Emotive Approach To The Metaphorical Use Of Address Forms

Address forms are linguistic units which directly reveal interpersonal relationship, attitudes and emotions; and their studies are an important component of politeness. The present paper, from the perspective of sociolinguistics, is an attempt of investigating some emotions expressed by the metaphorical use of address forms, and intends to uncover the general rules.According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. Traditionally, metaphor has been regarded as a departure from ordinary, literal language. The incongruent and deviant form arise form the departure of language.Tian Guisen (1998) applies recent theories of linguistics to the analysis of incongruent and deviant form at pragmatic level, i.e. "Pragmatic Metaphor". The metaphorical use of language exists at different levels, lexical, grammatical and pragmatic. Hu zhuanglin (2004) proposes that the deviance divides the language use into two major parts: one is the normal use of language which follows the norm of language use; the other is the metaphorical use of language which consciously violates the norms. The deviant form is the metaphorical use of address forms. Through comparing the normal use and metaphorical use of address forms, the present research discovers the emotions presented by the metaphorical use of address forms in context.The thesis consists of seven chapters. A brief introduction to the address form studies is offered in Chapter I, together with the discussion of issues concerning objectives and arrangements of the thesis. Chapter II reviews the previous studies on address forms and provides a dynamic view for the metaphorical use of address forms. Chapter III, firstly, discusses the recognition of the metaphorical use of address forms, i.e. the difference between the literal meaning and metaphorical meaning. Theories of context and interpersonal politeness are used to infer the metaphorical meaning and a suggested framework is drawn. Chapter IV analyzes the emotions displayed by the normal use of address forms. Chapter V and Chapter VI take most part of this paper. Emotions presented by the address forms are classified into two major kinds: euphemistic and dysphemistic. Chapter V explores the euphemistic emotions by the metaphorical use of address forms. Dysphemistic emotions by the metaphorical use of address forms are...