A Memetic Study On Family Members’ Conflict Talk In Modern Family

Conflict talk is produced when participants in a conversation are holding different opinions about one topic,and it is unavoidable as a common language phenomenon.In Modern Family,conflict talk can be seen everywhere,thus the study selects 120 episodes of conflict talk among family members from this American TV series,applies the methods of qualitative and quantitative research to classify conflict talk,and focuses on applying memetics,a new theory in pragmatics which is assisted with conversation analysis to construct an adaptive theoretical model,aiming at interpreting conflict talk in each phase and investigating the competitive and dynamic characteristics of conflict talk.After a concrete analysis of family members’ conflict talk from the initiating,escalating and terminating phase,the research conclusions are as follows: 1)Memetics,as a fresh theory to explain language and culture phenomena,could be used to interpret conflict talk.At this time,conflict talk is triggered by memes’ competition.2)Instruction vs.rejection,provoking question vs.opposing answer and claim vs.counterclaim are the three forms which cause conflict talk,and claim vs.counter claim appears most frequently among them.Meme hooks initiate three kinds of conflict talk,including ideational,interpersonal and textual conflict talk,and textual conflict talk is the major form.Combining conflict talk’s three forms and three kinds of meme hooks’ results in this initiating period,it is evident that most conflict talks among family members are initiated by the claim vs.counterclaim format in textual aspect in the initiating phase.3)Direct confrontations,explanations,each conveying his/her own points,rhetorical questions and non-obedience are the main five formats which escalate conflict talk and the former four formats could be included in arguments;direct confrontation is found to be the most common format after a quantitative analysis.During this period,conflict memes’ transmitting is mainly realized through verbal and non-verbal vectors;verbal vectors cover two aspects,the lexical level and the meaning level;and it is found that most memes are spread by verbal vectors in lexical level after the analysis;also,non-verbal and verbal vectors usually appear together.Besides,two infection phenomena,informational and emotional infection phenomenon will appear in conflict talk’s transmitting procedure,and emotional infection possesses a higher frequency.Combining conflict talk’s five formats and two aspects of verbal vectors in this escalating period,it can be found that most conflict talks among family members are intensified by the direct confrontation format in lexical level and the rhetorical question format in meaning level;combining conflict talk’s two aspects of verbal vectors and infection phenomena,it is discovered that conflict memes are chiefly transmitted through emotional infection in the meaning level.4)Stalemate,withdrawal,compromise,submission,shifting the focus and third party intervention are the six formats which terminate conflict talk and stalemate appears most frequently among them.As the results of the hosts’ memetic competitions,conflict talk in this period can be concluded as three major types,i.e.compromise,stalemate and win or lose.The type of compromise includes withdrawal,compromise,shifting the focus and third party intervention;stalemate is an independent type;and the win or lose type is just submission.And it is found that stalemate still occupies the largest proportion among the three.Combining conflict talk’s six formats and three types in this terminating period,it is obvious that the ways in which conflicts end can be placed into two categories,conflict left and conflict solved.Still,the analysis result is that stalemate which leaves conflict unsolved can be seen as the leading format which terminates conflict talk among family members in the termination process.5)In the process of replication and propagation,memes are transmitted through vectors from one host to another host.Hosts can choose not to transmit conflict memes,choose to recombine memes or memeplexes,or avert the most common conflict formats to destroy conflict memes’ replication loop,resolving conflict talk effectively meanwhile.This paper,based on the relationship between language and memes and previous studies,systematically summarizes the causes and resolutions of conflict talk,and finds out the correlations between the formats and meme competitions of conflict talk presented in each phase,which indicates that memes and conflict talk are closely connected and lays a theoretical foundation for the subsequent related researches.This study is also beneficial for promoting family members’ comprehension,realizing peaceful communication,creating nice family living environment and building a harmonious society.Future researchers could consider applying corpus-based method to analyze more texts.