Contemporary Chinese Social Vocative Terms

Abstract

<p>Regarded as the epitome of culture and society, social appellation terms, and vocatives in particular, always reflect the immediate situation of language use, thus having great value in socio-linguistic research. This paper investigates the contemporary Chinese social vocative terms and analyzes their application principles and distribution patterns. Based on searches in large-scale corpora, questionnaire surveys, and interviews, it is concluded that the contemporary Chinese social vocatives can be grouped into six categories: (1) substitution of greetings; (2) generalization of kinship appellations; (3) the quasi-generalization of the occupational appellations; (4) the generalization of laudatory terms; (5) borrowing cyberspeaks; and (6) conventional terms. The application of these vocatives integrates the four variables of distance, superiority, gender, and age gap. Besides, the tendency of ‘intimacy’ and ‘superior’ is observed, which balances the approbation and tact maxim. Meanwhile, the contemporary Chinese social vocatives are changing towards the agreement maxim, and a new tendency of equal respect is emerging.<br></p>