Analyzing Conflict Talk Between Lovers In Love Battle:A Perspective Of Impoliteness

Conflict talk is a common and complicated linguistic phenomenon in daily communication. An extensive review of relevant literature has revealed that conflict talk has drawn the attention of many scholars from various fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and linguistics but that in-depth analyses are still lacking, especially so in studies on conflict talk between lovers. There have been researches on conflict talk between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, between parents and children or between friends, but researches on conflict talk between lovers are comparatively small in scale, lacking especially in the perspective of impoliteness. Since conflict talk is more often than not associated with impoliteness, the present paper aims at an empirical research on conflict talk between lovers in the hot Chinese TV talk show named Love Battle. The impoliteness strategies employed by the lovers are analyzed and summarized first based on Bousfield's Impoliteness Model, then the terminating strategies adopted by the third party are summarized and finally the positive pragmatic functions of conflict talk are explored. A comprehensive and detailed analysis of the data from Love Battle leads to the following three major findings:1) lovers deploy various impoliteness strategies in conflict talk and many impoliteness strategies identified by Bousfield can find their realization in the data; 2) as a third party, the host of Love Battle mainly adopts five strategies to terminate conflict talk between lovers, namely, question strategy, collaboration strategy, humor strategy, interruption strategy and topic-shifting strategy; 3) the major positive pragmatic functions of conflict talk between lovers are relieving one's negative feelings and improving interpersonal relationship. It is hoped that the present study will contribute to a better understanding of conflict talk, to improving interpersonal relationship between lovers from a practical point of view and, more broadly, to the construction of a harmonious society.