A Study Of Impoliteness In Conflict Talks Between Family Members

Conflict talks, which are verbal conflicts in communication, are an unavoidable and complicated language phenomenon in our daily life. Although many studies have been made on conflict talks from different perspectives, there is little research on impoliteness in conflict talks. This study explores impoliteness in conflict talks between family members with an emphasis on two different kinds of relationships:mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and mother-in-law and son-in-law. The study aims to help people have rational thoughts on impoliteness, and establish and maintain harmonious relationships within family and society.Based upon Culpeper’s (1996) and Bousfield’s (2008a) impoliteness theories, this thesis is an attempt to address the following three research questions:(1) What are the similar/different impoliteness strategies and impoliteness response patterns in conflict talks between the two different kinds of interpersonal relationships? (2) Why are different impoliteness strategies and response patterns used in conflict talks between the two different kinds of interpersonal relationships? (3) What are the main pragmatic functions of impoliteness in conflict talks?For the purpose of the study,68 episodes with 269 turns on conflict talks between the two kinds of interpersonal relationships from seven TV plays were collected. The data were analyzed in the following steps. Firstly, after identifying conflict turns, the thesis sorted every opposition turn into a certain output strategy and classified every occurrence of conflict talks into a certain impoliteness response pattern. Secondly, the study counted the frequency and percentage of each impoliteness output strategy and impoliteness response pattern respectively identified in the whole data. Thirdly, answers to the three research questions were explored in more detail.Tentative conclusions can be drawn as follows:(1) Every family member adopts different strategies and response patterns to deal with face threats. Criticizing, condescending, scorning or ridiculing, challenging and "explicitly " associating the other with a negative aspect are the four most frequently used impoliteness output strategies in conflict talks between two kinds of interpersonal relationships. (2) Power relation, gender differences, and generation gap are three main reasons for those differences in output strategies. (3) Offensive strategies and the offensive-offensive response patterns would result in the deconstruction of their interpersonal relationships to some extent, while the offensive-defensive and the offensive-compromise response patterns contribute to the construction of interpersonal relationships.The study is both theoretically and practically significant. Theoretically, the thesis proposes two strategies which are not proposed by Culpeper (1996) and Bousfield (2008a), but used in the data collected. Therefore, this research enriches previous studies and provides inspirations for future research. In practice, the thesis helps people better understand impoliteness in conflict talks between family members, which will promote the establishment of harmonious family and society.