Analysis Of Conflict Talk Between American Parents And Their Adolescent Children Based On Face Constituting Theory

Conflict talk is a dynamic and complex communication phenomenon.After more than forty years of research,in order to show the dynamic communication process of conflict talk,scholars mostly use Verschueren's language adaptation theory as the theoretical framework.At the same time,many scholars believe that conflict talk involves the face of the conflict parties.Therefore,many previous studies have been conducted with Brown & Levinson's face theory,which cannot fully reveal the face in dynamic communication.Therefore,this thesis believes that it is necessary to combine Arundale's face constituting theory(FCT)and conversational analysis to further analyze the problems of face and relationship between conflict parties in the interaction on the basis of fully analyzing adjacent turns.From the perspective of face constituting theory(FCT)and conversational analysis,this thesis selects 96 adolescent parent-child conflict episode segments from the American TV series Desperate Housewife and Weeds with the help of the definition of conflict talk in Chapter 2,aiming to answer the following three questions:(1)What types of conflict are there between American parents and adolescents in conversation?(2)How are the conflict talks between American parents and adolescents realized?(3)What strategies are there to realize the transformation of relational orientations from separateness to connectedness between American parents and adolescents?In terms of the first research question,this paper holds the point that face is relational.And the dialectical existence of separation and connection is the key factor in the formation of interpersonal relationship.Therefore,this paper works it out from the perspective on the separateness or connectedness of interpersonal relations,that is,to examine who wants to separate or connect relations in the conflict talk between American parents and their adolescent children.As for the second research question,with the help of conversational analysis,this paper summarizes the realization of conflict talk between American parents and their adolescent children from the lexical aspect and syntactic aspect.In terms of the thirdresearch question,under the guidance of face constituting theory(FCT)and conversational analysis,this paper fully analyzes face problems between conflict parties and its changes in the relationship between(or among)them based on analyzing the adjacent turns,so as to summarize the strategies that make the relationship between conflict parties change from separateness to connectedness.Based on the above research design,after qualitative and quantitative analysis of the collected corpus,this thesis draws the following conclusions: There are basically three types of conflicts between American parents and their adolescent children,namely separation of adolescents versus connection of parents,separation of parents versus connection of adolescents,and separation of both adolescents and parents.The first two types of conflict are typical two-party conflicts without a third party because there are only two parties from the beginning to the end of the conflict.However,the last type of conflict,the type of separation of both adolescents and parents,contains typical two-party conflict without a third party and a kind of more complicated two-party conflict with a third party's interfere.In such more complicated two-party conflict with a third party's interfere,when the conflict parties(two parties)initiate the conflict and maintain the conflict,a third party chooses to form an alliance with one of the conflict parties and joins the conflict by outspokenness,and then such conflict becomes a two-party conflict again until the conflict ends.In addition,in the conflict with a third party's interfere,when the third party doesn't interfere the conflict,he(or she)is a bystander,and he(or she)has a covert conflict with one of the sides in conflict.When he(or she)interfere the conflict,he(or she)becomes a side-participant by outspokenness to align with the side he agrees with.At this moment,he(or she)has a overt conflict with the other side in conflict.In terms of the realization of the conflict,this paper considers that the realization of conflict talk includes swearword,modal word and emphasis in lexical aspect and includes negative imperative sentence,negative question,disjunctive question,and if-conditional clause in syntactic aspect.In terms of conflict mitigation strategies,the most commonly used strategy by conflict parties is withdrawal(52.28%),followed by submission(20.61%),third-party intervention(12.37%),compromise(11.34%),topic-shifting(2.06%)and unexpected event(1.03%).This research is a favorable exploration of adolescent parent-child conflict talk under the guidance of face constituting theory(FCT)and conversational analysis.It is beneficial to improve interpersonal relationship and promote family harmony to some extent.