,the speaker's mood at the moment of speech,and the speaker's psychological distance towards or relation to the hearer(s).All these factors affect social intercourse,not only in the process of interpersonal reactions but also in the generation of texts and discourses.The semantic relation of power and solidarity between speakers/writers and hearers/readers is one of the most influential factors that condition CAFs,varying along with social status,age,gender,intimacy or psychological distance of the participants.Genre differences,such as the number of participants in the social events,the complexity of the relations between participants,and the expressions of interpersonal meanings may all affect the use of CAFs.Generally speaking,the more participants are involved in the speaking and hearing,the more complex the relations among participants are,the more diversified the use of composite address forms will be.The chief aim of the complex use of CAFs is to clearly convey the interpersonal relations,the personalities of characters,and the speaker's affection and appraisal towards the relevant parties.The ideological differences between English and Chinese socio-cultures restrain the production of genre structure in both English and Chinese texts and the uses of English and Chinese CAFs in different genres,which in turm reflect the role of ideology in normalizing and regulating peoples'speeches and social behaviors.The major innovative points in this dissertation are:(1)it has given a comparative statistic analysis and an overall description of the components and inner composition structure of English and Chinese CAFs.It has defined the terra CAFs,for the first time categorized the core components and sumnarized six major core components and six major affixed ones to form CAFs through basically four ways of composition.(2)It has analyzed the use of English and Chinese CAFs in literary texts based on a quantitative study,and for the first time presented a detailed study on their interpersonal meanings,on how English and Chinese CAFs express appraisal and exercise negotiation and involvement in the process of composition,stressing their significance in stance-taking,negotiation,involvement,and construction and reflection of interpersonal meanings.(3)It has made an in-depth study of interpersonal meanings of English and Chinese CAFs in terms of appraisal,negotiation and involvement respectively based on case studies of Tales of Hulan River,Letters between Two:Correspondence between Lu Xun and Jing Song,and Wuthering Heights.The chief inadequacies in this dissertation are:(1)The contrastive analysis needs to be deepened.The comparative analyses of interpersonal meanings between English and Chinese CAFs are often point-to-point instead of an overall comparison and contrast.(2)The data for analysis comprise chiefly literary texts with a small additional amount of journalistic articles,interviews,personal academic introductions and other genres,which can hardly represent the overall restriction of different genres on the choice of English and Chinese CAFs.(3)The definition and categorization of English and Chinese CAPs may be of certain subjectivity.When a CAF may belong to two or more types,we might categorize it into one type or reiterate it into two or more types.The process of categorization may involve certain subjectivity and may have certain effect on the objectivity of statistic data.Moreover,many aspects concerning the restraint of contextual features on the use of CAFs are worthy of further research.If we amplify adequate genres and have a more specified data categorization and analyses,we may find the answers to what CAFs are merely used for face-to-face address or other direct forms of address,what merely as terms of reference,and what can be used for both.This will help us understand better how speech modes restrain the use of English and Chinese CAFs.If we conduct a diachronic research on the variation of English and Chinese CAFs and discover their laws of change,we will have a better understanding of how social ideologies influence the use of CAFs,which will add to their linguisitic and sociolinguistic value.