The Power Of Discourse: Kinship Appellation Of Family Hierarchy In Tianmen District

Address forms, though not a new topic in academic research, have highly research value for the practical use. They play an important role in discourse and reflect people owning the degree diversity to utterance authority. The paper develops an analysis of the power of discourse on KAFH (Kinship Appellations of the Family Hierarchy) from the respective of sociology. It made a preliminary study on KAFH of a Yang family; the setting is Yangshihe village in Tianmen city in Hubei province, the central of china.The thesis analyzes KAFH in Tianmen district by employing Foucault's and Bourdieu's theory, focusing on cultural characters of KAFH through analyzing phenomena collected from Tianmen district. Through the analysis and cultural phenomenon investigations the author strives to discover the linguistic functions and cultural influences on KAFH from the pragmatic and cultural perspective, extending the scope of kinship appellations studies and enhancing our understanding of its nature.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part is the introduction, which is a brief survey of the past researches on kinship appellations at home and abroad. Then the author gave a brief overview of the general context of this research, the motivations, and the problems that it is answers, and the research purposes and significance.The second chapter deals with the theoretical approach of this thesis. Specifically, the paper introduces discourse, the power of discourse and the main concepts of discourse, knowledge and power in Foucault's theory. And then Bourdieu's theory, the author defines its main concepts, field and capital. Knowledge as a power resource, discourse as a medium through which knowledge generates the unequal power of discourse. And Foucault and Bourdieu's study shows that there is a hidden discourse field against non-peaceful space in discourse field, power is inherent in knowledge, and power and knowledge link together in the discourse.In the third chapter, the author begins to analyses KAFH in Tianmen district; firstly, it must be noted that different areas have different kinship appellations according to the different dialects. It will get more from the relationship between kinship appellations and a certain place. Secondly, this linguistic phenomenon has a special culture, Shijiahe culture, the foundation is genealogy, and the origin is Confucianism, and then forms three important principles in KAFH. In addition, the collection of the literature and data of kinship appellations is slightly weak, whether domestic or foreign; therefore, the research on KAFH has certain value to study.In chapter four, the author brings in the theories that help clarify and explain the phenomena that emerged in the kinship appellations. In this way, theories are grounded in the data and contribute to the development of the form. The author introduces the relationship of field and the traditional clan, knowledge and Confucianism, capital and genealogy, the traditional clan can be seen as a field, in this field, Confucianism as knowledge which is the resource of power, genealogy as a cultural capital (power), once it has a power accepted and believed by the whole clan, can turn into the symbolic capital (power), In the traditional clan (field), Confucianism (knowledge) as a source of power, KAFH (discourse) as a medium through which the contact with Confucianism (knowledge) and genealogy (power) generates the inequality of the power of discourse.Chapter five, the end of the paper, it is the summary of all the aspects mentioned above and discuss the findings and limitations of the study. The paper states knowledge as the resource of power, the power and knowledge link together generate the unequal relationship of the power of discourse. Through analysis the phenomena of KAFH, it reveals that discourse as a medium through which the link of knowledge and power generates the inequality of the power of discourse, in verse, the phenomena of KAFH advances the theory of Foucault and Bourdieu. Meanwhile, Bourdieu's theory and Foucault's theories not only provide a theoretical foundation for sociology, but also open a new field of research ideas.