A Study Of Address Forms From Cross-cultural Perspective

In view of the fact that few researchers have ever set foot in studying the relationship between social address behavior and politeness strategies in both Chinese and English, the present study tries to offer a detailed comparison of the social address behaviors of Chinese and American college teachers and students from cross-cultural perspective with language and culture, context and communication as well as related politeness theories (i.e., Brown and Levinson's Face Theory, Leech's Politeness Principle, Gu Yueguo's Chinese Politeness Principle as well as Politeness Strategy of Involvement and Politeness Strategy of Independence proposed by Ron Scollon and Suzanne Wong Scollon) as its theoretical foundation. An empirical study was conducted among Chinese college teachers (between 30 and 40 years old), Chinese college students, American college teachers (between 30 and 40 years old) and American college students by employing questionnaires as the main research instrument, aiming at identifying, on the one hand, the influences of power and distance on the social address behaviors of Chinese and American college teachers and students, and on the other hand, the politeness strategy tendency of Chinese and American college teachers and students in their social address behaviors.This thesis is composed of seven chapters. Chapter One is an introduction, which gives a brief account of the important role that address forms play in communication, declares the rationales for selecting the present study, introduces the focus of the present study, and states the significances of the present study. Chapter Two introduces some concepts related to the present study for the purpose of helping readers get a better understanding of the thesis. Chapter Three is the literature review, examining the previous researches on address forms conducted by renowned scholars at home and abroad and articulating the differences between the present study and previous studies. Chapter Four, the theoretical foundation, is devoted to introducing the theories applied in the present study. Chapter Five elaborates the experimental design of the present study, including the hypotheses, the subjects, the research instruments and the experimental procedure. Chapter Six is the core and the main body of this thesis, which can be further divided into six sections: the four basic interpersonal relationships between the addressees and the addressers [i.e., ( + P, + D), ( + P, - D), ( - P, + D) and ( - P, - D)] are introduced in the first section; the second section elaborates the three politeness systems proposed by Ron Scollon and Suzanne Wong Scollon, that is, hierarchical politeness system, deference politeness system and solidarity politeness system; the third section describes the related data coUected from Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 and the corresponding conclusions drawn from the data; the fourth section is about the fieldwork implemented at home and theobservation results; the fifth section is devoted to describe the types of address forms that Chinese and American college teachers and students employ in the questionnaire investigations; and the sixth section first elaborates the differences of the social address forms and the social addressing rules in Chinese and American English, then traces their origins from the perspective of culture so as to explain the differences in the social address behaviors of Chinese and American college teachers and students. Chapter Seven is the conclusions drawn from what has been discussed in the present study.On the basis of the data collected from questionnaires conducted under Chinese circumstances and English circumstances, the frequency distributions of the address forms employed by the Chinese subjects and the American subjects in the questionnaire investigations were calculated. Then the differences of the Chinese subjects' and the American subjects' social address behaviors were analyzed, and the causes were traced from the disparities between Chinese culture and American culture. The conclusions drawn from the present stu...