A Study Of The Change Of Power And Solidarity Relationship In The Chinese Social Context At The Turn Of The Century

Term of address,the most frequently used language to communicate with people,has been studied for quite a long time.It functions as the signal and bridge for interpersonal relationship since it can reflect the social relationship between interlocutors at most.Research on address terms covers various perspectives such as sociology,sociolinguistics and pragmatics.This paper makes tentative efforts to proceed the study further based on insights from sociolinguistics,that is,to explore how address terms fulfill their roles to reflect the changes of power and solidarity relationship in different times from the diachronic perspective and to figure out the social factors that cause the changes of relationship between power and solidarity,thus providing some suggestive implications for the study on Chinese addressing as well as some consultative value for real-life communication.The theoretical basis for this study is the concept of power and solidarity proposed by Brown and Gilman.The data in this study were collected from the address terms in all the utterances from twenty episodes of two TV series: Desire and Ode to Joy.The two plays represent two different social-historical periods: one takes the initial period of Reform and opening as its background and the latter is set in the modern age of 21 st century.Then the author transcripts the address terms in the utterances of characters during interactions to make comparative analysis.Through the analysis of all address terms in both Desire and Ode to Joy,it is found that characters therein change their address patterns in different social context.For example,“??(Shifu)”is often used to designate a person in higher position in the 1990's,while terms like“??(Zhuguan)”and“??(Jingli)”are popular in modern workplace.Another tendency is that the extended use of kinship terms are more often to be seen nowadays,and even some new terms come into being in interpersonal communication,such as“??(Meimei)”,“??(Haigui)”and“???(Gaofushuai)”.In this sense,it can be learnt that address terms are deeply marked by social context and that these changes in the way people communicate with each other are exactly the reflection of interpersonal relationship.Great changes have also taken place in the relationship between power and solidarity.In the initial period of Reform and Opening,the power relationship dominates the conversation between speakers as people then are greatly influenced by traditional ideology.When in the 21 st century,however,power begins to give way to solidarity and the social distance between people seems to be shortened.Therefore,it can be concluded that the use of address forms is changing along with the variation of social revolution and development,which indicates the fact that language is the mirror of society.Furthermore,the prosperity in politics,economy and culture accounts for the changes of power and solidarity relationship between people,as shown by different address terms they choose to use in daily interactions.