An Analysis Of Conflict Talk From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Conflict talk is considered to be a universal and complicated language phenomenon, occurring frequently in daily communication. Utterances, behaviors or opinions of communicators can not come to terms, which cause conflict talk. It often results in communication breakdown and creates barriers to successful communication. Hence, an overwhelming majority of fields have paid attention to and researched it from different respects such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics and so forth. However, compared with researchers at abroad, researchers at home, to some extent, fall behind.The theoretical foundation of present study is based on Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory, which so far has been referred to as an outstanding discourse analysis theory. Relevance Theory, put forward by Sperber and Wilson, is based on Grice’s Co-operative Principle. It researches language communication from the perspective of cognition and is applied to various discourse analysis. Relevance Theory takes the attitude that communication is an ostensive-inferential process. The process of ostention and inference are regarded as one coin with two sides. From the communicator’s point of view, communication is considered as an ostensive process. While for the audience, communication is thought of as an inferential process. Communicator presents the informative intention and communicative intention by ostensive behavior during the communication. While the audience, with the guidance of Relevance Theory, takes advantage of a cognitive context fully to make proper contextual hypotheses. Then the audience will acquire some contextual effects and infer the communicator’s intention. At last, they will achieve communication successfully. In addition, methodologically speaking, the present study belongs to a qualitative study based on the date collected from American Sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Through detailed study and analysis on data, the present study reveals the reasons for occurrence of conflict talk:that is to say, in the process of ostensive behavior, on the account of communicator’s ambiguous ostention; in the inferential process, communicative intention failure from the audience’s perspective; the failure of mutual manifestness; in the cognitive context (here we use cognitive context for distinguishing from traditional term context), such as discrepancy of background knowledge, incorrect comprehension on linguistic text, ignorance of physical environment and lack of relevance between communicators, which result in conflict talk.The present study on conflict talk has not only theoretical significance but also social significance. Besides the deeper understanding the reasons for the occurrence of conflict talk, it also has great value in modifying and replenishing the theory of pragmatics. The research on the mitigation or avoidance of conflict talk has a vital significance in our society. We advocate the construction of a socialist harmonious society in China. However, conflict is regarded as a disharmonious element, which should be laid emphasis on. Getting well known of the occurrence of conflict talk and making an attempt to avoid or mitigate it, which has a crucial significance in promoting socialist harmonious society.