A Comparative Research On Title Usages From Different Editions Of "Wolf Totem"

Language is a tool for thinking, a medium for communication, and a carrier for culture. Title, being an important part of language system, plays a part in initiating conversations. Cross-culture communication leads to different usages of titles. This essay uses "Wolf Totem" as a reference to compare title usages in different editions of the book, and to analyze the different usages of titles utilizing Cross-Culture Communication studies.This essay consists of introduction, main body, and conclusion. The introduction part provides the reason for choosing this topic, research materials used, the purpose for research, sources of research materials, methods for research, general information of researches on titles, different editions of "Wolf Totem," the relationship between title translations and people’s roles and cross-culture communication. The first chapter of the main body counts and analyzes title usages in different editions of "Wolf Totem" using statistics. The second chapter compares the titles from Chinese adult translation, Traditional Mongolian translation, and Cyrillic translation to discover what are the things in common, and what are the special aspects. The third chapter analyzes the reasons for how different titles came about based on what area, what nationality and what country they’re from; the methods used are Literature Content Analysis and Interviews.The research thesis is summed up as the following:1, five different editions of "Wolf Totem" have a total of 8 kinds of titles,18 kinds of social titles and 2 kinds of nicknames.2, the similarities in five different editions of "Wolf Totem":(1) Separate usages of salutations and titles (2) Titles vary and increase according to the context (3) Using kinship titles as social titles (4) Titles change as there are differences in honorific titles.3, in Chinese translation and Traditional Mongolian translation, there are distinctions of seniorities when addressing kinship titles; in social titles, addressing each other by simplified names made obvious the difference of power dynamics.4, in Cyrillic translation, age differences and genders are called differently based on kinship title usages. In people’s dialogues, names are addressed full not simplified; therefore no power dynamics were represented.5, Different translations of "Wolf Totem" have their own distinct title translations based on their target audiences.6, the essay analyzes different cultural background in three levels from Ethnicities (Mongolian and Han), Countries (China and Mongolian), Regions (West and East side of Inner Mongolia) based on title formation through looking at different editions of "Wolf Totem".