The Study Of Social Deixis From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Social deixis is widely used in daily conversation and the proper use of social deictics is considered as an important part of communicative competence. Accordingly, investigation into this linguistic phenomenon is of practical importance. On the basis of the Adaptation Theory, using language in nature consists of the continuous making of linguistic choices. Three properties of language use, namely, variability, negotiability and adaptability, are responsible for choice making. The three properties are hierarchically interrelated. In fact, the adaptation in social deixis results from the cooperation of the variability and negotiability of social deictics. By means of human"mind in society", the making of linguistic choices and the mental processes of adaptation in communication may take place with different degrees of salience. Analyzing social deixis used in English and Chinese, this dissertation focuses on the discussion of the adaptation and salience in the choice of social deictics. The author thinks that social deixis consists of four subcategories, that is, addresser social deixis, addressee social deixis, third-party social deixis and stylistic deixis. The specific objects to which speakers adapt can be categorized into linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations. Firstly, adaptation to linguistic reality means the adaptation to linguistic existence and linguistic features. Secondly, as politeness is one of the important social conventions, this dissertation discusses how politeness and other social conventions influence social deixis. Finally, psychological motivations also wield a great influence on social deixis. It should be pointed out that the three categories may be overlapped. Actually, in many instances, the choice of a social deictic is the consequence of the speaker's adaptation to several factors. Moreover, adaptation to psychological motivations may run counter to linguistic reality and social conventions.The present study has some implications for cross-cultural communication, language teaching and translation. Considering the three specific objects that speakers adapt to when using social deixis, it may be inferred that different linguistic reality and social conventions may lead to some misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication and certain failure in language teaching. Moreover, translation of social deictics is in fact a process, in which a translator makes adaptation to linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations so as to achieve accurate expression of the communicators'identity and social status as well as the representation of the characters in the original work.