An Intercultural Study Of Modern Address Forms

Address form (AF)is the word/words used to designate the other person/persons by the speaker. It shows the role people play in certain communicating background. It also implies the interpersonal relationships between them. Every language and culture has its own AF system. AF not only is the identity of a person, but also is a mark of a culture. The forming, selecting and using of it are affected and restricted by socio-cultural factors. Using AFs appropriately will facilitate communication. Otherwise it will impede or even lead to the failure of it.Combining with the researches by predecessors and based on many theories mainly the theory of power and solidarity, a comprehensive and systematical study of AF systems in English and Chinese which is concerned with vocative terms and referring terms, kinship terms and social terms has been conducted and great achievements have been gained. Methods such as observation, participant-observation, informal interview, references, experience, and so on have been adopted. In this thesis, through analyzing the forms, patterns ,structures, classifications, pragmatic functions and usages, the using situations, variations, evolution and changes etc. ,many previous theories and viewpoints have been further deeply tested and verified as well as being enriched and strengthened, the similarities and distinctions between the two AF systems that signify the corresponding cultures are explicitly showed.Generally, American culture is characterized by individualism, equality and solidarity. Solidarity is the orientation of the speech acts and behaviors of the American people. Chinese culture is featured by courtesy. Most Chinese people honor power and authority. The rigid hierarchy system is required to be observed. Power semantic is much more preferential than solidarity semantic. In the study, some new findings have been gained, and a few supplements and new personal viewpoints have also been given to the corresponding old ones as follows.1) Being a social title,'sir'is much more favored and frequently used than the social title'Mr.'to be the most extensively used social title.2) To the relatives of the partner or even the parents of the partner, and to step-mother, step-father or the like relatives, the Americans are accustomed to employing first names (FNs). The major reason is that the marriage relationships can not substitute the blood relationships.3) Under V(the preferential pronoun) social terms conditions, in American English, the using of social titles is much more frequent than that of official and occupational titles, and the high academic occupational titles such as'Dr.','Prof.'have more preference than official titles and even the social titles; yet in Chinese, official titles are the most preferential titles.4) Americans can address their parents from the angle of children directly in face to face conversations; yet, normally, the Chinese can refer their parents from the angle of children only indirectly.5) The Americans are apt to using the titles without combining with surname because the concepts of equality, independence and solidarity let the Americans not care about the background and family source more and more.6) In China, under the conditions of using T (the familiar pronoun) terms, the using of full names is increasing; conversely, the using of FNs is getting lesser and lesser.7) Because'tongzhi同志'is declining and'xiansheng先生','xiaojie小姐', etc. are controversial, the using of Zero term is also in a rising trend especially to the strangers.8) The declining of'tongzhi同志'is not owing to the unfavorable Cultural Revolution era and in my personal view it is because of the changed various concepts of the Chinese people resulted from the intrusion of all kinds of cultures and the market–economic structure etc..9) When playing the role as social title,'shifu师傅'prevails mainly in Shanghai and the boundary areas.10) The expressing structure of kinship terms(KTs) and analogue KTs in Zhuang dialect is the same as that in English, to be the form as'KT/AKT + modifier'.11) The linguistic market of analogue kinship terms (AKTs) in the rural is much bigger than that in cities in China. The extended use of'dage大哥'doesn't apply to the speech community in some places of Longsheng County, Guilin because of the old day-marriage tradition..All in all, AFs vary with time, regions, ethnics, languages, etc. which require people to try to improve intercultural communicative competence, and learn about the customs and traditions as well as the AFs using conventions of the other part, then select appropriate AFs according to the communicating purposes and the contexts etc. to make communications smooth and succeed .