On Factors Influencing The Selection Of Address Forms-from The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

The use of address forms is pervasive in people's daily communication and the proper use of address forms is of great significance to communicators, and thus the phenomenon of addressing has been widely studied by linguists from various perspectives. The classic and most influential study of address forms was published by Brown and Gilman, who are regarded as the initiators of modern sociolinguistic investigation of address forms. Since then many other studies of address forms have been carried out. However, those studies followed by Brown and Gilman's theory of power and solidarity are just "refinement or completion of the system explained by Brown and Gilman" (Belz & Kinginger, 2003: 595). All these studies including the classic theory just pay their attention to the social elements related with the address forms which are too general, but they more or less neglect the dynamic elements such as people's psychology as well as the conversation settings. So in this thesis, the author tentatively integrates the Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren (1999) into the analysis of address forms, aiming at finding out factors specifically governing and constraining the selection of the address forms in real interactions.Verschueren considers that the process of using language is a process of choosing. Language use must consist of the continuous linguistic choices. As a particular phenomenon, the use of address forms is also a linguistic choice-making process, and speakers consciously or unconsciously make adaptation to approach to the communicative goals. In Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, the adaptative objectives to which speakers adapt categorize into social world, mental world and physical world.This paper builds on Verschueren's theory of adaptation to research the factors influencing the selection of address forms. The paper begins with the introduction of address form researches at present, including the limitations. Then the author introduces the Adaptation Theory, and in order to illustrate the guiding effect of the Adaptation Theory on the use of address form, the author chooses many examples from literary works as the material for the case study. Through comparing and analyzing the different address forms people chosen, the author of this paper draws the conclusion: the addresser must make a dynamic adaptation to his/her mental factors, the social factors and physical factors to achieve his/her need. Based on the analysis of the previous chapters, in which the three types of the important factors are pointed out, the author designs the questionnaire and conducts a small-scale survey to verify whether the factors are really so important in selecting the address forms in people's actual daily communication. The last chapter is the conclusion.