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A Comparative Study of Social Address Terms of Chiinese and American College Teachers and Students

Author: WangZuo
Tutor: WangYing
School: Shandong University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: social address terms second person pronoun addresses naming addresses power solidarity
CLC: H13
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 111
Quote: 1
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Abstract

As an impressible linguistic phenomenon, address term has always been the object of sociolinguistic researches. Yet a close look at the relevant materials tells us that few of the previous studies have done researches on the description of some certain speech communities. Here the present study confines itself on the social address terms between teacher and student communities in both China and the United States. As a cross-culturally contrastive study, the research bases itself on the theories of language and culture, context and communication, power and solidarity as well as politeness theories (i.e. Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory, Leech’s Politeness Principle and Gu’s Chinese Politeness Principle). Taking the Chinese university teachers and students and American teachers and students as the subjects, the author of the study investigates the similarities and dissimilarities of terms of address used between Chinese and American teachers and students in the university community via questionnaires. The data is collected by adopting relative power, distance and gender as variables, and contrast the different influences of different social factors in different cultures and the interpersonal relationships that manifested by terms of address, at the end of the thesis, the cultural origins that cause the different relationships between teachers and students in the east and west are discussed.The originality of this thesis lies in its adoption of sociolinguistic theories in making an analysis of the second person pronoun addresses and naming addresses between Chinese and American teacher and student communities, such as "ni"/"nin ", "laoshi VS Mr./Mrs/Miss/Ms.+LN", "full name", "first name", "academic title" and "official title" through the use of qualitative and quantitative methods.In the first place, the address terms used between Chinese teachers and students reflect that there is a larger social distance between them, while the address terms between American teachers and students do not show that there is an apparent social distance between them.In the second place, there is a tendency of sexism in the address terms in American student community while no sexism is displayed in the terms of address in Chinese student community.Lastly, Chinese students tend to address their teacher by his/her administrative title, while the American students are likely to call the teacher by his academic title.All these findings demonstrate that compared with the address terms between American teachers and students, the address terms between Chinese teachers and students are more influenced by relative power and distance, they indicate more of the "power" relation between the teachers and the students. The address terms between American teachers and students show more of the "solidary" or "equal" relation between them. The teacher’s gender plays a greater role in affecting the selection of address terms than the other two variables on the part of American students.The findings illustrate that the origin of the differences of Chinese and American terms of address lies in their different cultures:China is a country of high-power distance. Influenced by the rigid hierarchy system, Chinese people lay more stress on the social distance between person and person. Power semantic is much more preferential and V-form terms of address predominate. Chinese like to use reciprocal terms of address to others, especially the students to the teachers. American culture is oriented towards individualism, equality and independence, and solidarity is the guiding principle that usually dominates the choice and use of address terms. The address terms between American teachers and students well reflect such "solidarity".The present study is of some practical significance and can provide some impetus for studies on the social address behaviors of other communicating communities. It can be of some value for cross-cultural communication. At the same time, the findings of the research of address terms can be applied to foreign language teaching and learning.

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