Research On The Intercultural Conflicts In Movie Babel Based On Intergroup Communication Theory

This thesis takes the theories of social group, social identity, and intergroup communication as the theoretical basis, selects four independent stories in the movie script Babel as intercultural communication cases, analyzes root cause, process, and types of intercultural conflicts and concludes new conflicts managing strategies.Text analysis is a scientific research method advocated by"New Criticism School"in literary criticism. It takes text as research subject and takes literariness as research object. Through communicating social reality with the text, it reveals social implications and values of text. Babel is a movie with documentary style, and its stories reflect the real condition of the current society. Applying text analysis as the critical research method, this thesis selects typical conflicts and successful communications from its script as cases. Based on theories about intergroup communication and the analysis on script, this thesis concludes new features of intercultural conflicts, with which it also gets new conflicts managing strategies.Through analysis and discussions, the author draws the following conclusions of the thesis: 1) group stereotype is root cause of intercultural conflicts; from uncertainty and anxiety at the beginning of communication to explosion of conflicts, conflicts develop with multi-way process; and based on the multi-way process, conflicts can be divided into several types; 2) through managing these types of conflicts, the present study concludes the following conflicts managing strategies: avoidance of over-general categorization, processing incoming information reasonably, taking neutral behavior approved internationally or accepted by public, self-awareness of negative image, exposure to intercultural contact situations, mindful perceiving, and mindful judging.This study is expected to help those who are working or studying in the frontier of intercultural communication to get profound understanding about root cause, developing process, and types of intercultural conflicts. With this knowledge they can take relative strategies according to different stages of the developing process. In addition, the author hopes this research will draw the attention and focus of the researchers and learners of intercultural communication on the variety and dynamic of intergroup contact. Subsequently, the relative researches can reinforce people's awareness of various culture groups, and make them manage intercultural conflicts more effectively.