Terms of address in Chinese

An introduction

Authors

  • Dániel Z. Kádár Dalian University of Foreign Languages; HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics; University of Maribor
  • Fengguang Liu Dalian University of Foreign Languages

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.26871

Keywords:

terms of address, Chinese, facework, personal pronouns

Abstract

In this paper, we first present the rationale behind editing the present Special Issue dedicated to Chinese terms of address. We argue that conventionally speakers of Chinese prefer using terms of address in many interactional contexts, while personal pronouns – in particular the standard second person ni used without an accompanying term of address – are often perceived as face-threatening. We also argue that, while historical Chinese terms of address are very important to study because they influenced the development of honorifics in other East Asian linguacultures, present-day terms of address are of as much academic interest as their historical counterparts. At the end of this paper, we overview the contents of the Special Issue.

Author Biographies

  • Dániel Z. Kádár, Dalian University of Foreign Languages; HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics; University of Maribor

    Dániel Z. Kádár (MAE, D.Litt, FHEA, PhD) is Ordinary Member of Academia Europaea, Chair Professor, PhD Supervisor and Director of the Centre for Pragmatics Research at Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China, Research Professor at the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, and Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Maribor. He is author of many books, published with publishing houses of international standing such as Cambridge University Press. He is co-editor of Contrastive Pragmatics: A Cross-Disciplinary Journal. His research interests include pragmatics, applied linguistics, foreign language learning and teaching, Chinese linguistics, linguistic politeness research and discourse analysis.

  • Fengguang Liu, Dalian University of Foreign Languages

    Fengguang Liu is Professor, PhD Supervisor and Vice-president of Dalian University of Foreign Languages. She has published her research in high-impact international jounals, such as Discourse, Context and Media, Lingua and Language Sciences. She has special interest in Chinese pragmatics, speech act theory, language and politics and literary pragmatics.

References

Agha, A. (1998). Stereotypes and registers of honorific language. Language in Society, 27(2), 151–193. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500019849

Agha, A. (2006). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Agha, A. (2012). Honorific registers. In A. Agha (ed.), Language and social relations (pp. 301–339). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Braun, F. (1988). Terms of address: Problems of patterns and usage in various languages and linguacultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Goffman, E. (1955). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry, 18(3), 213–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1955.11023008

House, J. (1989). Politeness in English and German: The functions of please and bitte. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp, 96–119). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

House, J., & Kádár, D. Z. (2020). T/V pronouns in global communication practices: The case of IKEA catalogues across linguacultures. Journal of Pragmatics, 161, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.03.001

House, J., & Kádár, D. Z. (2021). Cross-cultural pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kádár, D. Z. (2007). Terms of (im)politeness: On the communicational properties of historical Chinese (im)polite terms of address. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University.

Kádár, D. Z. (2017). Politeness, impoliteness and ritual: Maintaining the moral order in interpersonal interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kádár, D. Z. (forthcoming). Ritual and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kádár, D. Z., Ning, P., & Ran, Y. (2018). Ritual public apology: A case study of Chinese. Discourse, Context & Media, 26, 21–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.01.003

Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.

Lü, S. (1985). [The pronouns of the Baihua language]. Shanghai: Xuelin Press.

Pan, Y., & Kádár, D. Z. (2011). Politeness in historical and contemporary Chinese. London: Bloomsbury.

Taavitsainen, I., & Jucker, A. H. (Eds.). (2003). Diachronic perspectives on address term systems. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Zhou, L., & Kádár, D. Z. (2021). Self-denigration in 21st century Chinese. Journal of Politeness Research, 17(2), 265–289. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2018-0043

Downloads

Published

2023-09-29

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 3 (2023): Special Issue: Terms of Address in Chinese

Section

Guest Editorial

License

© Equinox Publishing Ltd.

For information regarding our Open Access policy, click here.

How to Cite

Kádár, D. Z., & Liu, F. (2023). Terms of address in Chinese: An introduction. East Asian Pragmatics, 8(3), 301-308. https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.26871