A Study Of Conflict Talk Between Friends From The Perspective Of Impoliteness Theory

As an omnipresent linguistic phenomenon,conflict talk exists in the verbal communication of our daily life.It appears when humans have different attitudes,values or thoughts.If this special linguistic phenomenon is handled appropriately,it will be beneficial to build healthy relationships.Otherwise,it will destroy harmonious relationships.Because of its negative effect,many linguists neglect the study of conflict talk.Due to its inevitability,studies from different perspectives on conflict talk have attracted more researchers' attention,and achieved a lot recently.This study integrates Culpeper and Bousfield's Impoliteness Theory and adopts Bousfield's response patterns as the theoretical foundation to study these three questions.First,what impolite output strategies of conflict talk are employed between friends? Second,what response patterns are used in the data? Third,what are the pragmatic features of conflict talk between friends from the perspective of impoliteness?Since it is difficult to collect conflict talks between friends in real life because of privacy,the data of this thesis are collected from two popular American sitcoms,Two Broke Girls and The Big Bang Theory.After carefully finding out the conflict talks in the two sitcoms,this study analyzes what impolite output strategies and what response patterns of conflict talk are used in these conversations,and summarizes the pragmatic features of conflict talk between friends from the perspective of impoliteness.The research findings show that most impolite output strategies are reflected in the linguistic data,except the strategies of making the other feel uncomfortable,enforcing role shift and invading the other's space.Two response patterns of conflict talk are used in the data,namely,OFF-OFF pairing and OFF-DEF pairing.When two parties have a furious argument,they tend to used OFF-OFF pairing to show their anger.However,when one party tend to terminate or mitigate the conflict talk,OFF-DEF pairing will be adopted to end the conflict or make concessions.The pragmatic features of conflict talk between friends from the perspective of impoliteness are confrontation,intentionality and destructivity.The previous studies mainly focus on how to avoid conflict,while this study aims at finding out what the impolite strategies are employed to initiate or escalate conflicts.This may provide a new perspective to the further study of conflict talk.