A Comparative Study of Social Deixis in Chinese and English from the Perspective of Rhetorical Authority

Abstract

Social deixis is concerned with the social status of the speaker/writer, the hearer/reader, or a third person referred to, as well as the relative social relationships between them. As a pragmatic symbol, it plays an crucial role in smooth communication, especially cross-cultural communication, and it can serve as a catalyst in interpersonal communication. However, it varies from culture to culture and thus it has different forms in different contexts of Chinese and English. In fact, social deixis involves a certain kind of rhetorical authority, which exerts some influences on the effect of communication carried out by the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader. In this essay, we are to make a comparative study of social deixis in Chinese and English from the perspective of rhetorical authority, in order to gain implications to cross-communication.