A Conversational Analysis Of Complaints About The Third Party In Chinese Daily Conversation

Complaint,as a linguistic phenomenon,exerts a profound influence on interpersonal relationship among people in the daily life.Extensive research has been conducted by many scholars both at home and abroad since the 1970s.A lot of noticeable achievements on complaints have been made in the field of pragmatics.The researchers have mainly concentrated on complaint/response realization patterns,complaint strategies,pragmatic transfer and so on.Meanwhile,the researchers in the field of Conversational Analysis have highlighted some specific devices in order to realize communicative goals.However,few scholars discover the structure of complaints in a long sequence from the perspective of Conversational Analysis.Therefore,it is necessary to make a further study in Chinese ordinary conversation from this new angle.The present study takes Conversational Analysis as a methodology.As for the research object,complaints about the third party are communicative activities in which a complaint teller explicitly displays an action’s impropriety and expresses his/her own dissatisfaction to a complaint recipient.In such a situation,the central feature of the complaint lies in its access to the recipient’s affiliation.As for data collection,all the data at hand are authentic from naturally occurring daily conversation.They are transcribed and analyzed in detail in order to truthfully uncover social order behind language communication.The present study aims to examine the following research questions through data analysis:on the one hand,it will mainly concentrate on the candidate sequence of complaints about the third party.A complaint sequence displays a trajectory,that is,participants begin with a conversation,talk about a complainable matter,and finally exit from the complaint.On the other hand,it will probe into the details of verbal expressions through which the complaint is to be accomplished.By analysis,the conclusions are drawn as follows:firstly,the complaint sequence consists of five stages in accordance with a recurring sequential position.They are initiation,arrival,delivery,work-up and closing.There are sub-stages occurring orderly.But not all complaints occur as a consecutive sequence of ordered elements.Therefore,the sequence is close to an ideal type.Secondly,from the perspective of turn design,we find that a complaint teller makes a good use of various linguistic resources so as to enhance the complainable matter’s justification and complainability.In the current data,these typical devices include reported speech,Extreme Case formulation,repetition and contrast in the delivery of a complaint,which are frequently used to secure a recipient’s involvement in co-constructing the complaint.Thirdly,in the process of complaining,the complaint teller looks forward to getting the complaint recipient’s affiliation,more than projecting a coherence of the whole package in the interactional activity.Therefore,the co-participants collaboratively push forward the development of complaint sequence.Although the present study provides a new perspective to study complaints,some limitations still exist in our research.It is hoped that the present study contributes to revealing social norm behind Chinese,at the same time,providing forward-looking guidance for people in order to better maintain harmonious interpersonal relationship in everyday life.