A Research On Individual Route Instruction Strategies

Language and spatial cognition have always been the focus of human cognition research.With the increasing scope of human activities,people often encounter unfamiliar situations in life,and inevitably need to ask others for route-instruction or guide others.The spatial description process of “route instruction” will involve directions,distances,spatial frame of reference,and so on.However,not all people use the same route instruction tactics.Different people will give different answers to the same request.For example,there will be differences in the types of information and the degree of detail,especially in the selection of spatial frame of reference.Regarding this daily communication behavior,this kind of voice is circulated on the social networking platform that there are differences between the southerner and northerner and different gender in route instruction.Some research also indicated that there are such phenomena.The reason for the existence of differences between the southerner and northerner on the Internet is mainly attributed to the differences in geographical environment between South and North China,but there is a lack of scientific explanation for the existence of gender differences.We can find that route instruction strategies are influenced by multiple factors.How do the geographic and gender factors interact in a concrete manner? Whether the individual is affected by other factors requires further research.And with the development of society,especially the popularization of GPS positioning technology and mobile phone map applications,as well as the frequent occurrence of personal migration behavior,it is necessary to observe people's route instruction tactics from a diachronic perspective.Since previous research mainly belongs to psychology and cognitive linguistics and quantitative research methods are most used,this study observes the individual's route instruction strategies under real communication scenarios from the perspective of sociolinguistics and pragmatics.Interviews are conducted among 20 people of different ages,genders living in Beijing or Shanghai.This qualitative research observes and analyzes how the individual's route instruction strategies are affected by social background factors such as gender,age,and origin,and how the economic and social development affects individuals from a diachronic perspective.Through the analysis of the interviews,it is found that the North-South differences are significant among the respondents and are stronger than gender differences.There are also intergenerational differences between individuals.Compared with people born before the 1990 s,interviewees after the 90 s mostly state that they are not as good as their sense of direction and are not good at using absolute reference frame.However,it also shows that as their age grows,they will become more and more conscious to use the absolute reference frame.This change in trend may be due to increasing pressure from the language market after entering the community.In dialogues such as asking for route instructions,guides are affected by the Cooperative Principle,and strive to abide by the Maxim of Quantity and the Maxim of Quality.To ensure the accuracy of information,they often prefer to use the spatial frame of reference they are confident about.When it is difficult to provide accurate orientation,landmark information is used as an alternative supplement.Some guides will also determine their own tactics based on help seekers' cognitive ability and knowledge of this area.