A Study Of Address Forms In Moment In Peking From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As the first language information conveyed to the listener in daily communication, the address form plays a very important role in speech communication. The earliest study of address forms was initiated by Brown and Gilman who took sociolinguistics as the research perspective. From then on, the study of address forms flourished, and refined the system of Brown and Gilman. Generally speaking, these studies associated with social factors are static, while the choice and usage of the address forms is not stable, but highly flexible. This thesis take Adaptation Theory of Verschueren as the basis to study the dynamic use of address forms in Moment in Peking, thus analyse the selection of address forms.According to Adaptation Theory of Verschueren, the process of using language is a process of linguistic choice-making. The three properties of address forms, i.e. variability, negotiability and adaptability, make linguistic choice-making possible. Except for these three key notions, Verschueren also points out four angels of Adaptation Theory, i.e. contextual correlates of adaptation, structural objects of adaptation, dynamics of adaptability, and the salience of the adaptation process. The context includes linguistic context and communicative context. According to Adaptation Theory, contextual correlates include language users, physical world, social world and mental world. Guided by Adaptation Theory, the thesis takes the novel Moment in Peking of Lin Yutang as the data to analyse the relationship between address forms and context, aiming at revealing the dynamic process about how the characters and the author select address forms to adapt to various communicative contexts.The study finds that in the process of language using, the speakers make the choice of address forms consciously or unconsciously to adapt to the related context. The dynamic process of choosing address forms is achieved in the adaptation to the communicative context: the mental world, the social world and the physical world, and there exist some differences in the salience of the adaptation processes. In addition, as a new theory, Adaptation Theory proved to be powerful in analyzing address forms. The study also finds that the colorful characters and the huge address system in the novel offer suitable data for the study. Therefore, the thesis provides a new theoretical perspective for the study of address forms. And the present study which combines Adaptation Theory and the address forms in Moment in Peking not only brings forth new ideas in research content, but also provides a new research perspective to the novel.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is introduction, which introduces the background, the purposes, the significance of the study, and the organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 is made up of two parts. The first part is mainly about the definition, classification of address forms and the previous researches on address forms both at home and abroad. The second part reviews the studies of Moment in Peking. Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework of the thesis, which reviews Adaptation Theory. Chapter 4 is the main body of the thesis, which applies Adaptation Theory to the address forms in Moment in Peking. Chapter 5 is the summary of the whole thesis. It summarizes the major findings of the study, points out the limitations of the study, and puts forward some suggestions for further research.