A Contrastive Analysis Of Frequently-Used Address Forms In English And Chinese

Address forms are the words that are most widely and frequently used in people's speech communication in all cultures. As an important part of social etiquette, address forms can be adopted to establish, maintain, reinforce, and break down all kinds of interpersonal relationships. The social position, status, role of the interlocutors will be identified by the choice of address forms. Therefore, as a basic strategy of speech communication, the appropriate use of address forms, to a great extent, will exert tremendous influence on the success of people's daily communication.Address forms are closely related to the history, custom, values, social psychology and social structure of a certain culture. Due to the diversity of the English and Chinese cultures, the differences of address forms in both languages are demonstrated not only in forms and pragmatic meanings, but in the rules governing the choice of them and in the standard of judging the proper use of them. In intercultural communication, if we do not have a certain knowledge of address forms and address the hearer from another culture according to the rules of usage in our own culture, or evaluate the custom of the use of address forms in another culture by resorting to the standard of our own culture, it will lead to misunderstandings, unhappiness, intensity. In addition, it will influence the success of intercultural communication and even cause serious consequences. Nowadays,intercultural communication is becoming wider and more frequent with the development of globalization. A contrastive analysis of address forms and the cultures they are derived from are of great help for the success of intercultural communication in that it can help to enhance the cultural sensitivity of the interlocutors in the appropriate use of address forms.This paper first introduces the definitions, classification, features and functions of address forms and reviews the theoretical achievements of address forms by the Western and Chinese scholars. Then on the basis of other scholars' findings it conducts a comparison in social general honorific titles, personal names, official titles, occupational titles and kin terms used to non-kin. In addition, it also discusses a unique form of address in Chinese, that is lao/xiao plus LN. As we can see from this paper, it has made a contrastive analysis not only in the form and meaning of address forms, but in the frequency of the use of address forms as well as in the settings where they are used in both languages. This paper has also covered the cultural factors that result in the differences of address form. In other words, it has made a contrastive analysis of the major cultural patterns of the Western and Chinese cultures from the perspective of intercultural communication, which presents us the reason for the differences of address forms and will help us have a thorough understanding of the main characteristics of them in both languages. Last but not least, this paper also discusses the practical significance of the contrastive analysis of address forms, that is, it can be applied to foreignlanguage teaching, translation and intercultural communication.