The Influence Of Context On The Use Of Address Terms

The proper use of address terms is of great importance to communicators, and thus the phenomenon of addressing has been widely studied by linguists from various perspectives. In order to interpret speakers' use of address terms systematically, this study investigates the influence of context on speakers' use of address terms through the analyses of all the address terms used by Ping'er in the first 80 chapters of Hong Lou Meng (HLM for short).All the address terms used by Ping'er are collected and categorized. Self-address terms are classified into self-abasing terms, plain self-address terms, and haughty terms, while other-address terms are classified into honorific terms, plain other-address terms, endearing terms, abusive terms, and zero form. At the same time, contextual factors are categorized into stable background context and changing situational context. Their influences on speakers' ways of addressing are examined respectively.Statistics analyses and examples in language materials indicate that the use of address terms is a complicated process of decision-making, which is to a large extent influenced by various contextual factors. On the one hand, background contextual factors are related to the stable states of speakers' addressing. Culture of a nation forms the criteria for appropriate communication, and the speaker's individual qualities play an important role in whether he/she follows the criteria or not. The combination of these two factors greatly influences speakers' general addressing strategies. Status distance between the speaker and the addressee/referent makes speakers' regular ways of addressing vary according to the status groups of the addressee/referent. On the other hand, situational contextual factors such as addressing object's presence, formality of the setting and the speaker's mood cause the changes in the speaker's way of addressing a person. Any one of the factors may make a speaker's way of addressing the same person different from the regular one.By investigating the influence of context on the use of address terms, the author intends to shed new light on the research of addressing and to provide some advice to people's daily communication. However, literary language is somewhat far away from that of real life, therefore future research should pay more attention to the analysis of real-life utterances.