Social And Pragmatic Meanings Of Person Deixis In English And Chinese: A Contrastive Study

Person deixis is an important component of pragmatics. With reference to the addresser, the addressee and the third party involved in a conversation, person deixis indicate the social status, interpersonal relationship and other factors of the conversational parties.Since Brown and Gilman (1960) initiated the study of person deixis, numerous scholars have researched the issue from the perspectives of semantics, pragmatics, socioliguistics and contrastive linguistics. However, most of these researches concentrate on the first and second person deixis. As to the social and pragmatic meanings of the third person deixis and unconventional use of person deixis, more attention should be paid to these issues.This thesis concentrates on the social and pragmatic meanings of English and Chinese deixis. Through the contrastive study on the pragmatic functions of person deixis in English and Chinese, similarities and differences in the person deixis use between the two languages can be analyzed. The result of the contrastive study can be applied to English learning and translation.The major similarities and differences in social and pragmatic meanings and unconventional uses of person deixis in English and Chinese that are discussed in the thesis can be summarized as follows:The singular form of first person deixis in both English and Chinese implies that the addresser is willing to take responsibility for his/her own opinion. As there is a difference in ideology between English and Chinese culture, English addressers tend to use the first person singular form more frequently. The plural forms in both English and Chinese have similar pragmatic meanings. An exclusive-of-addressee we/wo-men (我们) contains several pragmatic meanings such as modesty, objectiveness and avoidance of responsibility, etc. An exclusive-of-addresser we/wo-men shortens the psychological distance between the addresser and the addressee for the purpose of pragmatic empathy. Apart from these similarities, there are also many differences. In Chinese, there are two pairs of first person deixis: wo (我)/wo-men and zan (咱)/zan-men (咱们), while English has only one pair: I/we. Chinese zan/zan-men are more frequently used in oral communication, especially in northern dialects. Besides, English royal members use we in self-reference to show power, while a Chinese addresser of lower social class tends to use wo-men to refer to himself to show humbleness.When it comes to the second person deixis, you and ni (你) exhibit similar properties in that both can be used as a vocative to express strong emotions. Besides, both you and ni can be used to replace a first person singular. The differences are described briefly as follows: you is only the item for an addressee or addressees regardless of age, social status, gender, etc., while Chinese has two different items for an addressee, ni and nin (您), the choice of one over the other is illustrative of the social and pragmatic meanings in utterance. Chinese addressers sometimes use ni-men (你们) for ni in an indirect criticism of an addressee. On the contrary, this use is absent in English because English does not mark a singular vs. plural contrast with you being the only one for both singular and plural number.Moreover, in terms of the third personal deixis, a third person pronoun used to refer to the addresser himself/herself or the addressee often gives rise to a special reading. However, there is a difference between English and Chinese in the frequency of using a third person pronoun for such special indications. Compared with Chinese, a third person pronoun is more often used in one's self-introduction or talk to children in English.Besides, there are many unconventional uses of person deixis in English and Chinese. The first person plural deixis has vague use, that is, the referential object can not be or need not be identified by the participant in speech act. The second person deixis has impersonal use which refers to one or more persons, but no specific person is picked out. The second person deixis can also be used as metalingual in Chinese daily talking for the purpose of drawing the attention of the addresser. Besides, when the first and second person deixis are used in drama, the zero point usually switches to other characters in the drama, thus, to be strict, these two kinds of person deixis in drama doesn't have the deictic function.