Study On Terminating Strategies Of Chinese Marital Conflict Talk From Face Theory Perspective

Conflict is a pervasive human phenomenon which penetrates every form of social relationships of every ethnic and cultural group. Therefore, as a representation of it, conflict talk is also ubiquitous. Conflict talk has been attracting researchers’ attention for decades. Recently, more attention has been attracted to the initiation, escalation and termination strategies of conflict talk. However, research specifically focusing on terminating strategies of marital conflict talk is rarely found. Marital conflict, as a very important part of interpersonal conflict, is closely related to the harmony and happiness of families. In the context of high divorce rate, it is very significant to research on termination of marital conflict talk.Following the pragmatic perspective, under the guidance of face theory, the current study analyzes the marital conflict talks collected from six Chinese TV series, such as Something about Couples, Management of Marriage, on the basis of the terminating strategies proposed by Vuchinich(1990) and Zhao(2008). The purposes of the current study are to explore terminating strategies of Chinese marital conflict talk by establishing a new model of terminating strategy, and manage to explain reasons for the difference in strategy using frequencies from the perspective of face theory. In addition, gender differences in adopting these terminating strategies are investigated and explained. According to the purposes, 211 collected Chinese samples are analyzed and categorized. To find out whether gender difference is significant or not, the SPSS 19.0 software is used to do independent sample T-test and binomial test.Through systematic analysis, the current study gets the following results. Firstly, combined with collected samples, a new model of terminating strategy with six terminating strategies and nine sub strategies is established on the basis of terminating strategies proposed by Vuchinich(1990) and Zhao(2008). Strategy one is “withdrawal” with its three sub strategies, namely, sub-str. one A of “physical withdrawal”, sub-str. one B of “non-verbal withdrawal”, and sub-str. one C of “verbal withdrawal”. Strategy two is “frame-breaks” with sub-str. two A of “topic-shift” and sub-str. two B of “joke”. Strategy three is “concessions”, and strategy four is “compromises”. Strategy five is “third-party intervention”, including sub-str. five A of “interruption”, sub-str. five B of “suggestion”, sub-str. five C of “order” and sub-str. five D of “equivocation”. Strategy six is “objective condition intrusion”. Secondly, on the whole, strategies which do not require face loss are employed more frequently. Withdrawal is the most frequently used one in the model, and among all the sub strategies, sub-str. one A, namely physical withdrawal is the most commonly used. Strategy three, namely concessions strategy, despite its self face-threatening nature, ranks the second. Among sub strategies of strategy five, sub-str. five A(interruption) is the most frequently occurring one. Strategy four and strategy six occur less frequently. Thirdly, gender differences in adopting terminating strategies of marital conflict talk exist. The gender discrepancies in adopting strategy two, frame-breaks, and strategy three, concessions is salient. Overall, males are more active in terminating conflict talk than their partners as they adopt terminating strategies more frequently.Readers of the current study may get a better understanding of marital conflict talk, which is beneficial to achieve harmonious relation between husband and wife by reliving or removing marital conflict. Besides, being a study of terminating strategies of Chinese marital conflict talk, the current study is hoped to complement the researches in conflict talk field to some degree. Because of the author’s insufficient academic research experience and limited number of samples collected, it is still a preliminary study and needs further investigation.