On The Response Patterns And Constructive Functions Of Conflict Talk Between Couples

Conflict talk is a common sight in daily communication,which is defined as conflictive speech acts like opposing,arguing,quarreling between interactants(Kuang,2009;Liu,2010).It is generally considered that conflict talk plays a negative role in interpersonal relationship and has close links with impolite speech acts.Scholars at home and abroad have done many studies on conflict talk from diverse perspectives,among which pragmatics and sociolinguistics are the mainstream.With regard to the constructive functions of conflict talk,however,few of them pay their attention,some even ignore its positive aspect,let alone their major findings in this respect.This paper adopts a qualitative research method attempting to conduct a case study on the response patterns and constructive functions of conflict talk between couples from the pragmatic perspective.This study extracts data from American TV play Desperate Housewives Season 5 and makes an analysis in three steps.First,the author collects conflict talk between couples by means of watching every episode over and over again.Next,according to the three kinds of response patterns,the author divides the data into three types and analyzes them respectively.Then,the author is devoted to discussing major findings of this study and pointing out its limitations for further researches.This study takes Bousfield's Impoliteness Theory and the Response Framework as its theoretical foundation.First of all,the author reviews the notions of Face and Face-threatening Acts(Brown & Levinson,1987),which sets out a clear view and direction of Impoliteness Theory in the following.Faced with face-threatening acts,the hearer tends to resort to three kinds of response patterns.First,the author summarizes the output strategies that may attack the hearer's face and cites examples to testify them respectively.Then,the author divides the data for the present study into three types according to the three kinds of response patterns,attempting to figure out the most frequently-used response pattern.Finally,the author sums up the constructive functionsof conflict talk between couples.It is observed that data analysis yields the following findings: the study firstly shows that most of the impolite output strategies summarized by Bousfield(2008)are covered in the present study.Secondly,after a thorough analysis,it can come to a conclusion that three response patterns to a face-threatening act are all embodied in this study,which are the offensive-offensive response pattern,offensive-defensive response pattern and offensive-compromise response pattern.Thirdly,it turns out that conflict talk between couples has constructive functions on interpersonal relationships,which are as follows.First,conflict talk provides a way for couples to express negative emotions,which will contribute to mutual understanding between couples.Second,conflict talk plays an active role in maintaining self-image when one's fitness for a job is questioned by the other.Third,conjugal relation is comparatively equal in social relationship.When inequality appears in a family,one party may choose to resort to conflict talk in order to compete for one's power in the family.Many previous studies on conflict talk put emphasis on exploring how to avoid conflict talk,but this study is meant to identify the pragmatic strategies that can be used to initiate and terminate conflict talk and the constructive functions conflict talk may generate on interpersonal relationship,such as expressing negative emotions,maintaining self-image and competing for one's power in a family.This study,to some extent,can not only promote mutual understanding between couples,but also contribute to building a harmonious family and society.