A Study On Dynamic Selection And Function Of Addressing Terms From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

The use of language is a process of constant selection in our real life,no matter itis out of consciousness or unconsciousness,and no matter it is due to language internalreasons or external reasons.Addressing term,as a part of language expression, iswidely used and it plays an important role in interpersonal communications.It is a toolof nomination which can be used to designate the addresser,the addressee and thethird party concerned,etc.It is the first step to start a talk and hence guiding theconduction of communication.In addition,it could directly reflect the identity, socialstatus and emotional attitude of communicators and identify various social cultures aswell.Most previous studies about addressing terms concentrate on the comparativeanalysis of English and Chinese nomination’s pragmatic duplicature and thetranslating strategy,few papers and works involving addressing terms in Chineseliterary works. Adaptation Theory,proposed by Jef Verschueren,is a classical theory ofpragmatics and has a strong explanatory and inspiring power of addressing terms.Itproposes language selection as a dynamic process which should adapt to thecontext.Language users need to make flexible selection of items so as to highlighttheir awareness of communication and meet the specific needs of communication.Based on famous pragmatician Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, the studyattempts to analyze the use of addressing terms in the novel A Dream of RedMansions from the perspective of contextual correlates of adaptability（includingsocial world, mental world, physical world).As to the physical world, the choice ofnominations has to adapt to temporal factors and spatial factors.In terms of the socialworld, addressing terms need to adapt to different social settings,power ranks andspecific social culture as well. In addition,in respect of the mental world, appellationsshould be in line with communicators’ particular personalities,emotions, intentions,etc.This thesis counts the use of addressing terms as a dynamic process and analyzestheir communicative characteristics and intentions in different contexts,which isexpected to be of some guiding function on verbal communication and cultureconsciousness. At the same time,all the examples of addressing terms in this paper come from some dialogues in A Dream of Red Mansions.So it could be a systematicsorting and inspection of addressing forms in A Dream of Red Mansions as well.