An Interactional Linguistics Study On The Address Form Conversion In Mandarin Chinese

Address form is one of the most frequently used but most complex form in daily communication.Address form studies have attracted much attention from many scholars and achieved substantial achievements.However,the description and explanation of its factors and functions have not been satisfactory.The present research insists that the core concept of “interaction” and “dynamic” grammar in interactional linguistics are consistent with the characteristics of “dynamic and orality” of address form.This paper analyzes the pragmatic functions and factors of address form conversion in natural conversation from the perspective of interactional linguistics.Specifically,the paper collects the natural spoken data in different scenes,makes quantitative analysis on the distribution of address form conversion,roughly outlines the general use in natural oral communication;and adopts the “conversation analysis” method to describe and analyze the typical cases in the conversation.It is found that the frequency distribution of pragmatic functions realized by address form conversion in natural conversations shows certain characteristics:“emotional indicator” accounts for the highest ratio,followed by “adjustment of interpersonal relationship” and “identity construction”,and the least “reference”.This suggests that in natural conversations,people tend to euphemistically express their emotions by changing their address forms to achieve their communicative purposes.Although the “reference” is the least,it still has more research value.The pragmatic functions of address form conversion include: reference,identity construction,emotional indicator,and adjustment of interpersonal relationship function.The main constraint factors of address form conversion are: psychological,social and discourse level,among which social factors include degree of intimacy,identity and social status and the difference of communicative objects.These are the motives that encourage the speaker to break the rules and choose different address forms.Based on the framework of interactional linguistics and the method of conversation analysis,this paper is a new attempt to study address form conversion and also a new exploration of the theory of interactional linguistics.At the same time,this study is of great significance of the usage of address form reasonably and appropriately in people’s real life.In addition,integrating the research findings of address form conversion into foreign language teaching can improve the teaching quality and reduce students’ pragmatic errors in daily communication.Although this paper has made some improvements on the basis of previous research,there remain some shortcomings :(1)it only focuses on synchronic research and ignores the influence of diachronic factors on address form conversion functions;(2)Due to the author’s limited knowledge,it is difficult to fully display the functions of address form conversion.In view of this,future research can take a synchronic and diachronic research to make a more detailed description and explanation of the synchronic and diachronic aspects of address form conversion.Secondly,future research can collect more natural data and further discuss and analyze the functions and factors of address form conversion.