Kinship Terms:Tradition And Reformation

Language and culture is the living fossil recording the changes of history. Since ancient times, every period of social transition had a great influence on the language and culture.Appellation is the part which is most close to life in language and culture for people. Appellation plays a significant role in the process of interpersonal communication. Kinship terms are used by relatives to address or refer to each others. As the most basic part of interpersonal appellation, kinship terms includes paternal relatives appellation terms, maternal relatives appellation terms, how husband and wife call each other, husband relatives appellation, wife relatives appellation.The five kinds of relatives appellation can be divided into two categories,which are the clan relatives appellation and relatives in-laws.Based on the history documents, the survey of dialects and field survey data in Shandong area’s relatives appellation, I have done the analysis of the diachronic evolution and synchronic system, and summarize the change laws of relative appellation and characteristics of the historical change.This paper mainly divided into three parts:the first part, analyzes the kinship terms in traditional society of the whole system and the diachronic evolution through the history documents.The first part mainly takes the classification of the relatives appellation terms in "erya" as the standard, that is, the clan party, female party, wife, marriage are intended to explore the four categories relatives appellation.The second part, through the collection of the survey in dialects, lists the kinship terms’s system and difference in region of Shandong area. There are subtle differences between modern kinship terms in Shandong and kinship terms of modern times.The third part, through the contrust of the survey data, the traditional social appellation changes and Shandong survey of dialect in kinship terms. We can get a conclusion that the kinship terms takes oneself as the center and spread outside. The kinship terms change along with the closeness of personal relationship.And closer kinship terms change faster, and r the more distant relatives appellation changes slower. The characteristics of kinship terms are consistent with the law.