Discourse Analysis Of Conflict Talk Between Family Members

AbstractConflict talk is a common linguistic phenomenon in life.It is a type of interaction in which hostile acts are exchanged between two or more parties.The term of conflict talk is often used in the broad sense and it includes many linguistic behaviors and events, such as arguing,disputing,quarreling,opposing and squabbling.And it can be classified into different categories,mainly into aggressive conflict talk and non-aggressive conflict talk.Researchers from home and abroad have made some studies on this linguistic phenomenon from different respects,such as from ethnmethodological respect,the interactional sociolinguistic respect and the pragmatic respect.This study is an empirical study in which qualitative method is adopted.The data of this study are derived from the movies and TV plays.The present study is based on the data collected following the usual procedure of spoken discourse analysis:first,the recordings of conversations are made;second,the data is transcribed in written forms with some signs and marks;third,the transcribed data is analyzed,and lastly the research is reported.The study applies Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's relevance theory and Harvey Sacks and his associates'conversation analysis theory to analyze the conflict episodes among family members from three movies and one TV play.Based on the inductive procedure of data analysis,this study identifies possible underlying reasons of conflict talks using Relevance Theory and analyzes the features with conversation analysis theory and concludes the mitigating strategies and termination formats of these talks.Firstly,it is found out that intentional and unintentional misunderstanding of the speaker's communicative intention cause conflict talks.Then the lacking conversational relevance may also cause conflict talk,and this is discussed in details in two aspects,in speech act relevance aspect and in conversational demand relevance aspect.Secondly,this thesis analyzes the features of interruption,repetition and disagreement preference of conflict talks using Harvey Sacks and his associates' Conversation Analysis Theory of turns-taking system and adjacency pair.Lastly,the thesis concludes several mitigating strategies of conflict talks:code-switching,hedges and transition,topic-shifting,humor and silence.And three main kinds of termination formats are summarized.They are:submission or compromise,change of the topic or leave of one party,together with interruption of the third party or circumstances.On discussing the conflict talks between family members and lovers,this study may help facilitate the mutual understanding in families.Therefore it is significant for building up harmonious families and then a more harmonious society which is promoted throughout the country these days.