A Study On Conflict Talks In American Drama Fresh Off The Boat From The Perspective Of Lingustic Adaptation Theory

Fresh off the Boat,the first American sitcom about American-Chinese family life,was made and promoted by American Broadcasting Corporation(ABC)in 2015.It’s adapted from a memoir with the same title,written by Eddie Huang.The drama tells the story of a Taiwan family who moved from Chinatown in Washington to Orlando in the 1990 s.In recent years,the study of conflict talks has attracted the attention of experts and scholars in many fields such as sociology,anthropology and linguistics.Verschueren’s linguistic adaptation theory is one theory of pragmatics,providing a new perspective for studying conflict talks.Verschueren believes that language use is composed of continuous making of linguistic choices.Language users must dynamically adapt to the contextual factors in the communication process in order to achieve communicative purpose.This study takes his linguistic adaptation theory as the theoretical framework,and attempts to analyze conflict talks in Fresh off the Boat from the perspective of pragmatics.Based on linguistic adaptation theory,conflict talks are interpreted as the consequence of a dynamic language use in which the two parties neglected to adapt to contextual factors.Normally,conflict talks include three stages: the initiating stage,the maintaining and escalating stage,and the terminating stage.32 extracts of conflict talks are selected from the first four seasons of the American drama Fresh off the Boat according to the intensity of the conflict and whether the conflict talks include the three stages.These extracts will be analyzed in a quantitative and qualitative method to explore the causes,the linguistic features,the types,and positive functions of conflict talks in this drama.The findings are as follows.Firstly,the cause of generating conflict talks in Fresh off the Boat is that the communicators(addresser and addressee)neglect the various factors in the conflicting context.They ignore dynamic adaptability to time,place,and non-verbal factors in the physical world,fail to adapt to the elements of culture and other social norms in social world,and also ignore to adapt to their cognitive and expectation elements in communicator’s mental world.In fact,communicators fail to dynamically adapt to contextual factors and thus cause communicative failure.Secondly,the linguistic features of the conflict talks in Fresh off the Boat are as follows: disputants frequently use negatives,derogatory adjectives and swear words in the lexical level;They tend to use special question,reason-asking question and imperative sentences in the syntactic level;In the grammatical level,they employ future tense and subjunctive mood to create a sense of oppression.In the rhetorical level,metaphor,irony and hyperbole are also used to express humor and ridicule.Thirdly,both the parent-child conflict talks and the husband-wife conflict talks in Fresh off the Boat follow three stages of conflict talks,including the initiating stage,the maintaining and escalating stage and terminating stage.In the initiating stage,these two kinds of conflict talks have the same four types of conflict talks(statements,requests,assertions and accusation).Due to the language level of the disputants,statements are frequently used in husband-wife conflict talks.In parent-child conflict talks,parents often use requests while children often use assertions.In the maintaining and escalating stage,husband and wife or parents and children often use arguing and noncompliance,and they less use repetition and substitutions.In the terminating stage,concessions,compromises,third-party intervention and withdrawal can mitigate or terminate conflict talks and make a more harmonious conversation for them.Fourthly,there are three positive functions on the study of conflict talks in this drama.Considering the range of its use,conflict talks in Fresh off the Boat have covered topics such as education,culture,life,emotions and so on.Studies on such topics can initially help later scholars to deepen their understanding of the Chinese culture and Chinese elements in this American drama.Then,it can help them to recognize the literary significance of character-shaping in American television.Last,it can extend the study of the two kinds of conflict talks’ interpersonal meaning.In conclusion,conflict talks as language phenomenon are common and complex,which reflects essential research value.Understanding its linguistic features,causes,types and functions,and trying to avoid and alleviate conflicts,can not only maintain good interpersonal relationships with others,but also have a positive significance for promoting social harmony.