An Analysis Of Conflict Talk In Monday Mornings Under The Adaptation-relevance Model

Conflict talk is an extremely common language phenomenon in social life.It refers to a state of opposition or dispute caused by different opinions between the speaker and the hearer in the process of verbal communication,which includes many speech acts,such as dispute,refutation,quarrel,opposition,etc.These speech acts often block the communication and affect the interpersonal relationship and communicative effect.Medical conflict talk is a kind of conflict talk on medical problems in the hospital.Compared with daily conversation,medical conflict talk belongs to institutional talk and has its own uniqueness.The adaptation-relevance model,which combines the advantages of linguistic adaptation theory and relevance theory,can help to explain many linguistic phenomena.The generation of conflict talk is a dynamic process,which can be explained by adaptation-relevance theory.This paper selects the American drama Monday Mornings as the research subject,adopts the qualitative and quantitative research methods,based on the adaptationrelevance model to analyze the medical conflict talk in the play,aiming to explore how the conflict talk is generated from the perspective of adaptability and relevance.This paper intends to answer the following three questions:(1)What’s the composing form of conflict talk in Monday Mornings?(2)Why does conflict talk occur during people’s communication in Monday Mornings?(3)What strategies can be adopted to mitigate or even avoid conflict talk in Monday Mornings?The findings are as follows:(1)Conflict talk consists of initiating move,conflicting move and closing move in this drama,but not all conflict talk has conflicting move.In the initiating move,there are three forms: statementnegation,question-opposing answer,order-refusal;In the conflicting move,there are five forms: argument,repetition,explanation,rhetorical question and interruption;in the ending move,there are six forms: topic shifting,compromise,third-party intervention,withdrawal,stand-off,and termination for objective environment.(2)As for the causes of conflict talk in Monday Mornings,on the one hand,it is caused by the lack of relevance of contextual assumptions,which is manifested in the conversational subject and conversational intention;on the other hand,the communicators fail to adapt to the relevant contextual correlates,that is,they fail to adapt to the relevant elements in the physical world,social world and mental world.(3)From the perspective of adaptation-relevance,three common strategies in the play can mitigate the medical conflict talk,namely submission,topic shifting and silence.Based on the theory of adaptation-relevance model,this study enriches the research perspective of conflict talk.Monday Mornings is a medical drama.The study of medical conflict talk in it can make the subjects involved in medical events more deeply understand the conflict talk,so as to avoid unnecessary doctor-patient conflict and create a harmonious working atmosphere.This study can also provide some reference for other research on institutional conflict talk.