A Case Study Of Father-Son Conflict Talk And Power In Country Love

As an inevitable product of human interactions, conflict can not be avoided and ignored.To a certain extent, it is restricting and affecting the social development course. In the presentstudy, conflict talk refers to the language phenomenon in which debating, arguing, disputing,quarreling, squabbling，talking back，wrangling and so on, arise while conversationalparticipants are opposing each other by means of talking. Although people are concerned withvarious conflict phenomena in daily life, domestic scholars have not been doing an enoughresearch for that, in particular the conflict talk between different generations which is still afield seldom scholars have set foot in. Based on the data of father-son conflict talks in TVseries Country Love, this study integrates sociolinguistics, speech act, conversation analysisand relevant power theory to investigate two main issues in the Chinese socio-cultural setting:the first, what are the patterns of father-son disputes normally undergoing three stages–initiating, escalating and terminating; what and how managing strategies are used by boththese family disputants. The second, father-son dispute is a prime site where power relation isshown,(re)constructed and negotiated by family members. We want to find out how existingpower relations affect the construction of the conflict talk in analysis and the dynamiccontextual power is conditioned by different strategies. This study attempts to analyze theintergenerational conflict talk of kind connected with power so as to extend the research fields.For its social significance, it is hoped to help fill the generation gap in terms of verbalcommunication and thus improve family relations.The whole thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter1is the introductory part, whichincludes the background, objective, significance of the research, the methodology and dataresource. The theoretical foundation, including speech act theory and conversation analysis isalso introduced. Chapter2offers a brief overview of conflict talk studies at home and abroad,and previous power studies in all kinds of disciplines as well. Chapter3concludes thepatterns of father-son disputes in three phases, and further analyzes functions of powerrelationship on these formats in detail. Chapter4examines what and how managing strategiesare employed by the father and the son to challenge or control each other in the process ofinteractions. Chapter5summaries the findings with limitations pointed out and suggestionsfor future study offered.