A Pragmatic Analysis On College Students' Use Of English Address Terms In Emulated Phatic Context

The existence of address terms is a necessity in people's daily life.It can reflect a speaker and a hearer's identities,relationship,emotional attitudes,etc.Hence,address terms are not simply specific language units,but they also contain some special pragmatic functions.Address terms differ from culture to culture,and different address systems reflect different nations' cultural conventions.It can be concluded that address terms are a kind of pragmatic units which have great cultural value and implications.Consequently,an appropriate and reasonable use of address terms has positive effects on people's daily communication.On the contrary,misuse of address terms canincur a negative effect on communication.Based on the above-mentioned mechanism of language,a study of how to use the target language's appellation terms reasonably and appropriately is beneficial to the training of our learners' capability of communication.In other words,English teachers should impart their students with knowledge of cultural connotations and pragmatic factors in the language,especially various address terms.Since 1960s,linguists have given more and more attention to address terms' pragmatic functions,and they tend to study them from different perspectives.Scholars have put forward some relevant interpretations concerning address terms,such asthe face theory,awareness of power,identity discrepancy,politeness principle and so on.Based on the study of related works,the author of this thesis has affirmed that address terms have a special value for academic study.Uptill now,inadequate attention is paid to the target language's address terms in our foreign language teaching.For learners who have acquired quite some linguistic competence of English,they tend to exhibit some obvious deficiencies in the use of address forms.The purpose of this paper is to investigate Chinese college students' use of English address terms in emulated phatic contexts,so as to find out the reasons of the problem and provide some useful tips for the teaching and learning of the English language.This thesis sets three questions to be answered:What phatic address terms can college students recognize in English spoken and written discourses?How appropriately can college students use English phatic address terms in given situations? What factors may interfere with college students' acquisition of phatic address terms in English?Due to the complexity of language's appellation system,this paper is confined on English titles,kinship terms,and name forms and makes a contrastive analysis of the terms in English and Chinese contexts.It is found that some native pragmatic characteristics are reflected in college students' application of English address terms.According to the cultural differences between Chinese and Western cultures,there are not only morphologicaldifferences but also cultural and pragmatical variances in the use of address terms.It is generally admitted that Chinese culture lays more emphasis on collectivism,the order of seniority,politeness in social functions,etc.;while English culture stresses individualism and equal status in personal communication.With considerations of our college students' social experience and their current mastery of English address terms,the author designed a questionnaire withemulated contexts involved,and tried to get some inference about college students' improper use of English address terms by analyzing relevant factors involved in the specific contexts.Specifically,based on the interference of first language and the analysis of questionnaire,it is found that students tend to use English titles extensively;students also apply the extensive use of kinship terms into the application of English address terms;in addition,students are not sensitive to use the form of “first name” to address others.Beyond that,interview is also conducted in this empirical study,which is included as a more effective supplementary means for the research.According to the interview of college students' English study,it confirms the importance of English address terms' learning.Through a combined approach of quantitative and qualitative analyses,thethesis confirms the significant role of appellation terms from the pragmatic perspective.In addition,this paper offers some referential hints for future research and foreign language teaching.