among each other. In daily communications, people first use address forms tostart a topic, and address forms are used to define and demonstrate the existing socialrelationships, so address forms have certain referential function. At the level of socialrelations, the referential functions can not only identify the speakers’ but the hearers’social group. At the linguistic level, address form is a fixed language tag or a personalpronoun. However, with in-depth and extensive research, especially research on the socialrelations, the study of address forms gradually extended to the cultural dimension.In systems of address forms, kinship address forms and social address forms are twodifferent types. The two kinds of address forms have significant differences. Kinshipaddress forms are based on blood relationship as the primary reference standard. Whilesocial address forms are based more on social activities and social relationship as the mainreference standard to define and indicate the relationship and status. So the social addressforms are more flexible and unstable than kinship address forms. Based on thesecharacteristics, people’s understanding and mastering differences of address forms systemin different culture are very helpful for cross-cultural communication.On the surface level, the address forms seem a common and pure languagephenomenon. But in fact it is a highly complex cultural phenomenon. From differentaddress forms we can master the communicators’ social identities and social relations, andthen know their social cultures. In addition, address forms reflect the social culture, andsocial culture influences the formation, development and application of address forms.Therefore, different social cultures can form different address systems and the effect ofsocial culture on systems of address forms cannot be ignored. Chapter 3 Research Methodology······················· 15
3.1 Data Collection ······················· 15
3.2 Data Analysis ···································16
3.3 Theoretical Framework ··································16
Chapter 4 Analysis of Cultural Differences ········· 19
4.1 Cultural Differences at the Level······························ 23
4.2 Cultural Differences at the Level······································ 26
4.3 Cultural Differences at the Level ·························· 28
4.4 Cultural Differences at the Level ······················ 31
Chapter 5 Conclusion ··························· 35
5.1 Major Findings···································· 35
5.2Implications ······························· 36
Chapter 4 Analysis of Cultural Differences in English and Chinese Address Forms
This part discusses
