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It's different with you: Contrastive perspectives on address research
Edited by Nicole Baumgarten and Roel Vismans
[Topics in Address Research 5] 2023
► pp. 92–112

Chapter 4
Address terms in social media requests

A contrastive study of Chinese and Japanese university students

| Beihang University
| 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.

Keywords: address term, requests, social media, Chinese, Japanese, positive politeness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Address terms in Chinese and Japanese
    • 2.2Some gaps in previous research
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data and participants
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Kinship terms
    • 4.2Sweeteners and titles
    • 4.3Names
      • 4.3.1First name
      • 4.3.2Last name
      • 4.3.3Full name
      • 4.3.4Nickname
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tar.5.04ren
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