A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Parent-Child Conflict Talk In American Situation Comedy From The Perspective Of Systemic-Functional Grammar

Parent-child conflict talk is a common but complicated phenomenon. It originates from the divergence of different opinions, interests, experiences, beliefs and values between parents and children. People usually regard conflict talk as something negative, meaningless and useless. However, this is not practically true. Conflict talk, if treated properly, could also be positive and constructive. Many scholars have shown interest in conflict talk. In recent years, they have made great achievements in the field of sociology, anthropology, philosophy and psychology. However, there are only a few scholars studying on parent-child conflict talk from the perspective of systemic-functional grammar. On the other side, interpersonal, as one of the three meta-functions of language, has always been a hot topic. It aims to create and maintain the relationship between the interlocutors. The theory believes that the speaker tends to assign a role to the listener, which is a perfect description for the cause for parent-child conflict talk. Thus, the present study aims to explore the interpersonal meaning carried out in parent-child conflict talk from the perspective of three subsystems of systemic-functional grammar, namely mood, modality and person. To realize this goal, the author tries her best to answer the following research questions:1. What are the typical mood structures of the speaker’s initiation and listener’s discretionary response that originate the parent-child conflict talk? And what function do they perform?2. What preferences do the family members have in using modal operators of different value in conflict? What interpersonal meaning does each value carry out?3. How does person system contribute to carrying out interpersonal meaning in parent-child conflict talk?114 pieces of parent-child conflict talks are collected from the first four seasons of the famous American family comedy, Modern Family. After a careful transcription, delicate classification and thorough analysis, the following major findings finally come up:First, when the speaker gets a discretionary responses from the listener, conflict appears immediately. There are mainly three kinds of initiation and discretionary response. They are statement vs contradiction, question vs disclaimer and command vs refusal. The typical mood structure for statement, question and command are declarative, interrogative and imperative respectively. Besides, the statement and question usually carry out the implied interpersonal meaning of persuading the listener into an agreement or convincing the listener of believing the provided information while command insisting on its basic function. Also the command is a kind of parents’ privilege. They usually apply the command to the conflict in order to carry out the interpersonal meaning of punishment and threatening.Second, parents tend to use high value modality especially the negative form to terminate the conflict unilaterally no matter the children get on board or not, which shows parents’ absolute power over their children. Median value modality makes the tone softer and shorten the social distance between parents and children. It also gives the listener more room to negotiate. Unlike high and median value modality, although the low value modality accounts for more than half of all modality systems used in the conflict talk, most of the time it only carries out its basic function to indicate the possibility or ability.Last but not the least, four major kinds of person systems are used in parent-child conflict talk. The first and second person systems are used most frequently. “I” is born to make a point and stand firm for one’s position on the controversial topic, while an inclusive “we” creates a feeling of intimacy and identity that quickly keeps off the distance. Second person system generally refers to the listener in the interaction. It can shorten the distance between the interlocutors in order to build a face-to-face communicative feeling, and make the communication more genuine. The family members simply apply third person system “he, she, they, it, his, her, their, its” to refer to a third party with no implied interpersonal meaning carried out. As for the other address forms, parents tend to use “honey, sweetie, sweetheart, baby” to soften their tone to make their command or sentence easier to take, while children tend to use “mom, dad” to remind the parents of their responsibility and obligation and challenge their power sarcastically.The present study enriches the application of systemic-functional grammar and probes into the interpersonal meaning carried out by parent-child conflict talk from the perspective of its three subcategories: mood, modality and person system. Hopefully, the present study can bring some implications to the future research in this field.