Determinants of stall-holders’ address forms to customers in Beijing's low-status clothing markets

This study aims at identifying the socio-demographic and linguistic factors that determine or influence the choice of nominal address terms by 42 stall-holders to their customers in two low-status clothing markets in Beijing. Five dichotomies related with address behavior are proposed: quality and quantity of address terms, personal and impersonal conversational topics, determining and influencing functions of the variables, their visible and invisible distinctions, and dependent and independent roles. The findings are: (1) The customers’ age and sex directly determine the quality of address nouns the stall-holders use. (2) There are quantitative patterns between the stall-holders’ age and sex and their use of vocatives. (3) The stall-holders’ vocatives tend to co-occur with the topic of price. (4) The special features of the address form choice at the two low-status markets are the diversity of address nouns and the prominence of pseudo-kinship terms. They can be looked upon as a miniature of the situation of lacking general address terms in China. (5) Address pronouns and self-references reinforce and complement the use of address nouns. On the relationship between people's choice of address terms and its determinants, a two-phase model is proposed, in which visible factors gradually give way to invisible ones.