Research On The Deviated Address Forms In A Dream Of Red Mansion

A Dream of Red Mansion is a great Chinese classical literature work, which has been ahot topic to be researched by scholars at home and abroad since its coming out. It reflectsthe complicated social relationship of Chinese feudal society, and there are various addressforms used by different characters. Recently, more and more researchers pay attention to theuse of address forms in A Dream of Red Mansion. Most of them do the researches from theperspective of translation, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, while few from the perspectiveof language deviation. The author takes a crack at the discussion and analysis of thedeviated address forms used in A Dream of Red Mansion from the perspective of languagedeviation.In the thesis, the author firstly uses the combined method of exhaustive counting andtype-to-type analysis to list out all the representative deviated address forms from A Dreamof Red Mansion, and then classifies them into different groups, such as deviated addressforms in public, deviated address forms in private, deviated face-to-face address forms,deviated behind-face address forms, deviated address forms among peers, deviated addressforms among the elder and the younger, deviated address forms to raise others’ status anddeviated address forms to lower others’ status; secondly, the author uses the combinedmethod of static description and dynamic analysis to describe the deviated address forms indetail and analyze them in a dynamic developing point of view. Since the research contentof language deviation involves many aspects, it is impossible for the author to have anoverall discussion and analysis. What is more, the deviated address forms in A Dream ofRed Mansion can be classified mainly into spatial-temporal deviation and social deviation.Therefore, the main part of this thesis is to discuss the deviated address forms used by somekey characters from the perspective of temporal-spatial deviation and social deviation.Through analysis, the author has found that firstly, even if the address forms in ADream of Red Mansion are in changeable and heterogeneous form, there are still some rules in the complicated address forms and they are in an orderly relationship; secondly, the thesispoints out that the speakers have their own purposes and motives to use deviated addressforms. A speaker can use different address forms to address the same person according todifferent communication context; thirdly, the author has discovered that the deviated addressforms can reflect the speakers’ communication psychology and help them reach an idealcommunication purpose.Therefore, the research has some practical value because it can help people choosecorrect address forms in daily communication; besides, the research has some theoreticalvalue because this thesis analyses the deviated address forms with the theory of orderlyheterogeneity, which is a brave try in sociolinguistics. However, because of the limitedknowledge of the author, the theory of orderly heterogeneity has not been used fully toanalyze the examples of deviated address forms and it is necessary for the future researchersto discuss them continually.