A Contrastive Pragmatic Study Of Address Forms In English And Chinese

As one important part in speech communication, address form is considered as the first message conveyed from speakers to hearers in many situations. Address form, though not a new topic in academic researches, is still worth studying for its importance in the practical use. Lots of sociologists and linguists at home and abroad have done many researches on address forms from different perspectives which are mainly sociolinguistics, anthropology, cross-culture, and pragmatics. On the basis of the former researches, the thesis develops an analysis of the address forms in English and Chinese with some pragmatics theories. The thesis employs the method of contrast when doing the study. The purpose of the pragmatic study is to use address forms properly and to find the cultural roots and the implication of address forms.As for data collection, it mainly comes from lots of literature works. Through consulting some literature works, the author collects as many examples as possible, and classifies them into English and Chinese to do the study. On the basis of the data, the thesis develops a contrastive study on the address forms in English and Chinese with pragmatics theories. First of all, through the analysis of the examples, the thesis gives a contrastive analysis on all kinds of address forms in English and Chinese in detail, to find their specific differences in practical use. Generally speaking, there exist a large number of differences between Chinese address forms and English address forms. Chinese address forms are more complicated while English address forms are more simple; specificity and generality are their respective features. In Chinese address forms, the generality of professional titles and official titles and the extension of kinship terms are two exclusive features which are not included in those of English address forms.Then the thesis gives an explanation to the differences with pragmatics theories, i.e. politeness principles, power and solidarity theory. With some pragmatics theories related to address forms such as the involvement strategy and independence strategy, tact maxim, modesty maxim, the self-denigration maxim, and the address term maxim of politeness principles, the thesis develops a contrastive study on the differences of address forms. The study suggests: Chinese address forms employ the independence strategy while English address forms the involvement strategy, which is realized through the differences of person pronouns and kinship terms. Chinese address forms obey strictly the tact maxim, modesty maxim and self-denigration maxim, which are realized in titles used widely and complicated kinship terms, but English address forms emphasize the individual independence and social equality, and the address forms elevate others but not denigrate self. Especially in recent years, English address forms is going through a revolution, that is to say people tend to address each other with names whatever the age, title and status, which is acknowledged and accepted as the tact politeness principle among the west countries. Influenced by the traditional system of"Be polite between senior and junior, and be orderly between old and young", Chinese stress the status of individual and the proper use of language in communicating situation, so the address forms show power tendency and belong to the non-reciprocal type; while the western people prefer reciprocal pattern and the address forms have solidarity orientation.There are deep culture roots of the pragmatic differences of address forms. The thesis searches the cultural roots of the differences of address forms in English and Chinese from the perspective of philosophical sources of different cultures. The thesis gives a discussion from three aspects: the concept of equality and Confucius'ranking theory, individualism and collectivism, power and solidarity, which are the essential causes of pragmatic differences in address forms. Finally the thesis points out the implication and application of address forms in intercultural communication and in English teaching and learning.As a major category in the verbal communication, address forms possess unique cultural flavors and pragmatic characteristics. In order to achieve successful intercultural communication and to avoid further pragmatic failures and misunderstanding in the intercultural communication, the thesis suggests that English learners in China should pay more attention to the communicative competence, and in particular, sociolinguistic competence in their studies and English teachers should also attach more importance to this aspect. The present study on address forms has some implication both in intercultural communication and in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.