| Address terms are indispensable to people's daily communication. In 1960s, Brown and Gilman first proposed that power and solidarity are the main factors influencing the usages of address terms. However, over time, scholars in this field have found that besides power and solidarity, other factors like culture, context, speakers'sex and so on also have an influence on people's usages of address terms.This paper intends to study the address terms used by the graduate students in China and America from an intercultural perspective. Based on questionnaires and interviews, four variables---context, sex, rank and intimacy are taken into consideration. It aims to find out the terms used by students in these two countries; the differences and similarities among these terms; and the cultural reasons for these differences.Based on the comparative study from an intercultural perspective, the findings of this paper are: 1) The address terms used by Chinese students include six categories (names, titles, fictive kinship terms, relation address terms, zero address term and others), while American students use four categories including names, general forms, titles and zero address term. 2) Influenced by collectivism, Chinese students only use titles to address the advisor; by contrast, under the influence of individualism American students prefer to use first name, but, this term does not apply to all circumstances. 3) Because of the emphasis on"we", Chinese students use fictive address terms among themselves, and rank is the most influential factor for them; while in America"I"is emphasized and students in this research use first name among themselves regardless of the four factors mentioned above. 4) There are also similarities. Both Chinese and American students use titles to address advisor in some circumstances; male and female students in these tow countries use different address terms toward a particular addressee; they use zero address term when they do not know which term is proper.
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