Study On The Address Terms In An Epic Of A Woman From The Perspective Of Dynamic Context Adaptation And Pragmatic Distance

Address term is a huge and complicated language and culture system, and plays an important part in verbal communication. So linguists have done many researches on address terms from different perspectives. In many cases, an address term is the first message transferred to the hearer. In order to make the communication go on smoothly, the speaker has to choose a proper address term based on the hearer's age, profession, status, position, situation and the relationship between the speaker and the hearer. Address terms also express the speaker's attitude and feelings to the hearer. At the same time, the hearer could conjecture the speaker's real intention according to the address term the speaker chose and make psychological preparations for communication. Most previous studies about address terms usually concentrate on the comparative analysis between English and Chinese address terms'pragmatic implicature and the translating strategy, few involve the address terms in Chinese literary works.Based on Verschueren's Adaptation Theory and Wang Jianhua's Pragmatic Distance Theory, the study attempts to analyze the use of address terms in the novel An Epic of a Woman from the perspective of social world, mental world, physical world and the two features of pragmatic distance. It has been found that: 1)As to the social world, the choice of address terms has to adapt to different social settings. That is to say, the address terms chosen by the characters in the novel vary from formal settings to informal settings. Besides, some of the address terms used in this novel are culture specific. For example, kinship terms are used to address non-relatives. 2)As to the mental world, the choices of address terms in the novel have to adapt to the characters'particular personalities. Emotion is always a motivating force for the speaker to make a choice of address term. The characters in the novel choose different address terms to express their different emotions. The choices of address terms also adapt to the characters'particular motivations in the novel. 3)As to the physical world, the choices of address terms have to adapt to temporal factor. Time span contributes greatly to the change of address term for the same person. The choices of address terms also adapt to spatial factor. Address terms change along with the spatial reference in the novel. 4)As to the pragmatic distance perspective, before selecting a proper address term, the speaker has to makes calculation about the pragmatic distance between the two interlocutors. As the conversation continues, the changing process of pragmatic distance perceived by the interlocutors may lead to the change of their choices of address terms. Besides, in the novel, the address terms could be negotiated between the two interlocutors, when one side wants to change their pragmatic distance and the other side accepts this change.