A Study Of Cross-Cultural Conflict Talk In Film Gua Sha—Under The Adaptation Theory

Conflict talk is a very common phenomenon in daily life.In the process of verbal communication,when the interlocutors have different goals,needs or different beliefs,conflict talk may occur.Sometimes,conflict talk has constructive influences.But if not handled well and recognized,it’s very harmful to the construction of a harmonious society and interpersonal relationships.Therefore it also has destructive consequences.The term of conflict talk is often used in the broad sense to refer to many linguistic behaviors such as quarreling,arguing,disputing,squabbling and opposing.Later,an increasing number of scholars deepen and broaden the scope of conflict talk studies so as to form various researches which have been carried out from the perspective of ethnography,intercultural communication,interactive sociolinguistics conversational analysis,and other different subjects.Due to their differences in analytical methods and collecting data,the emphasis and starting point of the study are also different in terms of communication strategies,structural features,and research significance.In this thesis,the author focuses on the coexistent conflict talk in the intercultural context between Chinese and American cultures.As for the methodology,the present study belongs to a qualitative and contrastive study based on the data collected from the film Gua Sha.Using this theory analyzes the conflict talk in the film Gua Sha.Based on the treatment Gua Sha as the research object,this thesis studies on the conflicts between Chinese and Western intercultural communication,to find out the cause of conflict talk through the analysis of value of the characters in the film,traditional culture,etc.,addressed to answer two research questions:(1)What are the reasons for the occurrence of conflict talk?(2)How do the contextual factors influence people’s choice of linguistic in the intercultural conflict talks?Based on Verschueren’s linguistic adaptation theory,the reason why there is aconflict talk in intercultural context is that both sides ignore the contextual adaptation in the social,mental,and physical worlds.Different cultural models,such as conflict culture,individualism-collectivism in Chinese and American cultures,are the main reasons for people’s adaptation failure to the contextual factors.