A Study On The Conflict Talk From The Perspective Of Linguistic Adaptation Theory

Conflict talk is a common but complicated linguistic phenomenon in daily life.However,according to the current research situation,there is a lack of exploration in this field.Moreover,the existing studies of family conflict talks are mostly independent studies between husband and wife or parent-child relationship,and there are few comprehensive studies on the conflict talks of the three relations between husband and wife,parent-child and among children.In addition,the existing studies in the field of linguistics are mostly based on the theories of discourse analysis,relevance theory and cooperation principle and the like,but few is from the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory.Therefore,this thesis takes Vershueren's linguistic adaptation theory as the theoretical framework and chooses the conflict talks in Home with Kids as the corpus,probing into the following three questions:(1)From the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory,what are the linguistic characteristics of the three types of conflict talks in Home with Kids?(2)From the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory,how do the conflict talks happen under the different contextual correlates,thus presenting such kind of linguistic characteristics?(3)From the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory,based upon the analyzed linguistic features and the causes that lead to them,what can be the strategies or methods to effectively mitigate and/or even terminate the conflict talks? Through the analysis of these three main questions,this thesis looks forward to providing reference for alleviating the conflict talks of a family,thus building a harmonious family atmosphere.In addition,the present study can also enrich the research content of linguistics to a certain extent.In order to probe into the three research questions,this thesis adopts the methods of qualitative analysis and takes Versheuren's linguistic adaptation theory as the theoretical foundation to make a pragmatic analysis of the conflict talks in Home with Kids.First of all,in the analysis of the linguistic characteristics of conflict talks,this thesis finds that among the three types of conflict talk,conflict participants tend to use strongly opposing and negative discourses,such as rhetorical questions,imperative sentences and negative comment language and so on.The linguistic characteristic of conflict talks is the result of linguistic choice.Therefore,after acquiring the language characteristics of conflict talks,this thesis starts to analyze the causes of conflict talks from the angle of adaptation to interlocutors' mental world,social world and physical world,in other word,analyzing the factors that influence the result of language choice,thus working out that the speaker's failures to adapt to the hearer's mental,social and physical world are likely to lead to conflict talks.Finally,based on the analysis of language characteristics and the causes of conflict talks,this thesis analyzes the corresponding language strategies or methods to ease and/or resolve conflict talks,finding out that participants involved in the conflict talks can moderate and/or even resolve the current conflict talks by such strategies as using humor,using hedges,shifting topics,third party's intervention and the like.Because of its universality,conflict talk is inevitable.But after analyzing its linguistic features and causes,it can help interlocutors consciously reduce or avoid the use of strongly opposing language expressions,such as rhetorical questions and imperative sentences.For another thing,it may enable interlocutors to adapt to each other's worlds as much as possible.Furthermore,even when the conflict talks happen,the interlocutors can learn from the strategies or methods analyzed and summarized in the present study to ease or even resolve the conflict talks.Therefore,the purpose of the present study lies in providing the reference to reduce the potential conflict talks or to mitigate and/or resolve the occurred conflict talks of families.