A Study On Social Face-To-Face Address Forms In The Pre-Qin Period

The face-to-face address forms are indispensable in verbal communication as they are used by people to call each other when they have a face-to-face social conversation. The usage of face-to-face address forms can not only reflect the relationships, social status and closet connections between the communicators but also display the speaker’s feelings about the hearer. At the same time, it is limited by the special social system and has close relationship with social culture, ethical institution and moral idea. This paper is mainly talk about the usage and cultural meaning of the face-to-face address forms that used in the pre-Qin period. According to the differences between the referents, the address forms are divided into two kinds:address forms used to refer to the hearer and address forms used to refer to the speaker himself/herself. In-depth analysis about their usage condition and cultural characteristics are made, and then the communicative principles and their cultural connotation are pointed out in the last part of the paper.In the introduction, the concepts of face-to-face address forms and some relative concepts are defined. The introduction also reveals the research status of address forms, object of the study and sources of this paper.The first part of the paper mainly studies about how people address the hearer in a face-to-face social conversation in the pre-Qin period, and divides it into7genres:"addressing he/she according to his/her identity or official position","calling directly by his/her name or Courtesy name","addressing in a relative’s term","calling his/her subordinate instead of he/she","calling he/she for his/her’old’","calling he/she for his/her virtue" and "calling he/she by the address forms which are used in common". I analyze the semanteme and cultural connotation of the address forms of each genre.The second part of the paper mainly studies how people address themselves in a face-to-face social conversation in the pre-Qin period, and divides it into4genres:"calling themselves by their identity","calling themselves by their names","calling themselves as immorality" and "calling themselves by the address forms which are used in common". The semanteme and cultural connotation of each address form are analyzed, too.The key point of this thesis is Part Three. Basis on the pre content, I summarize communicative principles that reflected by the usage of the address forms in face-to-face social conversations during pre-Qin period and analyze their cultural connotation. Principle of social stratum, principle of feelings and principle of courtesy are the mainly communicative principles. These principles reveal our traditional cultural connotation and the national mind of humility such as the traditional Chinese society with rigidly stratified identity-concept, highly valued family ethics and harmony of social relationship and so on. All of these show the true color of traditional Chinese culture.In the last part of the paper, I summarize the full content of this paper and point out the shortcoming of the full text.