A Sociopragmatic And Cognitive Study Of The Address Forms In Prison Break

This thesis attempts to illustrate address forms from a sociopragmatic perspective and to make a tentative study of the meaning construction of address forms in Prison Break within the framework of cognitive semantics.From the perspective of sociolinguisitics, address forms indicate social relationships. From the perspective of cognitive semantics, address form not only expresses speaker's attitude or politeness, but also functions as a semantic mapping in mental space. In this thesis, address forms are classified into two types:vocatives and nicknames.In this thesis, address forms from Prison Break are selected as data to demonstrate that social relationship and integration are universal phenomena in language. In addition, these two elements also integrate with cultural element, providing access to illustrate the specific use of address forms. The use of address forms is the integration of linguistic symbols and many other factors such as social culture, pragmatics and cognition.In our analysis, pragmatic functions of vocatives and nicknames with implications can be found. In the process of meaning construction, metaphor and metonymy are also the vital elements in uttering and understanding address forms intentionally. The author tries to demonstrate the cognitive meaning construction process and offer a practical perspective on the study of English address forms.Theoretically, this study draws on Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, Brown and Gilman's power and solidarity, and conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy of cognitive semantics. The author assumes that a study of vocatives and nicknames from both the perspective of sociopragmatics and cognition will shed some light on address forms which have been neglected.