Address Terms Used Between Different Ranks

As one of the speech marks to initiate a conversation and the barometer thatreflects people’s social relation, the study of address terms is valued by linguistics,which has developed into an important field for research of pragmatics andsociolinguistics. So far, scholars at home and abroad have probed into some aspects ofaddress such as definition, classification and so on, and have conducted a certainamount of researches on address system as a whole, while few of them study the useof address terms in specific speech communities. Only Qi Huyang and Zhu Qinqin(2001) study the use of address terms by the primary and secondary school students inXuhui Distric, Shanghai, Yan Xiaopin (2002) study the address terms used by publicservants and Liu Yonghou (2007) study on the stall-holders’ addressing terms. So theaddress terms used in the specific speech communities leave much room for furtherresearch. What the paper focused belongs to social address terms used in Chineseoccupational registers.Based on the Politeness theories, contextualism and the data collected byquestionnaires, this paper summarizes the general characteristics of all kinds ofChinese occupational registers. Government is taken as an example to explain it.Meanwhile the paper made a case study on the address terms of deputy superiors inthe troop to highlight the phenomenon of removing fu when addressing deputysuperiors in most of Chinese occupational registers. Appropriate terms accord withparticipants, occasion and topic express the communicative competence ofinterlocutors. So understanding the characteristic of address terms used in Chineseoccupational registers and addressing custom help interlocutors to improve thecommunicative competence and reach the communicative goals better. The papersummarizes that there are3reasons of removing fu: firstly, from phonetic aspect, fu(副) is homophone of such Chinese word “妇”(woman)，“腐”(decay) with negativemood, which hears redundant. Secondly, from cultural aspect, Chinese people valuepower and influence. It is popular to try hard to elevate other’s title, and thenremoving fu benefits speakers and hearers. Lastly, from theoretical aspect, removing fu obeys the politeness theory and Face theory which emphasize lower self to elevateand give face to others. While the special function, strict military disciplines andsolemn atmosphere of troop make it distinguish the phenomenon of removing fu.This paper consists of6chapters. Chapter One mainly focuses on the researchpurpose, motivation, significance, methodology and the framework of the essay. InChapter Two, the author sums up the previous studies from the perspective ofpragmatics, sociolinguistics and the contrast between China and Western based on theclarification of address terms’ definitions and classifications. The contribution andlimitation are pointed out at last. Chapter Three first makes an introduction ofPoliteness Principle proposed by Leech, Face Theory by Brown and Levinson,Politeness Theory, which Gu Yueguo proposed to accord with the actual social contextin China, and contextualism respectively. Then, the relation between these theoriesand address terms are analyzed, together with the theoretical foundation. In ChapterFour, the universal characteristics of address terms used in all occupational registershave been concluded. Chapter Five studies the address terms for deputy superiors, andmakes a case study on the address terms for deputy superiors in the troop to highlightthe phenomenon of removing fu in other occupational registers. Chapter Sixconcludes the result, and points out the limitations and comes up with somesuggestions for the future studies.