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ON ADDRESS FORMS IN ONLINE LIVE STREAMING ROOMS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF POWER
Ge Hong, Xu Yaoyun, Shan Yuxin, Huaiyin Institute of Technology
E-mail: 2872093835@qq.com
Abstract. This paper studies the use of address terms in online live streaming rooms from the perspective of power theory, a sociolinguistic analysis. It aims to reveal how social relationships between people of this speech community are constructed through the use of address terms. It is concluded that power plays an important role in the use of address forms in live streaming rooms. We can see that power has a great influence on address forms in online live streaming rooms. From the perspective of power, the address terms in online live streaming rooms could approximately be divided into three types, that is, first, address terms with explicit power relationships, such as "iron fans", "old fans" and "fans", which reflect explicit power relationships; Secondly, semi explicit address terms for power relations, such as "new fan sisters" and "old fan sisters"; Thirdly, address terms used to refer to implicit power relationships, such as "elder sisters", "elder brothers" "elder brothers and sisters", "uncles and aunts", son on and so forth. Among these three types of address terms, the third type, which embodies implicit power relationship is used frequently, while the first and second types, although still in use, are much less frequent than the third one. The commonality among these three types of address terms lies in the fact that although they may be different from each other literally, they are all pertinent to power, the only difference lies in the fact that whether they are explicit and obvious or not.
Key words: online live streaming, address term, power
Introduction
Sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and society, while address term is one of the research objects that linguistic researchers focus on. Scholars in related fields have studied address terms from different perspectives, consequently, lots of findings related to it come into being. So far, there have been a lot of research on kinship address terms and social address terms, however, Little literature is available on address terms in online live streaming rooms. Therefore, the present paper deals mainly with address terms in online live streaming rooms.
It is unnecessary for us to emphasize the importance of the Internet in the information age. In recent years, the Internet is ubiquitous, there has been a great
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interest in the address terms used in live streaming rooms, which also attracts the attention of language researchers. The exploration of address terms in live streaming rooms is not only beneficial for verifying the theory of address terms in sociolinguistics, but also has the potential to contribute to the standardization of online language.
1. A brief Introduction to Power
Sociolinguistics, which came into being in the 1960s, focuses on the study of language variation, particularly on the relationship between language and society. Roger Brown, an American scholar, first proposed the terms "power" and "Solidarity" in the paper titled "Pronouns Expressing Power and Equal Relationship"(1960) [1]. From then on, more scholars started to study "power" and "Solidarity". Various social factors, such as social status, class, age, gender, etc., can have an impact on the choice of address terms. Zhu Yongsheng, a Chinese scholar, believes that "address terms can indeed reflect the relationship between power and equality" [2]. In the field of sociolinguistics, Brown and Gilman define power as "a relationship between at least two persons, and it is nonreciprocal in the sense that both cannot have power in the same area of behavior"(1960) [1]. Such kind of power relationship could be found between the host and audience in online live streaming rooms. The concept of power aims to reveal the existence of unequal relationships, and this paper explores the power relationship embodied in the address terms adopted by live broadcast hosts to the audience.
2. A brief Introduction to Address Term
A form of address is a specific phrase used to refer to or address a specific person or group, which reveals specific social culture and interpersonal relationships. Different address terms carry cognitive information about the social status, gender, age, occupation and other aspects related to a specific person or group. One specific aspect of situational use of language is that of address term usage. An address tern, or address form, refers to the word or words used to address somebody in speech or writing. In other words, address term is a language expression used by people to address each other when they communicate. By means of various address terms, specific information and emotions are conveyed to each other.
As far as address forms are concerned, there are lots of research. As early as the 1950s, Zhao Yuanren, a Chinese scholar, conducted a detailed study of Chinese address forms. [3]
Address terms can directly reflect the social relationship between speakers and listeners. Professor Zhu Yongsheng, a Chinese scholar, pointed out, "Don't assume that some address terms only reflect power factors, while others only reflect solidarity relationships, the reason lies in the fact that address terms reflect both power factors and solidarity relationships."
Different cultures have their own systems of address terms. It can be roughly divided into two categories, namely kinship address terms and social address terms. Kinship terms are mainly used between people with blood relations, while social terms are mainly used in social communication activities, the latter has a much larger scope and can be mainly divided into the following five categories: general terms (such as
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"comrade" and "master"), professional terms (such as "teacher"), job titles such as "Dean and "department head", special terms (personal names), and zero titles (including "hey", "hi" or nodding) [4]. Kinship terms and social terms were originally two distinct addressing systems, but through observation, we found that kinship address terms have broken through the original barriers and begun to expand into social address terms.
3. Address terms for online live streaming rooms
In online live streaming rooms, based on data of address terms collected online, it is found that kinship address terms have a tendency to replace social address terms to some extent, such kind of address terms could be listed as below, like "family members" and "elder brothers and sisters". Of course, it is also found that although kinship terms have been increasingly used in live streaming rooms so far, there are other types of address terms still adopted in some live streaming rooms, such as "flower friends" and "friends", etc. With the rapid development of the internet, the number of netizens is also rapidly increasing day by day. It is reasonable that netspeak has become the forefront of language change and development.
As one of the important research objects in the field of sociolinguistics, it is natural for address terms to change with the development of society. So far, there have been few studies on the address terms used by online hosts for live streaming audience. Therefore, this paper aims to study address terms adopted by online hosts for live streaming audience from the perspective of power, hopefully, it will help us understand netspeak to some extent. The internet has great influence on many aspects of our lives, and its importance is beyond doubt. In the context of the internet era, researchers should pay proper attention to the study of netspeak. This paper is expected to contribute to the study of internet address forms and also contribute to the study of address forms in sociolinguistics. As the fourth largest media, the internet is an open, vibrant, and creative place. With the development of the Internet, our daily life is more and more closely connected with the network.
On Pinduoduo platform, there are lots of online live streaming sales, and there are different kinds of products sold, for instance, daily necessities, cultural items such as calligraphy and painting, and even luxury items such as pearls, jade, and jewelry. In online live streaming rooms, hosts have to choose proper address terms for the audience who enter the live streaming room as potential consumers, they begin to communicate face-to-face in this virtual, space breaking online store, thus address terms for audience who enter online live streaming rooms come into being. The online live streaming room belonging to the online community, due to the strong mobility of its audience, may enter a certain live streaming room today but may not come tomorrow, which leads to a weak connection in the social network of the live streaming room.
Based on the data collected from hundreds of online live streaming rooms on the live streaming platform Pinduoduo from December 2023 to January 2024, it is found that address terms used in online live streaming rooms can be roughly divided into three types based on the social factor of power, namely, the first type embodies explicit power relations, such as "iron fans", "new fans", and "old fans". "Fans"
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reflect explicit power relations; The "fan group" button located at the top left of Pinduoduo's online live broadcast room directly indicates the unequal power relationship between the host and audience in the live broadcast room; the second type is a semi explicit and semi implicit address term for power relations, such as "New Fan Sister"" and "Old Fan Sister". The third type is the address term for implicit power relationships, such as "family members", "elder sisters", "elder brothers and sisters", "uncles and aunts", as well as "babies", "darling", and so on. Based on the theoretical framework of power relations, this paper explore these three types of address forms.
Address terms for explicit power relations
The most typical form of address terms for explicit power relationships, in my opinion, is those with the word "fan", such as "iron fans", "old fans", "new fans", and "fans". It is evident that these address terms reflect explicit power relationships.
"Fan"
"Old fans" and "new fans" are terms in the field of fandom (a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest). "Old fans" refer to fans who have been in love with a celebrity, idol, or group for a long time and have a deep understanding of their development history, while "New fans" refers to those who have just started to like a celebrity, idol, or group and are not yet familiar with them. This distinction is mainly based on the level of understanding of idols and the length of time they have been supported. "Old fans" usually have a deeper understanding of their idols and longer lasting support, while "new fans" may only be new to their idols and have relatively less understanding of them.
Generally speaking, the address terms used by live streaming hosts to the audience illustrates their understanding of the social relationship between hosts themselves and the audience. When the live streaming host uses "old fans", "new fans", or "fans" to refer to the audience, it reveals a powerful attitude and shows a superior unequal relationship, as the host who holds the discourse power. Streaming hosts use the term "fan" that reflects differences of identity, to define the level of status between each other. Baidu Baike's explanation of fans is as follows: fans, a netspeak, which originates from English, commonly known as fan or fans, refer to people who are infatuated with or worship a certain celebrity, enthusiasts who are passionate about something, and a group of people who worship a certain celebrity, artist, or something else. [5] They are mostly young people with a fashionable and trendy mindset. Fans are transliterated from the English word "fans" and can also be understood as "XX fans" or "X tribe". Fans are the plural form of fan. Fan means "enthusiast", while fans mean "fanatic""". The actual use of the term "XX fan" is similar to the suffix of English word formation. In the live streaming room, "XX fans" can be concretized as "mom fans", "new fans", "old fans", "iron fans" and other words. There is also "passersby fans", which refers to viewers who enter the live broadcast room but do not follow them. The host says "I do not spoil passersby fans", which means that it is not allowed for passersby who do not follow in their live broadcast room to purchase
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products that are affordable and listed in the live broadcast room. "New fans", "old fans", and "iron fans" all reveal the clear and undeniable power relationship.
The term "fans" clearly and directly expresses the power relationship between the anchor and the audience, with the former being superior and the latter being in a position of power. And the "fans" that can be seen everywhere in the words of live broadcast hosts, such as "newly arrived fans, the attention point in the upper left corner becomes more prominent", "our fans", "just three orders, I will spoil fans", "just arrived online, just to find" fans "," new fans follow, old fans compete "," regardless of cost, only to increase fans ", these ubiquitous" fans "reflect the high mentality and explicit power relationship of live broadcast hosts.
The term "fans" clearly and directly expresses the power relationship between hosts and the audience, with the former being superior and the latter being in a being in a lower position. And the address term "fans" that can be heard frequently in the words of live streaming rooms, such as "New fans who just enter our live streaming room, please click the attention button in the upper left corner", "Our fans", "There are only three orders which rock bottom price, I will spoil fans", "I just enter my live streaming room, in order to get new fans", "New fans who just enter our live streaming room, please click the attention button, old fans place orders instantly","I don't care about the cost, just want to increase the number of fans", it is found that the term " fans " used in high frequency shows us the explicit power relationship between live streaming hosts and audience(people who enter certain live streaming room).
3.2 Address terms for semi explicit and semi implicit power relationships
The address terms "New fan sister" and "Old fan sister" embody both power and equal connotations, which could be analyzed from two perspectives. On the one hand, when hosts uses "fans" to refer to the audience in the live broadcast room, they actually preset themselves as being of the same level as celebrities, idols, and so on. Hosts uses "fans" to position themselves as idols above the audience from a linguistic perspective, which is an unequal power relationship; On the other hand, the term "sister", which is closely related to relatives, has diluted the meaning of relatives and is only a definition of gender, belonging to a polite social address.
The meaning of "implicit power relationship" refers to the latter half of the terms "sister" and "baby" in terms of "new fan sister", "old fan sister", and "new fan baby", indicating that seemingly equal terms weaken the feeling of power, while the "fan" of "new fan" and "old fan" is an obvious manifestation of the power relationship. As a result, "new fan sister", "old fan sister", and "new fan baby" reveals two types of relationship, that is, power relationship and equal relationship, in other words, it belongs to a semi explicit and semi implicit address term of power relationship.
"Iron fans" can also be classified into this category, where "fans" reflects an explicit power relationship, while "iron" (its meaning similar to brothers or friends) reflects a sense of equality.
3.3 Address terms for implicit power relationship
Based on gender, address terms for implicit power relationship can be classified into the following three categories.
3.3.1 Male: Brothers, big brothers, uncles, and also add some adjectives before
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the brothers, such as "my brothers", "our brothers", "handsome guy", "big brothers, buy quickly", "give Han Yong big brother, best price."
3.3.2 Female, such as "Elder sisters", "Elder sisters and younger sisters", "aunts", according to the address terms collected in the live broadcast room, "Elder sisters" are the most frequently used address terms, address term "Elder sisters and younger sisters" occupies the second place. What's more, some attributives can be added in front of the sisters, such as "our sisters", "old fan sisters", "my sisters", "our sistesr", or plus the online nickname of the audience, such as "Yixiaoerguo sister", "Haiyun sister", "our cute sister", and so on. " Elder sisters ", "Our sisters", "Haihui sisters", "Guke sister", "Sister Shen took a picture...", "Little elder sisters", " Elder sisters and younger sisters ", "Go to take a picture, elder sisters", "Aunt Zhang, please pay as soon as possible", " Elder sister, elder sister Xiaoyu", "Thank you for my elder sisters' feedback", " Elder sisters ,Sorry for keeping you wait for such a long time", "Thank you! Beautiful elder sister for waiting patiently", "Elder sister Zihan, there are other colors, such as coffee, black, gray", "All the ladies and sisters of Qianyu (Qianyu women's clothes)", "Dongtian sister, Huiniu sister, Aiaoye elder sister ", "Today it's only 9.9 yuan," Elder Sisters "," If you can't grab it, then there's nothing left, Elder sisters ".
3.3.3 Neutral, such as "Baby", "Babies", "Family members", "Hurry up to place order and pay! Family members," "Hurry up to pay! Family members," "Hurry up, Babies," "Hurry up, friends," "Come on, my friends, here is the kitchen faucet," " Okay, friends," "Good afternoon, Family members!" "How beautiful the red roses are, my dear family members!"
"Family members" is an address term that doesn't reveal neither gender nor age. "Family members" originated from the Kwai short video, to put it in detail, the address term "Family members" came from a certain host's, whose nick name is "Dongyongguaige"(means Winter Swimming Peculiar Pigeon). He called netizens
"family members", which also caused other hosts to imitate. [6] "Family members" is an internet term commonly used to refer to each other among the same fan group, or to use nicknames among different netizens on the same platform. "Family members" does not refer to members of the group who have a blood relationship, but rather a form of addressing intimate relationships on the internet, which highlights the purpose of achieving social closeness. The meaning of "Family members" are similar to that of "Laotie". When hosts in the live streaming room try to sell certain kind of goods, hosts usually use family members, babies and other similar address term for the audience, so as to achieve the purpose of promoting goods. The key point is to win the audience's trust, in order to achieve the goal of selling products.
This third type of address is intended to establish a close relationship between the host and the audience. The purpose is to achieve the goal of promoting sales in the harmonious atmosphere created by hosts in their live streaming rooms. Hosts intentionally adjust the social distance between the two parties through implicit address terms, more precisely, narrowing the social distance between hosts and the audience, and thus narrowing the psychological distance, in order to achieve the goal of selling goods.
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Conclusions
This paper studies the use of address forms in online live streaming rooms from the perspective of power factors in sociolinguistics. The conclusion is that power, as a social factor, plays a significant role in the use of address forms in live streaming rooms. It is found that the various address terms of in online live streaming rooms embodies power factors. From the perspective of power, the address terms in online live streaming rooms can be divided into three categories: explicit addressing terms with power relationships; Address terms for semi explicit and semi implicit power relations, and the address terms for implicit power relations; Among these three types of address terms, the third type of implicit power relationship is the most common one, while the frequency of use in the first and second types is much lower than that in the third type. The commonality lies in the fact that behind the three types of address forms, they all embody the factor of power, their difference lies in the fact that whether the function of power is explicit or implicit.
Address terms are dynamic, constantly evolving with the development of society and technological advancements. As sociolinguistic researcher Zhu Wanjin has put it, "Address terms are a sensitive and developed vocabulary system, and changes in time and values can lead to changes in the semantics and functions of address forms" [7]. As a sociolinguistic researcher, the study of address forms also needs to keep up with the times.
Jiangsu Province College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program Funding Project (Project Number: 202311049120H, Project Name: Research and Overseas Sales of Innovative Intelligent Wearable Protective Equipment, Led by Shan Yuxin).
References:
1. Brown, Roger and Gilman, Albert & A. (1960). The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity. Cambridge, Mass. M.I.T. Press.
2. Zhu Yongsheng, The Expression of Power Factors and Equal Relations in Address Forms, Foreign Languages, Journal of Shanghai Foreign Studies University, 1992, Issue 2: 41-45.
3. Cho Yuanren: Chinese Terms of Address, IN Language. Vol. 32, pp. 217-241,
1956.
4. Liu Yonghou ,The semantics of Chinese social appellations Beijing: Intellectual Property Publishing House, October 2017.
5. Fans. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%B2%89%E4%B8%9D/6368045? fr=ge_ala
6. Family members. URL: https://wen.baidu.com/ question/530412714765155005.html
7. Zhu Wanjin: Overview of Sociolinguistics, Hunan: Hunan Education Press,
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