A Contrastive Analysis Of Address Terms In Midnight And Wuthering Heights From The Perspective Of Politeness Theories

Address terms have very important role in the communications of people’s daily life. They can enhance the impressions between addressers and addressees if they use them appropriately; however, an inappropriate usage of address term will contribute to misunderstandings and unhappiness. There are some similarities on address terms in both Chinese and English languages, but differences exist as well due to different cultural background, values and social structures in western countries and China. Applying the theories of politeness, the theory of power and solidarity from the perspective of pragmatics which compares the previous researches from the macro view of sociolinguistics, the present thesis adopts the two novels of Midnight and Wuthering Heights as data to make a contrastive analysis of the similarities and differences on address terms in Chinese and English languages.This thesis contains six parts. The first and second parts review and compare the relevant literature concerning with address terms both at home and abroad, and expound the definitions and classifications of address terms. The third part explains and analyses the theoretical framework with specific examples, these theories including Robin Lakoff s politeness rules, Brown and Levinson’s face-saving theory, Leech’s politeness principle, Gu Yueguo’s politeness theory and Brown and Gilman’s power and solidarity theory. The fourth part makes a comprehensive collection and comparative analysis of address terms in the two novels based on the theory of politeness, the theory of power and solidarity. By so doing, it aims to generate a more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics and usages of address terms in English and Chinese languages. As a result, the commonalities and differences can be more clearly manifested. The fifth part elaborates the factors that affect the choices of address terms from cultural, subjective and objective, and pragmatic perspective, such as:individualism and collectivism, face-saving strategies and age, gender and the like. The sixth part clarifies the significance of analyzing the address terms, and makes a tentative proposal regarding how to solve the misunderstandings due to different norms of usages of address terms in Chinese and English languages. The thesis conducts a thorough research on the similarities and differences of address terms in Chinese and English languages from the perspective of politeness theory, the present thesis concludes that the principles of politeness differentiate from Chinese to western cultural contexts. Therefore, the communicators should master different politeness principles in different cultural backgrounds in cross-cultural communications, so as to avoid the misunderstandings and achieve the goal of successful communication.