A Diachronic Socio-cognitive Study Of Address Term In English Textbooks For Chinese Junior High Schools(1949-2021)

Address terms are both linguistic and sociocultural phenomena.The previous studies of address terms mainly include kinship terms and non-kinship terms from the macroscopic point of view.From the microcosmic viewpoint,such as generalization,simplification,missing,cultural interpretation,and pragmatic interpretation.Previous scholars used various research methods to address terms,including categorical research,empirical research,conversational analysis,contrastive analysis,diachronic,and synchronic research.Due to the limitation of subjective and objective,the collection of address terms meets the difficulties in getting the historic,linguistic data,and real-time data exhaustively.Furthermore,in the diachronic study of address terms,present studies mainly focus on the developing of individual words.Based on the previous studies,this study takes sets of Junior High School English textbooks compiled and issued by People’s Education Press from 1949 to 2021 as the research object.Through using the diachronic description and combing the history and social reality,the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the research will be made to explore the mechanism of its evolution and the social cognitive motivation,which is contrived to the development of the address term system supported by social cognitive theory.This thesis intends to answer three questions:1.What are the synchronic features of address terms found in sets of junior high school English textbooks compiled and issued by People’s Education Press from 1949 to 2021?2.What are the diachronic features of address terms of the above textbooks?3.What are the social-cognitive motivation for the change of address terms?This research first divides the corpus into four historical stages,selects the textbooks that have been published for a long time to obtain the relevant corpus,and then carries on the quantitative analysis of the corpus.Semantically,the corpus can be divided into two categories of kinship terms and non-kinship terms.Non-kinship terms include general social address term,fictive kinship term,title term,and name address term.From 1949 to 1966,the proportion of address terms is as follows: kinship term(8%),general social address term(27%),fictive kinship term(2%),title term(62%),and name address term(1%).From 1966 to 1976,the proportion of address terms is as follows: kinship term(5%),general social address term(11%),fictive kinship term(0%),title term(83%),and name address term(1%).From 1976 to 2000,the proportion of address terms is as following: kinship term(7%),general social address term(14%),fictive kinship term(2%),title term(75%),and name address term(2%).From 2000 to2021,the proportion of address terms is as following: kinship term(8%),general social address term(12%),fictive kinship term(2%),title term(70%),and name address term(8%).Then,this paper discusses and analyzes the corpus according to the social cognitive mechanism of language evolution,and draws the conclusion of four trends in the diachronic change of textbook address terms: individuation,instrumentalization,generalization,and no changing trend.In the last this study qualitatively discusses these five categories and further studies the relationship between the semantic evolution of address terms in textbooks and social development by exploring the social cognitive motivation behind the formation and evolution of address terms in textbooks.The research found the inner relation between the addresser addressee and historical reality.Under the cognitive processing of address terms,the particular historical reality and addressee characteristics are formed into address terms.The study shows that the address term of textbooks are not only the product of social cognition but also reflect the change in social reality.