Social Sciences in China

Vol. 38, No. 1, 2017

 

SPECIAL ISSUE: LANGUAGE STUDIES AND METHODS FROM THE CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

 

Semantic Transfer of Chinese Kinship Terms to Occupational Address Forms since the Economic Reform

(Abstract)

 

Huang Xiaozhao and Zhou Yi

 

Semantic transfer of kinship terms in address forms to nonkin has always been an intriguing topic to researchers from different fields, anthropologists and sociolinguists alike, whose investigations involve data from various cultures. This study focuses on eight Chinese kinship terms used in twenty-one address forms for addressing nonkin in newly created occupations and practices during the recent economic reform in China, in an attempt to identify the driving force behind such transfer. By examining the use of these kinship terms in addressing nonkin in the economic reform, this study compares its findings to those from earlier studies and has found surprisingly that except gender, the other distinctive features, such as consanguinity, affinity, seniority, and generation, have all become neutralized in the semantic transfer, driven chiefly by the nonkin’s occupational status. The results from this study demonstrate that the “categorical falsity” evidenced in the semantic transfer of kinship terms in address forms to nonkin is in essence a manifestation of performing an attitudinal “speech act” by the general public about how the nonkin’s occupational status is evaluated in the economic reform.

 

Keywords: Chinese kinship terms, address forms, semantic transfer, occupational status