Speech Act Theoretic Approach To Parents-Children Conflict Talks In Modern Family

Conflict is an interactive act that takes place between two or more parties which involves disagreements,arguments,quarrels and even violent confrontations.The speech acts generated from the conflict are called conflict talks.Although conflict talks have long been the focus of researchers and studied in various fields such as sociology,psychology,anthropology and linguistics,a pragmatic study of conflict talks from speech act theoretic perspective is still rare,letting alone the study on the parents-children conflict talks in an American sitcom like Modern Family.Considering this,the present research,with a case study of the American sitcom Modern Family,aims to explore the parents-children conflict talks based on the speech act theory,intending to address the following five questions:(1)is the speech act theory applicable to the study of parents-children conflict talks?(2)what are the physical features of the locutionary acts(i.e.utterance acts)of parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family?(3)what are the semantic features of the locutionary acts(i.e.propositional acts)of parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family?(4)what types and subtypes of illocutionary acts are performed in parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family and how often are they performed respectively?(5)what are the perlocutionary effects of parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family?The corpus for the present research is totally collected from the parents-children conflict talks in the first two seasons(48 episodes in total)of the American sitcom Modern Family.After a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the corpus collected from the sitcom,the present research has arrived at the following findings:Firstly,the speech act theory can be appropriately applied to the interpretation of parents-children conflict talks.Secondly,the utterance acts or physical features of locutionary acts of parentschildren conflict talks in Modern Family vary with the participants involved in the conflicts.Specifically,deliberate variation of intonations,extension of sound pronunciation,change of stress and use of discourse markers such as filler words and filler sounds,pauses and silences are specific to the conflict talks between Jay and hisChildren Claire and Mitchell;use of discourse markers,sudden rise of pitch,and sudden lowering of loudness are specific to the conflict talks between Claire and her children Haley,Alex and Luke;functional pronunciation just happens between Gloria and her son Manny.Thirdly,the utterance acts of parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family also vary with the properties of the conflict talks: when the conflicts are escalated,the participants tend to raise the tempo,pitch and loudness of their voice subconsciously;by contrast,when the conflicts are de-escalated,the participants would speak in a slower,milder voice with lower loudness.Fourthly,the propositional act or semantic aspect of the locutionary act of parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family also has its unique features: the reference may be made to the addresses,third party or things;the predication varies greatly from asking rhetorical questions,pointing out the falsity,pretending to be sick,expressing “thanks” and so on.Fifthly,in the parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family,the most frequently used illocutionary acts are the assertives(40.16%),which are made up of complaints,accusations,subjective speculations,the negative judgments,derogatory comments,false statements and unbelievable excuses;the expressives(34.65%)composed of expressions of sarcasm,surprise,disbelief,indignation and disappointment come to the second;the directives(16.54%)composed of ordering,advising,demanding and requesting come to the third;the commissives(6.30%)and the declarations(2.36%)are relatively less frequently used in parents-children conflict talks.Sixthly,the perlocutionary effects of parents-children conflict talks in Modern Family mainly occur in three ways:(1)conflicts resolved,in the form of unilateral victory or bilateral agreement;(2)conflicts intensified,including the disputes escalated or the relationships worsened;(3)conflicts transferred,owing to the third party intervention,change of topic or the participants' retreat from the current environment.This thesis is concluded by summarizing the findings,pointing out the theoretical and practical significances as well as the limitations of the present research and presenting some suggestions for further researches of the same field.