A Study Of Address Terms In People’s Daily From The Perspective Of Register

Address term, as an important component of linguistic system, is a social fact. It is not only influenced and shaped by social structure, but also faithfully records social steps and cultural advance. The study of address terms has attracted attention of many scholars from different disciplines. However, most scholars mainly concentrate on the address terms in daily conversations while the study of address terms in written works has not received due attention.The present study finds that address terms in a particular register such as news reports predicates some unique characteristics, which can enrich the currently available researches on address terms. In addition, situational factors that affect the use or the choice of the address terms are also well worth studying. Furthermore, address terms in news reports faithfully record the social steps and cultural advance, which is helpful to learn the social background in different periods.The present thesis employs a qualitative method to make a study of 5235 address terms in the front-page news of People’s Daily from the perspective of Register Theory. The study firstly makes a description and analysis of the characteristics of the address terms used in the front-page news and seeks for the various situational factors that influence the use of the address terms in news reports; and then it makes a diachronic study to keep track of the changes of the address terms and explores the development of the social environment that influences the change of address terms.The present study finds that address terms in news reports are different from those in verbal communication and predicate some unique characteristics. The components of address terms in news reports are relatively complex, which can be divided into various types. The frequency of different types of address terms is different. The most frequently-used type of address is the compound address term of title and name. Different components and titles in a compound address term do not pile up in random but follow certain sequence/rules.Situational factors such as the subject-matter, social activity, environment, power relations,emotional involvement, the medium and the rhetorical devices act collectively to determinethe use of the address terms in news reports. Furthermore, address terms change along times.The frequency of some types of address terms predicates periodical characteristics in different periods, and some components and types of address terms which are of obvious/extreme emotional function or in traditional Chinese addressing form gradually decline. The address terms in People’s Daily tend to be more concise and objective, more normal and standard,more open and multiple. Additionally, address terms in the news reports change along with the development of social environment, which faithfully record the development of political,economic and communicational environment in different periods.There are five chapters in the present thesis. Chapter One serves as an introduction of the present study. Chapter Two makes a brief literature review of the previous researches of the address terms and news language. Chapter Three presents a review of the Register Theory,which makes up the theoretical foundation of the present study. Chapter Four studies the address terms in People’s Daily from the perspective of Register Theory in detail. The first part describes the characteristics of the address terms in People’s Daily by analyzing the composition of address terms, comparing the frequency of different types of address terms and illustrating the combining features of address terms. The second part seeks for the situational factors that affect the use of the address terms from the perspective of three variables of Register. The third part describes the diachronic changes and developing trend of the address terms. The fourth part further explores the development of social environment according to the change of the address terms. Chapter Five is the conclusion, summarizing the major findings and limitations of the present thesis and providing suggestions for further study.