A Study On The Occurrence Of Conflict Talks And The Suggested Constructive Management

Conflict talk is a verbal opposing state caused by different views of the speakerand the hearer in daily communication. It occurs frequently in interactivecommunication as a common but complicated language phenomenon. As we allknow, conflict has destructive effects which always bring about communicationfailure and impede successful communication. Nevertheless, it has constructiveeffects which depend on the reasons for the occurrence of conflict talk and tacticspeople take when conflict occurs. If conflict talks are dealt with appropriately, adesired outcome can be achieved in the end of the conflict talks and conflict talkplays a significant role in the developing healthy relationships. In the past few years,the study on conflict talks has been the focus of attention of researchers from variousfields, for instance, anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics and so on.However, compared with what has been studied abroad, the study of conflict talks inChina still have a long way to go, especially few studies has been conducted toanalyze the occurrence of conflict talks and constructive management from theperspective of adaptation theory.The present study is planned to make an analysis of conflict talks from theperspective of pragmatics. With a careful study on America drama DesperateHousewives based on qualitative analysis, it is intended to discover the reasons forthe occurrence of conflict talks and constructive management in the light of JefVerschueren’s adaptation theory.According to Verschueren, communication is an adaptation process. Only bythe speaker and the hearer making continuous choices to make adaptation to thecontext, can the communicative purpose be obtained smoothly. The present studyanalyzes the reasons for the occurrence of conflict talks and constructive tacticspeople take from three dimensions: mental world, social and physical world.Through a thorough analysis of conflict talks in an American drama, the presentstudy tries to reveal the reasons for the occurrence of conflict talks. More specifically, conflict talks happen in that the speaker fails to make adaptation to physical worldsuch as time, space and non-verbal factors. Conflict talks are likely to happen whenspeakers fail to make adaptation to social world including value factors, masculinityand femininity, cultural identity and so on. Besides, failure to adapt to mental worldlike participants’ cognitive and emotional factors may trigger conflict talks. Thesefactors trigger conflict talks and should be taken into account during communication.Then the present study explores constructive management of conflict talks, whichcan be divided into seven tactics: avoidance, accommodation, competition,compromise, collaboration, silence and euphemistic expression. In the dynamicprocess of the arguing state, the participants choose different constructive tactics toadapt to communicative needs in order to realize communicative purposes.It is expected that the analysis of the occurrence of conflict talks and tacticspeople take to minimize dysfunctions of conflict talks may be helpful andmeaningful for the construction of harmonious relationship. Moreover, theapplication of adaptation theory to the analysis of conflict talks may prove thatadaptation theory has a strong explanatory power, hoping to enhance the profoundunderstanding to conflict talks.