A Pragmatic Study On Chinese Mother And Daughter-in-Law Conflict Talk

Conflict talk is a common phenomenon during family communication. Different from the blood relationship which is naturally steady and intimate, the relationship between mother and daughter-in-law is very complex, and sometimes even weak. A failure to resolve their conflict may greatly affect the harmony of the whole family. To gain a better understanding of the particularity of this type of conflict talk and the factors underlying the initiating, maintaining or escalating and terminating of the conflict talk is helpful to the avoidance or reduction of it. Nevertheless, studies on the conflict talk between mother and daughter-in-law so far are mainly confined to psychology, sociology, ethics, etc. Few researchers have studied the mother and daughter-in-law conflict talk from the perspective of linguistics.The theoretical framework of the present study is based on Memetics of Language and Conversation Analysis. Memetics of language is a relatively new pragmatic theory exploring language phenomena. Meme is the core concept of this theory. It is a unit of cultural ideas transmitted through vectors from one host to another. Language is a kind of vector through which memes or memeplexes are transmitted. Language communication is a process of meme selection and competition. That is, through language communication, they are transmitted from one communicator to the other who then will select his or her relevant memes as a response to compete or adapt with the received memes. In addition, other pragmatic theories, like speech act theory, are also employed in the analysis.Methodologically speaking, the present study belongs to a both qualitative and quantitative study based on the data collected from seven Chinese popular teleplays. The data is classified and summarized and conversation analysis is adopted to analyze the structure of the conflict talk, in which three phases are analyzed respectively:the initiating phase, the maintaining or escalating phase and the terminating phase. Following this is the interpretation of the mother and daughter-in-law conflict talk from the perspective of memetics.Through the analysis four findings are obtained:First of all, different from other types of conflict talk, the mother and daughter-in-law conflict talk has its own characteristics. There are three formats of initiating the mother and daughter-in-law conflict talk in the first phase:claim vs. counter claim, directive vs. refusal, and provoking question vs. opposed answer. According to the quantitative analysis, claim vs. counter claim might be the most frequently employed format in the conflict talk between Chinese mother and daughter-in-law, and the ideational conflict meme might be the most important meme during the initiating phase.Secondly, in the phase of maintaining or escalating conflict talk, non-obedience and both expressing their own opinions are two major formats. During this phase, conflict memes are mainly transmitted through verbal vectors at the lexical level. All the non-verbal vectors are mostly employed together with the verbal vectors, and the emotional infection occurs more frequently than the informational infection in the transmission process.Thirdly, most of the conflict talks between Chinese mother and daughter-in-law happen when there are more than two people present. Generally speaking, the third party intervention is the most frequently employed terminating format. When there is not anyone else present, withdrawal accounts for most of the formats of terminating phase. As the conflict talk is seen as the competition of conflict memes in this thesis, the six formats are summarized into three types of conflict talk results of which compromise is the major one.Finally, from this thesis we can conclude that the memetics can be employed as a new perspective to interpret the mother and daughter-in-law conflict talk.The results of this study might yield insights into the study concerning the conflict talk between Chinese mother and daughter-in-law and also help to create more harmonious relationship.