A Pragmatic Analysis Of Conflict Talk Between Family Members In Xiao Er Nan Yang

As a universal phenomenon in life, conflict talk permeates every corner of life. It isinevitable for people to have conflict in conversation due to different ideas, beliefs, values,pursuits and even personalities hold between interlocutors. Generally speaking, the notion ofconflict talk includes many speech activities, such as quarreling, opposing, arguing, disputingand squabbling. However, conflict talk has both productive effects and destructiveconsequences. If appropriately and effectively managed by family members, it can be positiveand constructive. On the contrary, it may cause negative and destructive consequences ifinappropriately handled by family members, which is very harmful for the harmoniousconstruction between family members.Attracted by its universality and complexity characteristics, numerous scholars indifferent fields, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy and linguistics, areinterested in conflict talk. However, it is not until the1980s that conflict talk has been studiedas a branch of discourse analysis. After that, researches on it blossom with growingpublications related to it. However, compared with foreign scholars, scholars at home onlybegin to research on conflict talk until the21stcentury, therefore, relevant researches arerelatively few.This thesis is an empirical study in which both qualitative and quantitative methods areadopted. Collecting data from a popular TV series Xiao Er Nan Yang, this paper probes deeplyinto the features and causes of conflict talk with qualitative method adopted and makes asummary on the percentage of each format taking up in each stage by applying quantitativemethod.Based on the inductive procedure of data analysis, this paper analyzes the recurring formats of the initiation stage, the escalation stage and the termination stage by employingConversation Analysis Theory and explains the reasons and representation forms underPoliteness Theory. And this paper has achieved some findings. Firstly, as for the initiationstage, it is obvious that the representation forms of conflict talk are mainly the disputants’face-threatening behaviors. As the data show, the inquiry type is the most common format ininitiating a conflict talk, which accounts for51%. Therefore, in daily life, people shouldemploy greater face-saving strategies to avoid or mitigate conflict when they want to query oreven interrogate others.Secondly, from the escalation stage, we can see that people usually adopt opposingquestions to contradict others while some are inclined to choose the negation type. As thesetwo formats can heavily threaten the participants’ face, people in conversation should realizethe negative consequences of them and think twice whether it is necessary to adopt these twoformats.Thirdly, in the termination stage, people often employ withdrawal to end conflict talk.However, conflict talk only terminates temporarily, which might be initiated later. Therefore,people should realize that withdrawal is not the effective way to resolve conflict. In familylife, people should learn to be tolerant and considerate and sometimes they can choosesubmission to terminate conflict for obtaining a peaceful and harmonious family life.Fourthly, conflict talk happened between family members is caused by two aspects.Because of the negative responses of the hearer or the abnormal communication of thespeaker, conflict talk can be caused by different talking parties. While from the socialpsychological aspect, egoism, different values or different personalities between the speakerand the hearer can lead to the occurrence of conflict talk. The process of conflict talk is inessence the process of threatening face, therefore, under politeness theory, there are mainlytwo different representation forms of conflict talk---the verbal behaviors threatening the speaker’s face (mainly positive face) and the verbal behaviors threatening the hearer’s face(both positive face and negative face).On discussing conflict talk between family members, this paper may help people have abetter understanding on how conflict talk around them initiates, escalates and finallyterminates, which can help facilitate the mutual understanding in family life.