Saeko Fukushima | Tsuru University | Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics
Although address terms have been examined in Chinese and
Japanese, few studies have compared the use of address terms between the two
languages. This study investigates address terms in Chinese and Japanese in
social media communication, focusing on requests between university
students. Two sets of data were collected, one from social media and the
other from focus groups. The findings revealed both similarities and
differences in address terms in the two languages. Neither Chinese nor
Japanese participants use address terms frequently in social media requests
between peers. When they employ address terms between peers on social media,
both groups prefer using first names and nicknames. However, Chinese
participants tend to use kinship terms frequently, which are not used by
Japanese participants. It is argued that factors such as social distance,
pragmatic constraints, language play, preference for positive politeness,
globalisation, and new technologies all contribute to the findings here.
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