Extensive Use Of Chinese Addresses

This paper is a pragmatic study of the extensive use of Chinese addresses in modern Chinese.In 1998, PanFan, in an assay entitled as On Extensive Use of Addresses of Relations, talked about the characteristics and causes of extensive use of kin terms in Chinese. And also MaHongJi and ChangQingFeng, in a book named On Forms of Addresses, studied the extensive use of addresses of relations. This paper is aimed to study the extensive use of the whole address system in modern Chinese because in the system of the addresses of social status and the system of the addresses of personal pronouns, those addresses can also be extended.An address form is defined as the word or words used to address somebody in speech or writing. The way in which people address one another usually depends on their age, sex, social group, and personal relationship. Address terms can be used in three different pragmatic situations: self-directing, when the speaker refers to him/herself, addressee-directing, when the speaker refers to his/her interlocutor, and reference-directing, when the speaker refers to a third party. Chinese addresses fall into three groups: addresses of kinship, addresses of social status and addresses of personal pronouns.An important concept concerned with the extended Chinese addresses is the vagueness in language since the extensive use of address forms is the most evident manifestation of vagueness in Chinese. Vagueness refers to the finite area and lack of specification of its boundary. Vagueness is related with pragmatics.The extensive use of kinship terms'refers to use kinship terms to addressthose who are not the relatives of the addresser. The focal point for the Chinese politeness is 'affection' .So we can call an old man whom we do not know at all ye ye when asking the way.The extension of Chinese addresses of social status means that when we address someone by a specific address term of social status, it means that we are in such a social relationship when communicating; but when we do not belong to that kind of social relations, we can still use that specific address term to do and mean something, or just fill in the gap in the address system.The extension of Chinese pronoun addresses is much more vague than the other two address systems in Chinese because without specific communicative situations, we can not make it clear who the pronoun address refers to. We need the context to figure out the reference point of the different personal pronouns.The extension of the address terms actually means that their meanings have got some changes. So in this paper the semantic changes are also discussed.What the extension of Chinese addresses can do is as follows: a. They make the relationship intimate between two people not knowing each other well, b. They are used to make fun or to be ironical, c. They upgrade the addressee's social title, status or position in a family hierarchy, d. They are used for vague addressing. There are times when one does not want to address directly, not dare to use a particular address term, or finds it difficult to address.As a result of the Chinese cultural influence, the maxims for the extensive use of Chinese addresses are the following three: a. the affection maxim; b. the vagueness maxim; c. the manner maxim.For Chinese people, the internal feeling is much more important. Therefore, the characteristics of 'politeness' in Chinese culture are: a. be modest and show respect for others; b. show concern to each other; c. show understanding to each other; d. be honest..And another question is how to interpret the politeness of an address term, which is closely related with the context. There is no necessary connection between the linguistic form and the perceived politeness of a speech act. We cannot assess politeness reliably out of context. The linguistic form + the context of utterance + the relationship between the speaker and the hearer can render the speech act polite or impolite.The present study offers a preliminary analysis of pra...