Parent-child Conflict Talk In The Greatest

Interpersonal communication is a normal and important activity in our daily life.In this process,conflict talk occurs due to people's different opinions,purposes and demands.It can be represented as the speech acts of arguing,disputing,quarreling,opposing,squabbling and the like.Conflict talk can be found everywhere,even in a family where people have more intimate relations.If the conflict talk among family members is not solved in appropriate ways,it may lead to destructive and disruptive consequences.Previous studies mostly pay attention to the conflict talk between couples,mothers and daughters-in-law,or parents and teenagers.There are few studies focusing on the conflict talk between parents and their adult children.Therefore,this thesis intends to make a pragmatic analysis on this genre of discourse.With the data collected from the Chinese reality show The Greatest Love,the study analyzes 60 conflict talks between parents and their adult children from the perspective of speech act theory and conversation analysis.It employs both qualitative approach and quantitative approach to discuss three aspects of parent-child conflict talk.The research questions can be listed as follows:(1)What are the linguistic structures of parent-child conflict talk?(2)What are the causes of parent-child conflict talk?(3)What strategies can be adopted to mitigate parent-child conflict talk?The results can be concluded as follows.Firstly,parent-child conflict talk can be divided into three phases:initiation stage,escalation stage and termination stage.In the initiation stage of parent-child conflict talk,claim-counter claim,order-refusal,and provoking question-opposing answer are found to be the major linguistic structures.Among them,claim-counter claim and order-refusal occur more frequently,which shows that parents and their children tend to express their opposite views in direct ways.In the escalation stage,structures of parent-child conflict talk are represented as negation,interruption,repetition,explanation and rhetorical question.They are often used in combination to intensify verbal conflict.Parent-child conflict talk is often ended with concession,followed by compromise,withdrawal and topic-shifting which take up the similar proportion,and third-party intervention accounts for the least.It indicates that parents and their adult children are likely to solve the conflict immediately.Secondly,the study finds that the ideological difference and unequal power relation between parents and children are the major reasons leading to their conflict talk.Thirdly,based on the analysis of the collected data,strategies for mitigating parent-child conflict talk are provided,including responding with token agreement,using hedges,being humorous and keeping silent.