A Pragmatic Analysis Of Conflict Talk Between The Couple In Golden Wedding

Conflict talk is a common language phenomenon in social interaction, observable in many spheres and aspects of life. The term of conflict talk can be used to refer to many speech acts and speech events, such as arguing, disputing, quarreling, opposing and squabbling. These terms have one core common feature, that is, participants oppose the utterance, actions or selves of one another in successive turns. Many researches have been conducted to analyze conflict talk from different perspectives. However, from the literature available, it is found that researches on conflict talk between Chinese couples are rather limited. Therefore, the present study is intended to make a pragmatic analysis of conflict talk between Chinese couples.Based on a review of previous researches on conflict talk and the theory of Conversation Analysis and Politeness Theory, the present study integrates both qualitative and quantitative analysis to analyze the conflict talk in the data collected from Chinese television series Golden Wedding. Qualitative research is used to identify the opposition forms used by the couple and the face implication of each opposition form. Quantitative research concerns the frequency of each opposition form as well as the couple's differences in the use of opposition forms identified in the collected data.Findings of the detailed studies are as follows. Firstly, the couple frequently uses four opposition forms in conflict talk:contradiction (simple negation & aggravated negation), rhetorical questions, agreement (partial agreement & upgraded agreement), and format tying. Secondly, in terms of their degree of aggravation to face, the ranking of these opposition forms from most to least face-aggravating is aggravated negation, rhetorical questions & upgraded agreement, simple negation & format tying, and partial agreement. Thirdly, most of the opposition is expressed by rhetorical questions or upgraded agreement, and the wife is more likely to use the two forms.Findings of the study may provide some theoretical and practical implications. On the one hand, the findings of the study, to some extent, contribute to filling in a gap in the existing literature of Chinese conflict talk analysis and shedding some light on the future researches on conflict talk between couples with other approaches. On the other hand, the findings of the study have indicated that conflict talk itself is not positive or negative, and the ways of conflict management affect the outcomes of conflict talk. Therefore, one should learn to manage conflict effectively.