The Address Modes of Government Workers in Beijing

The popular address modes used by government workers in each era can largely reflect its popular political ideology, but the researches on this topic have been inadequate in recent years. Using questionnaires and interviews, the present study investigates the address-term features of government workers in Beijing by exploring their use frequency, degree of popularity, influencing factors and social evaluation. Four features have been revealed:occupational titles are government workers' first address choice; pseudo-kinship terms are important; the glamor of tongzhi is gone; vulgar general address terms like laoban, laoda, zongguan are generally not popular. Address-term planning should be an important part of language planning. This paper advocates the practice of democratic, equal addressing ideology between superiors and subordinates, and encourages the use of names among colleagues while decreasing the non-reciprocal use of official titles.