A Study On Conflict Talk In The Joy Luck Club

Conflict talk,as a very common and complicated linguistic phenomenon in our daily life,is a confrontational or contentious state of discourse caused by differences in opinions,interests or values between the two or more sides of communication.With the continuous broadening and deepening of the studying level of conflict talk,scholars have obtained abundant achievements at home and abroad,whose research perspectives are also fruitful,such as sociology,psychology,cross-cultural communication and so on.Besides,in the field of linguistics,many scholars have studied conflict talk from the pragmatic perspective.In the literature,the author finds that most of these studies use Relevance Theory and Linguistic Adaptation Theory to analyze conflict talk,while this thesis is intended to analyze different types of conflict talk from the perspective of Speech Act Theory.The Joy Luck Club,as the representative work of Amy Tan,a Chinese-American writer,has aroused great repercussions in America once it is published.The novel mainly tells the contradiction and estrangement between four mothers and daughters,and reveals the process from conflict to integration of Chinese and American cultures.Many scholars study the novel from the perspectives of feminism,identity and cross-cultural communication.However,this thesis attempts to analyze the conflict talk among the characters in the novel.Based on theoretical basis of Speech Act Theory,this thesis takes the conflict talk in The Joy Luck Club as the corpus,which aims to make an analysis of the causes and development of conflict talk in the initial and maintaining or escalating stages of conflict from the perspectives of Austin and Searle's different classifications of speech acts and the strategies for eliminating conflict talk in the terminating stage of conflict.Here are the findings:The locutionary act usually leads to the conflict talk,because of the provocative speech or inappropriate narrative manner of one party.The illocutionary act can also cause the conflict talk on account of the differences in objective,cognition and emotion between the communicators.The conflict is usually mitigated by the constructive perlocutionart act and is often exacerbated by the destructive perlocutionary act.In terms of the direct speech act,the assertives,such as statements and claims,often bring about the conflict talk,due to the inconsistent opinions or the negation from one party.The directives,such as orders and advice,usually lead to the conflict talk,because the participants often regard the orders or advice as kinds of control or limitation over them.The commissives,such as promises and threats,which are unfulfillable or could bring loss to one party,usually give rise to the conflict talk as well.In terms of the indirect speech acts,the conventional indirect speech acts are frequently regarded as indirect directives,which can bring about the conflict talk.And the conflict talk is often caused by the non-conventional indirect speech acts,owing to the failure to meet the expectations of one party.In order to terminate conflict talk,communicators often adopt verbal pragmatic strategies,such as submission,topic-transferring,third-party intervention and humor.Sometimes communicators also adopt nonverbal pragmatic strategies,such as environment suspension and one-party withdrawal.This study not only helps people to better understand the characters and plot development in the novel,and expands the application scope of Speech Act Theory,but also helps inspire individuals to effectively alleviate or eliminate the conflict talk,and thus promote the construction of harmonious communication relations and harmonious social environment.