A Study Of The Address Forms In The Joy Luck Club

Address forms are linguistic units which are most frequently and widely used in interpersonal communications and in literary works. This thesis, from perspectives of sociolinguistics and pragmatics, attempts a comprehensive, deep, and detailed investigation into how address forms are used by different characters in the classic novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan—a famous Chinese American woman writer, so that some general understandings of the importance of address form use can be acquired. It mainly focuses on how the characters refer to the interlocutor and the third party in conversations and intends to uncover that the use of address forms is an indicator of interpersonal relationships and also a pointer of the characteristics of speakers and addressees.The applications of Braun's modifications of the previous address form theories, Austin-Searle's speech act theory and Brown-Levinson's face-saving theory and politeness strategies sufficiently show different interrelationships in the novel: between mothers and daughters—an interweaving of both love and hate and of both misunderstanding and reconciliation; between relatives—parents-in-law's acceptan- ce to their foreign sons-in-law, foreign husbands'love and conflicts with their Chinese wives, an intimate relationship among brothers and sisters, and fathers'loving care to daughters; between friends—the seniors'affection for the juniors, the juniors'respect for the seniors and the intimacy and strong ties of friendship between the friends of the same generation; between unfamiliar people or strangers—showing unfamiliarity, respect or discrimination.The characteristics of the main characters in the novel are also clarified during the analysis of address forms, for example, Lindo's vanity, Waverly's rebelliousness, An-mei's kindness, Rose's submissiveness, Suyuan's over-sensitivity and Ying-ying's suspiciousness, as well as Chinese wives'conservativeness and American husbands'openness.