Understanding The Choice And Use Of Chinese Social Address Forms-From A Cognitive Perspective

Address form is an inseparable part of human verbal communication. It can not only call the attention of others, but also reflect people's social status and their relations together with customs and conventions of a speech community. Address system aroused the interest of sociolinguists in 1960s and since then the study of it has become an independent field of sociolinguistics. Social address system is one subsystem of address system. It is used to denote people other than family members. As an important part of social etiquette, social address forms are closely related to social structure of a certain culture. Due to the complexity of the Chinese society, Chinese social address forms are extremely complicated. Therefore, to learn and know how to choose an appropriate social address form plays an important role in improving people's verbal communication and interpersonal relationship.This paper first introduces the definitions, classification and functions of address forms and reviews the theoretical achievement of address forms by the Western and Chinese scholars, then discusses the development and semantic changes of the most frequently used Chinese social address forms and puts forward the theory whichaffects people's choice and use of these address forms-cognitive schema. Inaddition, it further explores such factors as age and occupation which help to form address form schemas. Through the study, the author argues that address form not only plays the directive and absorbing roles, but is also a cognitive pattern. Address form schema deeply controls the way people recognize others and themselves. The process people choose one appropriate title to address other people is just the process they recognize others by address form schema.