Cross-Cultural Construction Of Interpersonal Function Of Chinese Social Terms Of Address

1964 witnessed the start of a climax of relevant studies concerning terms of address as social linguistics sprang up and gained power in China. While most researchers concentrate on an analysis and generalization of social, cultural, and mental factors which influence and determine the standard mode of their usage at the beginning, more and more scholars learn to change perspectives and put more emphasis upon their social functions in practical use such as how speakers use or switch terms of address in order to realize specific communicative purposes. However, their inquiries are still imbalanced which exaggerate the restrictive and dominative role of social structures in communication while neglecting subjective initiatives of users. Therefore, the area is in need of dynamic studies of personal varieties and studies of a certain book or situation, which take the mutual interaction between contextual factors such as age, status, and gender and subjective consciousness of participants into consideration.Ru-Lin Wai-Shih, written by the famous author Wu Ching-tzu of Quanjiao county, Anhui province, is a great novel of the middle Qing dynasty. It is not only an excellent collection of sarcastic stories, but also a realistic masterpiece which marks and realizes the transition of genre from romance to reality in Chinese fiction history. The novel has already been translated into several foreign languages such as English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spain, and casted a profound influence on international sinology, but its first complete English version is not published until 1957 when Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang translated it into The Scholars. Their translation is both smooth and concise while basically conveying the style of the original text. Moreover, it is the only complete English version of 55 chapters by now, while all other translations are either fragments or chapters. However, studies of The Scholars are sadly and badly insufficient in the quantity of researchers and papers, the depth of research subjects and perspectives, and methodical and systemic approaches when compared with its literary status at home and abroad.The author made an objective observation and analysis of the ways how characters of different classes and professions in the two versions of the novel use social terms of address in order to reflect their identities and relative status, build and keep social relationships, or realize different interpersonal functions, after collecting and comparing various categories of addressing terms in their discourses. The paper tries to answer the following questions.1. What are the types and tokens of Chinese and English terms of address in discourses? What about their frequencies and distribution in different classifications? 2. Which interpersonal function is realized by Chinese addressing terms in the original text? What about their counterparts in the English text? 3. What does the translator do to omit, construct, or compensate interpersonal function in the target text? What are his strategies besides English addressing terms?The paper finds that social addressing terms consist of 352 titles,116 occupational terms,440 general terms, and 281 fictive kinship terms in the original text, while their English translations are composed of 161 titles,43 occupational terms, 228 general terms,746 pronouns,144 cases of omission,14 names, and 30 fictive kinship terms in the target text. It is noteworthy to mention that English terms of address outnumber those in Chinese because 177 supplementary cases in the target text are also included during statistics. Nearly all Chinese self-references are either translated into personal pronouns or omitted directly, while a few are converted into English interlocutor-references such as titles and occupations. And the strategy of "personal pronouns + other categories of addressing terms" is usually adopted when dealing with Chinese interlocutor-references. Social terms of address are salient indicators of power and solidarity relationships in the original text, but such interpersonal relationships are obscured because of the frequent use of personal pronouns and general terms in the target text. It can be compensated and reconstructed by virtue of mood and modality to some extent, because powerful people tend to choose interrogative or imperative mood as well as operators and adjuncts of high modality in order to stress their authority, and those of less power are inclined to declarative or modulated interrogative mood as well as operators and adjuncts of low or median modality to show their humility when power relationship is dominant in the discourses.The thesis was not only a comprehensive micro-research of varieties of addressing terms in the two versions of a complete novel, but also a supplementary study of the translation of Ru-Lin Wai-Shih from the new perspective of systematic functional linguistics. It helps broaden the vision of terms of address in the realistic novels after a comprehensive survey of all types and tokens which covers a co-occurrence of personal pronouns, nouns, self-references, and interlocutor-references, while most studies belong to a one-sided summary of mechanism governing the usage of an ancient Chinese addressing system such as honorifics and personal pronouns. It contributes to the studies both of addressing terms and of interpersonal function, for that it is not only a dynamic research of addressing behaviors interwoven with context by virtue of the theory of interpersonal function, but also a case study of Chinese and English versions of a realistic novel based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis. Besides, it can also provide some inspiration for translation criticism from the perspective of cross-cultural construction of interpersonal function.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one makes a brief introduction of research background, general structure, and theoretical and practical significance. Chapter two is literature review in which the author makes clear research orientation and proves the originality of the paper after briefing and commenting relevant theoretical and empirical works at home and abroad. Chapter three is concerned with methodology that describes research questions, operational definitions of research subjects, and the way in which data is collected and analyzed. Chapter four is the main body of the paper. It not only describes quantitative results (such as frequency and percentage) of Chinese and English addressing terms of types and tokens, but also makes a qualitative analysis of translator’s choices of omitting or constructing different aspects of interpersonal function reflected by Chinese addressing terms in the target discourses from perspectives of power and solidarity relationships combined with interactive motives and attitudes of participants. Chapter five is a conclusion summing up major findings, stating the limitations, and putting forward suggestions for further studies.