A Study Of Address Terms In Use From Administrative Subordinates To Superordinates In Universities Within The Framework Of Linguistic Adaptability

Address terms are essential for successful communication.Previous studies on address terms in educational settings have put much emphasis on students’ use of address terms,while faculty’s use of address terms in universities has been rarely touched upon.In addition,previous studies on faculty’s use of address terms mostly focus on teachers instead of administrative staff.Moreover,previous studies on influencing factors of address terms mainly focus on discourse analysis.There are few empirical studies.Hence,this thesis conducts an empirical study on the types of address terms in use and contextual correlates by administrative staff in universities.The use of address terms from superordinates to subordinates and between peers is relatively scattered,while that from subordinates to superordinates is more focused and the influencing factors are more multidimensional.Consequently,this study takes the use of address terms from subordinates to superordinates as an example.Based on the above background,this study takes administrative staff in A College of D University in Northeast China as the case and focuses on exploring the use of address terms from administrative subordinates to their superordinates in universities within the framework of Linguistic Adaptability.In this study,the users of address terms are 24 administrative staff in A College of D University and the addressee is their superordinate ZJL.Z refers to the surname and JL refers to the first name.This study collects data through interviews,and discusses the types,distribution and contextual correlates of address terms with the help of Excel 2010 and NVivo 11.This study aims to answer the following two questions:(1)What are the types of address terms used from administrative subordinates to their superordinates in universities and how are they distributed?(2)What contextual correlates do administrative subordinates adapt to in the choice of address terms for their superordinates?There are two kinds of address terms in this study,vocatives and designative terms.What’s more,designative terms are further divided into designative terms in the presence of addressee and in the absence of addressee.The main conclusions of this study are as follows.1.With regard to the types of address terms,(1)it’s found that the basic types of vocatives and designative terms are similar.There are four types in all,which are specified address terms,career address terms,fictive kinship terms and the “Other”type like “Boss”.(2)The structures of career address terms in both vocatives and designative terms are more complicated and diverse than the other three types,including “full name + occupational title/official title”,“official title + full name +occupational title/official title”,“personal pronoun + official title” and so on.(3)Although the structures of designative terms when the addressee is present are similar to those of designative terms when addressee is absent,some of the specific forms of designative terms are different.2.With regard to the distribution of address terms,(1)it’s concluded that career address terms are the focus of both vocatives and designative terms when the addressee is present or absent.(2)As for vocatives,“Teacher Z” and “Teacher” are more frequent in use.As for designative terms when the addressee is present,there are three address terms with high frequency,which are “Teacher ZJL”,“Teacher Z” and“Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee”.As for designative terms when the addressee is absent,“Teacher Z”,“Teacher ZJL” and “Our Deputy Secretary General”hold higher proportions.3.With regard to the contextual correlates that administrative subordinates adapt to in the choice of address terms for their superordinates,there are five perspectives in all,consisting of social world,mental world,physical world,languages user and linguistic context.(1)It’s found that the frequency of contextual correlates in social world always takes the first place in the use of most address terms,such as social distance,language group,power,familiarity,social setting,age and so on.(2)The crucial contextual correlates in vocatives and designative terms are similar.With regard to the use of vocatives,the first three contextual correlates with high frequency are social distance,language group and power in sequence.With regard to designative terms both in the presence and in the absence of addressee,the crucial contextual correlates with high frequency are language group,power,and familiarity between language users and interpreters and between interpreters and the addressee.