A Contrastive Study Of Social Appellation Systems Between English And Chinese

Appellation is an inseparable part of human verbal communication. One can not only use appellations to call the attention of others, but also to show the relationship between them. Appellations are kinds of linguistic routines of politeness which reflect customs and conventions of a speech community. They have long been considered as a salient indicator of interpersonal relationship. Appellation system aroused the interest of sociolinguists in 1960s and since then the study of it has become an independent field of sociolinguistics. Social appellation system is one subsystem of appellation system. It is used to denote people other than family members. It is a complex system and difficult to understand and to learn because it is closely related to the society and culture. In this thesis the author makes a contrastive study on social appellation systems between English and Chinese. This thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction which reveals the significance of the study as well as aims in writing this thesis. Due to the two distinct characteristics of social appellations (one is that they are used among the whole society; the other is that they are unstable and subject to change), they are likely to cause problems in communication because a person has no definite appellation forms in a society. When people from different cultures interact, misuse of social appellations is more frequent as people will unconsciously bring into cross—cultural activities conventions and thought patterns of their own cultures. So it is of great importance to understand similarities and differences between social appellation systems. Through the comparative study, the author hopes to provide people with a comprehensive description of social appellation systems and help people understand differences as well as causes for those differences between English and Chinese social appellation systems. Furthermore, the study is expected to be of some help for those who engage in cross---cultural activities such as communication, translation and teaching.Chapter Two is the literature review. It first defines the general concepts of appellations and social appellations. Appellation system can be classified differently according to different criteria. In this thesis, the author approaches it from functional point of view and classifies the system into four subsystems: kinship terms, social appellations, references to person's names and personal pronouns. Social appellations can be further divided into six subsystems: communicative appellations, post and rank appellations, relation appellations, honorific appellations, affectionate appellations and fictive kinship terms (unique in China).This chapter also briefly reviews the historical development in this field. In the west, linguists such as Brown & Gilman, Brown & Ford, Ervin—Tripp and Friedrike Braun, etc. studied appellation systems from different aspects and made remarkable progress. Brown & Gilman concentrated on the use of second person pronoun. Brown & Ford analyzed the appellation system of American English, especially the use of titles with last name (TLN) and first name (FN). Ervin—Tripp studied the American appellation system by using a computer flow chart format and presented the appellation system as series of choices. Friedrike Braun studied patterns and systems in various languages. In China, much research also has been done in this field. Many linguists have devoted to the study of appellations. They either studied Chinese appellations systematically or concentrated on the change and actual use of appellations, especially that of social appellations.Chapter Three discusses factors that influence the choice of social appellations. Usually factors such as context, status, social distance and age, etc. are involved in the process of choosing social appellations. Factors such as the educational level, gender, locations and intention of interlocutors sometimes are also relevant.Context varies in formality, which can be...