A Comparative Study Of Political Conflict Talk Between Chinese And English Talk Shows

As one of ubiquitous linguistic phenomenon of our daily social life, conflict talk has aroused manyresearchers’ attention. Both Chinese and western scholars did relative analysis and researches from differentaspects. As a kind of media discourse, talk show exhibits semi-institutional nature remarkably, bearingcharacteristics of daily conversation and institutional discourse. Therefore, exploring conflict talk in talk showsdeserves much consideration, and has attracted researchers’ attention in recent years. However, few comparativestudies on conflict talk in talk shows from different cultural backgrounds are done.This thesis aims to make comparative analysis on the patterns of conflict talk, conflict managementstrategies and pragmatic functions of conflict talk in both Chinese and English political talk shows. Programssharing similar or identical topics are selected from Global View of Phoenix TV and HardTalk of BBC, and aftertranscription and identification,60episodes of conflict talk are selected as data to analyze. Within theframework of conversation analysis and face theory, this research integrates qualitative and quantitative researchmethods, to resolve the following three research questions:(1) what are the patterns of conflict talk in Chineseand English talk shows, what’re the similarities and differences;(2) what are the conflict management strategiesin Chinese and English talk shows, what’re the similarities and differences;(3) what are the pragmatic functionsof conflict talk in Chinese and English talk shows, what’re the similarities and differences.This study finds:(1) interruption, disagreement, evasion and repetition are main patterns of conflict talkidentified in Chinese and English talk shows, among which disagreement is the most common pattern. What’sdifferent is that interruption accounts more and used more frequently in English talk shows.(2)This studyidentifies two kinds of conflict management strategies in Chinese and English talk shows, namely mitigatedstrategies including accounts or justifications, mitigation markers, mollifiers and humor, and aggravatedstrategies including direct disagreement, rhetorical question, uncooperative interruption and upgraders. It’s foundthat mitigated strategies accounts more than aggravated strategies both in Chinese and English talk shows;what’s different is that aggravated strategies shares a larger proportion in English talk shows than in Chinese talkshows, which indicates that conflict tend to be stronger in English talk shows.(3) This study identifies two kindsof pragmatic functions, namely constructive functions including inquiry mechanism and working consensus, anddestructive functions including venting negative feelings and getting power. The comparison of pragmaticfunctions between Chinese and English talk shows finds that constructive functions work more frequently bothin Chinese and English talk shows, but the proportion of destructive functions in English talk shows is slightly higher than in Chinese talk shows.The study may enrich the previous studies of marital conflict talk. Meanwhile, it can make contribution tothe studies of eastern and western cultural difference.