"老"="old"?-analysis On The Marked/unmarked Use And Ce Social Identity Of Word "老"

In Western culture, age is a sensitive topic, especially for the young lady. "How old are you?" is a taboo. However, in Eastern culture, word"老"stands for respect in many addresses, and makes our relationships even more intimate. When talking to a foreigner, the plausible English equivalent word "old" is apt to be found limited in replacing Chinese word"老".In cross-culture communication, due attention should be paid to avoid misuse of this word by people. And to solve this problem, numerous researches have been carried out by linguists to find an efficient way to distinguish the use of these two words from different points of view, such as Semantics, Pragmatics and so on.Based on the search of the English equivalent of Chinese word"老",this paper explores the effectiveness of Markedness theory in the explanation of corresponding translating method and discusses the implied differences of social identities by language. Through the analysis of the Markedness theory, including its background, developing process, and content, and with the reference of previous research on this theory carried out by linguists both home and abroad, a conclusion can be achieved on the standard of distinguishing the Markedness of a word:The author of three scholars of the view that the standard is whether the mark:1) Lexical category criteria:the part of speech of unmarked items tends to be more central than marked ones;2) Semantic criteria:the semantic meaning of the unmarked is more central.3) Pragmatic criteria:unmarked items enjoy high frequency and wider range in use than the marked;4) Acquisition duration criteria:unmarked item appears earlier in the acquisition process and later in the losing process;5) Structural criteria:the structure of unmarked items is less complex than that of the marked. According to this criteria, the paper carries out a study on the Markedness of the word"老"in all aspects so as to classify its English translating methods(Part 4) and therefore further discuss the CE culture identity in relation to Chinese word"老"and its English equivalent respectively(part 5) As for the research methodology of the paper, the author adapts a qualitative way doubtlessly based on a large number of relative quantitative collecting of data. In this paper, Peking University Modern Chinese Corpus, Lin Yutang's "Contemporary Chinese-English Dictionary" and Baidu Encyclopedia are referred to as a source of word"老"analysis, and among which the use of word"老"to constitute an address is emphasized. As is devoted to exploring the marked\unmarked uses of character"老",the paper also try to study the differences between Chinese English learners' and English native speakers' choice of these two words so as to solve the translating difficulty of this word. And after this, a deep insight is taken into the difference concerning culture identity reflected in the Markedness of Chinese word"老"and its plausible English equivalent "old" and a evaluation between these two words is made.Through the analysis on the Marked/Unmarked use of the word"老"based on the Markedness theory and the concluded principles of evaluating the Markedness of a language component, this thesis aims to explore the following questions:1) Is the word"老"in Chinese equal to the "old" in English, i.e. can "old" be used as the English equivalent of word"老"all the time?Since this is a big question with difficulty in answering it clearly in a few sentences, it can be divided into some indirect but related sub-questions for us to finish:2) In which situation(s) can "old" be used to substitute for word"老"?3) Is there any relationship between the choice of the English equivalent ofword"老"and the culture background?The above analysis would certainly provide some suggestions on the translation of the word"老"as well as the comparison of CE culture identity.