A Memetic Study On Parent-teenager Conflict Talk In Home With Kids

In daily verbal conversations, when one participant contradicts the other with his/her behavior and expression; or the discrepancy in opinions about certain people or the world, a conflict talk is generated. Conflict talk consists of several discourse behaviors and forms like "arguing, disputing, quarreling, opposing and squabbling". The natural function of conflict talk is that two parties in a conversation attempt to maintain their own positions by means of manifestation of negativity against the other party's opposition that is opposed to one's own. A conflict conversation usually exerts a negative effect on conversational parties to develop more serious conflict or even radical actions when no party intends to give in. Conflict talk is a common phenomenon in the daily conversations between parents and teenagers in modern Chinese families. A failure to resolve their conflict talk may greatly affect and even hinder successful communications between the two generations, which is detrimental to creating a harmonious family atmosphere. To gain a better understanding of its stages of initiation, escalation and termination of conflict talk is helpful to the avoidance, reduction and elimination of it. A happy and smooth communication between teenagers and their parents can facilitate their mutual understanding and ensure harmonious and warm family atmosphere in which teenagers can develop and grow in a positive and healthy way physically and psychologically.With the development of the study on discourse analysis, western linguists have carried out numerous studies of conflict talks, and great accomplishment has been achieved up till now. However, compared with foreign research, domestic research in this field has not been explored thoroughly. Relatively little work has been conducted to analyze the conflict talk on the basis of Chinese parent-teenager conversation data. Besides, in the linguistic area, the theories applied are limited to such familiar theories as Face Theory, Adaptive Theory, Relevance Theory, Conversation Analysis Theory as well as Speech Act Theory, with which the previous studies mostly focus on the construction of format, type, reason, resolution and linguistic function of conflict talks.These verbal communication theories lay emphasis on the study of language understanding and linguistic strategies, neglecting the dynamic feature of verbal communications.Memetics, based on Darwinian evolutionism, is a new theory used to discover how culture evolves. Up till now it has not been applied in the study of conflict talks. Meme, the core concept of this theory, is coined by the British scientist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Meme is used for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Similar to gene,meme is a unit of cultural ideas and survives through replication and spread by imitation through vectors from one host to another. What encourages the host to express and transmit memes is called the meme hook. The process of meme replication includes four stages, namely, assimilation, retention, expression and transmission. Memes influence the vitality of language, in turn, language transmits memes as the vector or carrier. Through language communication, memes can undergo self-replication and propagation and then form new memeplexes.This paper chooses conflict talks between parents and two teenagers in the modern sitcom Home with Kids as its data According to Zhao Yingling, conflict talk can be divided into initiation, escalation and termination stages with the guidance of conversation analysis theory. This present paper will then employ meme theory to analyze each stage. In the initiation stage, based on the classification of conflict content made by Partington, the conflict memes, or meme hooks, that can give rise to the Chinese parent-teenager conflict talks will be explored.In the escalation stage, the expression and transmission as well as "infection" of conflict memes in the process of memetic competition that drive forward the conflict talk will be analyzed. In the termination stage, the termination pattern of conflict talk will be provided with a memetic foundation based on the result of memetic competition, and finally the function of a successful resolution of conflict talk on the memes or memeplexes will be summarized. The study is aimed on the following questions:1)what is the mechanism of conflict talk from the memetic perspective? 2)What are the major conflict memes that contribute to the conflict talk between parents and teenagers? 3)How do we understand the escalation of conflict talks based on memetic theory? 4) How do we work out a termination pattern of conflict talk based on memetic foundation? 5)What is(are) the function(s) of a successful resolution of conflict talk on memes and memeplexes?Through the analysis and discussion of those data about the parent-teenager conflict talks collected from the sitcom from the memetic perspective, five findings are obtained:1)Memes or memeplex play a significant role in the stages of initiation, escalation and termination of conflict talk. From the memetic perspective, conflict talk is a process of meme expression and transmission, in which conflict memes compete with each other. The conflict memes serve as meme hooks, causing the continuous meme competition between the hosts, thus it gives rise to the conflict talk.2) Based on previous studies of the types of conflict content made by Partington, that is, conflict of ideational, interpersonal and textual types, this paper shed some light on the Chinese parent-teenager conflict memes, or meme hooks, from these three aspects, namely, ideational level, interpersonal level and textual level.The ideational aspect mainly includes their different memes at the cognitive and perceptive levels. The interpersonal level refers to the parental authority vs. the idea of "mutual respect the equality" between the parents and teenagers. And the textual level lies in their actual words used which trigger their conflict talks even though they do not have ideational and interpersonal conflict memes.3) The continuous expression and transmission of conflict memes contribute to the escalation of conflict talk. In the escalation stage of conflict talk, conflict memes are expressed and transmitted by verbal and non-verbal vectors, with the former mainly referring to the language used at the lexical and meaning level and the latter including the facial expression, tone, mood, gesture and so on. What stimulates the hosts to express and transmit conflict memes is the "mutual infection" between them. It lies in two levels, that is, the verbal or informational level and the non-verbal or emotional level. This "infection" encourages the hosts to select and restructure more memes to get involved in the competition, thus promoting the escalation of conflict talk.4) Since conflict talk is considered as a process of memetic competition, we can build a memetic foundation to work out a termination pattern of conflict talk. Generally speaking, conflict talk can be ended with three modes, namely, win/lose, compromise and stalemate between the two.5) From the memetic perspective, a successful resolution of Chinese parent-teenager conflict talk is of vital significance to the replication of their memes and the reconstruction of memeplexes. Conflict talk provides a perspective for us to see how the memes can be replicated and the memeplexes be evolved. On the one hand, memes can undergo replication process from one host to another. Through the verbal and nonverbal vectors in the conflict talk, those conflict memes are expressed and transmitted to each party, thus going through the stages of expression and transmission. After the memetic competition, the two parties will consciously or unconsciously assimilate and retain more memes in their memeplexes, thus going through the stages of assimilation and retention. And next time, these memorized memes may be expressed or transmitted in other contexts or not. On the other hand, each party's memeplexes go through the reconstruction process. And a successful resolution of conflict talk is helpful to the optimization of their memeplexes. When their memeplexes are expanded to a certain extent, more similarities can be generated and more smooth communications will be carried out on the basis of mutual understanding and tolerance. When the frequency of parent-teenager conflict talks is reduced, a harmonious and happy family environment will be created.