语用学视角下的冲突性言语分析 conflict talk

本科毕业设计（论文）( 2013届 )题目：语用学视角下的冲突性话语分析研究分院：文学专业：英语学生姓名：学号：指导教师：职称：讲师合作导师：职称：完成时间：2013 年月日成绩：浙江师范大学行知学院本科毕业设计(论文)正文目录Abstract. (ii)摘要 (ii)1. Introduction (1)2. Literature review (2)2.1 Previous studies on conflict talk abroad and at home (2)2.2 The relevant theories (3)2.2.1 Speech Act Theory (3)2.2.2 Politeness principles and face- threatening act (3)3. The structural patterns of conflict talk (3)3.1 Formats of initiating conflict talk (3)3.2 Formats of terminating conflict talk (6)4. The duality of conflict talk (7)4.1 The negative sides of conflict talk (7)4.1.1 An face threating act (7)4.1.2 Harm towards relationship and emotion (8)4.1.3 The damage to social harmony (9)4.2 The positive sides of conflict talk (9)4.2.1 An face maintaining act (9)4.2.2 Emotion maintenance (10)5. Conclusion (12)Works Cited (13)Perspective of PragmaticsJia YingyaAbstract: Conflict talk is a common but complicated social phenomenon. It has been studied in many fields, such as psychology, sociology, and linguistics. Through the study from the past several decades, we generally believe that conflict talk has one core common feature, that is, one participant is disagreeing with another participants when they have different opinions, quarrel, argument and disputes all belong to it. Thus, this paper aims at probing into conflict talk, coming from English television series, from the perspective of pragmatics, and giving us a better understanding for the purpose of achieving reunification and harmony in communication.Key words: conflict talk ; communication; pragmatics语用学视角下的冲突性话语分析研究郏英雅摘要：冲突性言语是一种普遍而又复杂的社会现象。

多个学术领域，如心理学、社会学、语言学等，都曾对此进行研究。

通过过去多年对冲突性言语的研究，我们普遍认为冲突都有一个共同的特征，即交际一方反对另一方立场由于彼此拥有不同观点。

争吵，争执，反驳都属于此范畴。

因此，本文旨在从语用学角度出发，分析摘自英语电视剧的冲突性言语，从而能更好地理解此现象，对构建和谐社会起到积极作用。

关键词：冲突性言语；交际；语用学Perspective of PragmaticsEnglish Department 2009 (05) Jia YingyaTutor: Zhu Xufeng1. IntroductionSpeaking of conflict talk, Leung stated that though the analysis of conflict talk has a extensive history in the social sciences, the study of discourse within conflict episodes and its feature is still relatively recent (Leung 93). Due to different values of the world, personal personalities and desires, non-cooperative discourses will take place and thus conflict talk may occur. Such phenomenon is a feature of daily life, it offers significant resources for the development of interactional competency. In other words, conflict can not only destroy a relationship, but also help maintaining it. It all depends on our attitude how to deal with it. Constructive approaches make the relationship become stronger, and effectively avoid the occurrence of further conflict; on the opposite, destructive approaches may weaken or cause gap in the relationship.Conflict talk has been much focused on and researched by linguistics in recent years, a great number of studies are published. Some are about couples, Schaefer points out there are five top reasons for martial conflict: a failure of communication, financial difficulties, sexual difficulties, problems with in-laws, and disagreements over child rearing (Schaefer 23).Some are about children. In 1990, Corsaro William A. And Rizzo Thomas compared conflict talk between Italian nursery school students and the students in the U.S.; Catherine S. P. Farris analyzed the data collected from videotaped interaction among girls and boys aged from 5 to 6 in Taiwan, and found out that the cross-sex conflicts and the same-sex boy-boy conflicts have the same frequency, and the girls subvert the masculine position in conflicts in nowadays changing society (qtd. in Catherine 552).With the aid of pragmatics, many researchers have conducted the constructure of conflict talk, tried to explain the external factors leading to occurence. And on the other hand, more and more people begin to value the importance of interpersonal relation, lots of literature about conflict talk has been published, such as John Gray’s Men from Mars, Women are from Venus. T his paper aims to broaden our understanding, shedding some lights on the duality of conflict talk.2. Literature review2.1 Previous studies on conflict talk abroad and at homeDuring the long discovery history, many terms are used to refer to conflict: backstage language behavior, the contracting routine, adversative episode, conflictive illocutions, disagreement, disorderly discourse. Since Grimshaw in 1990 first put forward conflict talk, it comes into linguistics as a term.In 1981, Jacobs and Jackson distinguish two concepts of argument that comes from our daily life: one can make an argument for a certain position, serves as a type of speech act; one can have an argument with someone, serves as a type of interaction (Jacobs and Jackson 121).In 1985, Schiffrin defines conflict talk as oppositional argument. In his research, he makes a distinction between oppositional arguments and rhetorical arguments. The former one implies one or more speakers support openly disputed positions; the other one indicates that a speaker presents an intact monologue supporting a disputable position. He also thinks when more than two speakers openly engage in disputing over a position across a series of turns, oppositional argument occurs (Schiffrin 58).In 1990, Allen D. Grimshaw summarizes the study of conflict talk in his book Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigation of Arguments in Conversation. About conflict talk, Goodwin points out “These phenomena, no matter how minute and apparently ‘linguistic’in character, must be investigated as forms of social action and not simply manifestations of underlying grammatical machinery” (qtd. in Goodwin 4).In 2002, Honda thinks conflict talk has two levels. In the narrow sense, conflict talk is a speech activity in two parties attempt to maintain their own positions by means of opposition, which the manifestation of negativity against the other party’s position. In the broad sense, conflict talk is a process of opposition includes the manifestation of opposition and the whole process of inducement, initiation, development, management of opposition (Honda 580).Domestic scholars do not notice the phenomena of conflict talk until the beginning of 21st century. Zhao Yingling, one of them, makes a great contribution to the study. On the basis of construction models, she defines conflict talk as one party opposes the other one’s words, deeds, manners or two parties hold different viewpoints towards some people or some thing (Zhao Yingling 38). In addition, she creatively divides conflict talk into three processes: the formate of initiating conflict talk; the format of maintaining conflict talk; the format of terminating conflict talk. Each format can be classified into several sub-formats. For example, there are 4 resolutions of terminating conflict talk: submission, compromise, the third part intervention, standing off.Zhao Zhongde and Zhang Lin in 2005 published a thesis named Speech Conflicts and Relevance Theory. They think lacking relevance is the main cause leading to conflicttalk. Then the basis of relevance is the mutual-manifestness (qtd. in Zhao Zhongde and Zhang Lin 19). If participants do not understand each other, conflict will break out. In the meanwhile, the positive cognitive effect can increase the speech relevance while the negative cognitive effect result in conflict. The more negative responses, the more possibility conflict talk will happen.Zhang Delu and Li Xiangyun in 2007 published a paper named “an analysis on structure features of quarrel conflict”. In this paper, they mainly introduce the features and ending models of conflict talk. Repetition, overlapping, insults and interruption are unique phenomenon in quarrel discourse (qtd. in Zhang Delu and Li Xiangyun 5).2.2 The relevant theories2.2.1 Speech Act TheoryIn fact, conflict talk is composed of speech act. According to Austin’s observation, sentences can often be used to report states of affairs, the utterance of some sentences must be treated as the performance of an act in specified circumstance (Yan Chensong and Gao Hang 277). He first introduced the concept of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Then John Searle developed the theory on the basis of Austin’s achievement. In his book Speech Acts, he made a clear distinction between constatives and performatives. He thought the smallest units of human communication are various speech acts instead of different different sentences patterns.Zhao Yingling suggests that conflict talk is constructed by more than one speech act. The principle sequential unit in a conflict is the action-opposition sequence, in which actions that can be deemed as arguable are opposed by the recipient and thus retrospectively become the initial point of a verbal conflict (Zhao Yingling 35).2.2.2 Politeness principles and face- threatening actPoliteness theory is formulated by Penelope Brown and Levinson in 1978. They proposed that there are universals in face wants: positive face and negative face. The former one means the desire to be wanted and needed by others, alternately, negative face refers to the desire to be unimpeded by others. The two aspects of face are the basic wants in any social interaction.Conflict talk can also be explained to face-threatening act, which is short for FTA. It inevitably damages the face of the speaker by acting in opposition to the wants and needs of him.3. The structural patterns of conflict talk3.1 Formats of initiating conflict talkIt is commonly accepted that conflict talk involves three phases: initiating moves,maintaining moves and terminating moves. According to Muntigi and Turnbull, the sequence of conflict talk generally has three steps:A: StatementB: Counterstatement (i.e. B disagrees with A)A: Counterstatement (i.e. A disagrees with B)(qtd. in Muntigl, P. & Turnbull, W 225-256)They think the degree of face-threatening in step 2 determines the orientation of step 3. So the more speaker B threatens speaker A’s face, the more possibility conflict talks will occur. To sum up, there are generally 3 types of initiating move: claim and counter claim, directive and refusal and provoking and opposing. I will simply explain above types.a. Claim vs. counterclaimClaim refers to the act of making one’s point of view on something or somebody known, which is a normal speech act. If the other party hold the opposite opinion toward this statement, he or she will respond correspondently, so that the motivation of conflict talk is constructed. In a word, to lessen the possibility of conflict talk, the second party’s agreement is preferred while refusal is unaccepted. Here comes an example:Example 1 from Ice Age 1 A: Diego B: MannyA: I’m sorry.B: No, you are not, not yet.A: Listen, I can help you.B: Stay close, Sid. We can find our way out.A: You can’t. Pax is too strong. You have to trust me.B: Trust you? Why in the world would we trust you?Apparently, Manny is inclined to his own perspective, thus refuses Diego’s help. This is a typical conflict talk started from claim vs. counterclaim.b. Directive vs. refusalDirective is defined as attempts to get the addressee to do or too refrain from doing something. Brown & Levinson indicate that directives present a threat to the addressee’s negative face in a sense: Directives predicate some future activity of the addressee, and thus impose certain pressure on the addressee for doing that activity (Brown and Levinson176). Therefore, if the addressee refuses, conflict talk could occur with much possibility.Example 2 from Modern Family S2E2A: Phil B: Luke C: ClairA: Wait, are we talking about Mr. Kleezak?B: Yeah. I went over to his house to get my ball, and we’ve been hanging out.C: You were in Mr. Kleezak’s house? Luke, that is not okay.B: Why not? He’s really nice and funny. Listen to this joke. Okay, two krauts walk into abar.C: Phil, this is not good.A: Honey, don’t jump to conclusions. Let him finish the joke.B: and one of them has a limp.A: Uh-huh.C: You may not go back to that man’s house.B: Why not?C: Because...he’e weird.A: And not very nice.B: That’s what you said about my friend Oliver.C: Oliver. Oliver who almost burned down our garage?B: He likes to melt stuff. Like you;re so perfect.A: Luke, I’m sorry, but your mother and I just aren’t comfortable with this.B: That’s not fair. You don’t even know him ‘cause you’re too afraid of him.A: Buddy, we’re just looking out for you.B: You never like any of my friends.(After saying these, Luke runs out of the house) Clair, as a mother, directs Luke to perform an action: Not to play with their weird neighbor Mr. Kleezak. Luke refuses her directive by asking “Why not” and tells a joke to show Mr. Kleezak’s humor. Accordingly, Clair shows her refusal which initiates the conflict. With regard to the speech act theory, there are two speech actions involved: challenges and demands for explanation.c. Provoking question vs. opposingThis is a particular pattern of initiating conflict talk. It generally exists in the form of question-and-answer. The question usually appear rhetorically, enjoying a stronger force than statements and conveying complaint to the addressee. Accusations and complaints are the two major factors that lead to dispute in normal conversations, used to express disapproval of what is deemed an unacceptable action, attitude, or characteristic on the part of the opponent.Example 3 from Modern Family S1E13A: Mitchell B: JayA: Can I talk to you for a second?B: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What’s the matter?A: “A friend of my son”? That’s how you introduce Cam?B: That’s why you came here?A: Dad, it’s--it’s just more than a little insulting. Cam and I have together for 5years. We--we have a daughter.B: It’s--look at these guys. They look like they came out of the 1800s. You see Hugo over there? After lunch, he ordered a sanka.A: No, they’re--they’re not the ones that are uncomfortable with this. You are. You...You’ve never been completely accepting of me and now that I has a family, it’s getting a little cold.B: These guys don’t understand the gay thing. Why create an awkward situation. That’s all I’m saying...We need some background to better understand the dispute in this example. About the thing his son is a gay, Jay accepts it reluctantly. So he always hides something in front of his old friends. This conversation happens after Mitchell knowing Jay introduces Cameron, his soul mate, as“a friend of my son”instead of “the partner of my son. Mitchell feels offended, so he employs a rhetorical question “a friend of my son”to express his extremely complaint to his father. Then the conflict talk between Mitchell and Jay initiates.3.2 Formats of terminating conflict talkThere is an old saying in China: Never do things by halves. Once conflict talk happened, it will end no matter how long it takes and in which way. Some scholars have begun to focus on which strategies disputants may use during the process of conflict talk. Tracing back to 1990, Vuchinich observed five formats: submission, a third party intervention, compromise, stand-off without submission and withdrawal. Decades later, Zhao yingling and other researchers also came to the similar conclusion. Recent studies of naturally occurring conflict talk appear to show that the resolution is not yet accomplished, but still has some widely recognized. I will introduce some representative formats following.In many cases, both parties of conflict talk insist on their own opinions, being reluctant to submit a little. As a result, conflicts remain unresolved. On that condition, the solution of stand-off or laying the conflict aside is more preferable rather than endless argument. For now, stand-off is the most common termination in conflicts.Example 4 from 18 to Life S2E9A :Tom B: Mother C：FatherA: What the hell is that?B:I was doing my job.A: Your job is to take care of me; You are my mother!B: Oh, so now you want my help?C: Help with what?A: She didn’t tell you? Mom failed me.B: I had no choice. He didn’t do the assignment.A: I outdid it! It was everything you like but any better.C: How can you fail latkes? They’re Jewish french fries.A: Not the way I make them.B: And that is exactly why you failed! I’m sorry. But you were supposed to replicate my dish exactly, and you didn’t. I didn’t fail you. You fail yourself.In this example, the conflict between Tom and his mother focuses on the issue of Tom didn’t cook latkes in mother’s way, which later failed Tom’s test. Then they both expressed their dissatisfaction till the terminating phase. In the end, this dispute was put aside unresolved, ending in Tom’s walking out with anger.Submission and compromise look similar, but still have some differences. Submission means one participant totally agree with the other’s statement or obey his order; while compromise refers to that one disputant offers a concession which is approved by both sides, his view is rather approached to than totally accepted. Based on disputant’s concession, the other party is biased to accepting the compromise instead of insisting on the original intention.Example 5 from Moder Family S2E3A: Gloria B: JayA: You’re still going to golfing? God sent you a sign, Jay!B: What, the earthquake? You got be kidding me.A: You say that you’re never going to church again, and the ground shakes with a vengeance.B: I’ll prove it to you. God, if you have a problem with me golfing, send me sign! I mean, throw in a little lightning! Put on a show.A: Don’t talk to god like that!B: Trust me, if god had a problem with me, he would let me know without shaking the whole city. He would be a little more specific.A: I’m not gonna argue with you. I don’t want to get upset. Vlmanos, Manny.This is a typical example using the strategy of compromise. Jay is a atheist, so he chooses to go golfing instead of going to church with Gloria. But Gloria firmly believes that the previous earthquake was a sign to force Jay to go to church. Hence conflict talk between them explodes. At last, Gloria offers a concession which leaves Jay alone. The problem is thus solved by the way of compromise made by both sides. If turning to the format of submission, Jay will give up his original intention and go with Gloria.4. The duality of conflict talk4.1 The negative sides of conflict talk4.1.1 An face threating actFor the offended party, conflict talk is one of the face threatening acts. Because conflict talk conveys complaint or disappointment about something connected to the opposite side, the offended’s face is threatened, especially his positive face, which stands for the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some executors. According to Leech’s politeness theory, the ideal interpersonal conversation should be observed by following rules: minimize cost to other and maximize benefit to other, ormaximize cost to self and minimize benefit to self; minimize dispraise of other and maximize praise of other, minimize praise of self and maximize dispraise to self; minimize disagreement between self and other and maximize agreement between self and other; minimize antipathy between self and other, and maximize sympathy between self and other. Obviously, conflicts violate above rules.Example 6 from Emily Owens, M.D. S01E03A: Marian B: EmilyA: What happened?B: Oh we found a mass on the frontoparietal...A: I meant why did you go over my head for an MRI authorization?B: Oh, you were in the surgery.A: You could have sent a note.B: But it wasn’t exactly an emergency.A: Then you wait.B: I’m sorry. I just...we would’ve had to wait a whole another day. And I felt really bad for...A: Let me tell you about bad. When you ignore hospital protocol, that’s bad. When you go over my head, that’s bad. And when you piss me off twice in your frist week of work, that’s very bad.Emily is a houseman working under Marian. When she operated a surgery without the head’s permission, Marian feels so angry about she exceeding her authority. Then she employs “What happened”to open this conversation. This is also a speech action: needing an explanation. Unfortunately, Emily can’t defend herself with a sound excuse.So Marian greatly debases what Emily had done and criticizes her relentlessly. In personal communication, Marian’s action is undesirable, because it obviously violates Leech’s politeness theory, threatening the other’s face.4.1.2 Harm towards relationship and emotionConflict talk is a negative act towards specific behaviors occurring in specific contexts. When they conflict with how one wants them to be or how one thinks they ought to be, their situated behaviors are viewed negatively. Therefore, such behaviors always have emotional consequences. In an investigation, Thompson found the child is likely to feel anger and resentment towards the parent if forced to comply with during the process of conflict talk, besides, this would decrease the child’s willingness to embrace and internalize the parental message. Such particular phenomenon also exists in other relation. If faced with complaints or blame, their repugnant feeling will get stronger. So once conflict talk is stared, the emotion among participants more or less get weaken. Example 7 from Modern Family S2E16A: Neighbor B: Jay C: Gloria(Ding Dong)A: Where the hell is the god?B: Who is it?C: It’s our neighbor.A: The dod is gone.B: Maybe it run away.A: It was chained to a tree.C: Maybe your wife took it.A: According to my credit card, my wife is in Europe searching for the world’s most expensive hotel.B: Then what do you want from us?A: You come over complaining about the dog. And the next day it’s gone? You tell me. B: I’ll tell... C: How dare you? You come to our house, you ring our bell many times, and you accuse us of taking your dog.B: You should go home.A: We’re not done here.Previously, Gloria complained to the neighbor about his dog’s barking. When the dog disappeared mysteriously, Mr neighbor naturally doubted what Gloria might have done to his dog. To this accusation, Gloria flied into a rage immediately, and gave him tough counterattack. From then, their relation came to a deadlock, the only neighborhood feeling left also gone with wind.4.1.3 The damage to social harmonyIn reality, conflict talk is quite normal. Once conflicts are triggered, appropriate linguistic strategies will mitigate them. But not all of them are well disposed, if anger gets out of control, it will block any chances of negotiation. More seriously, conflict talk will evolve into a higher level-- Body Violence. It’s all due to conflict talk have lost it’s novelty. Nowadays, the crim caused by verbal conflict is rising at an alarming speed. In social process of vigorously advocating spiritual civilization, we firmly believe that these violences seriously influence social atmosphere, going against the construction of harmonious society. In order to upgrade the level of our civilization and have better social conduct, conflict talk should be treated with caution.4.2 The positive sides of conflict talk4.2.1 An face maintaining actTo keep each other's positive face not compromised, the speaker is necessary to use active politeness strategy, making no stone unturned to let both face respected. Relatively, impoliteness is the factor that affect the opposing party’s face, causing conflict talk. But from the another point of view, through the whole discourse of conflict talk, participants just strive for storing their own face by the mean of threating the other side’s face. As we know, impolite verbal behaviors such as coercive impositions, insults and threats, tend to linger the hearer’s memory, causing negative emotions long after they’ve been uttered.Such utterances can later be recalled in an attempt by the offended party to restructure the original offence and thus retroactively defend against the face attack. So it’s possible for the offended to restore his/her face through continuous exchanges with the offender, either in a single long conversation (Culpeper,2008).Example 8 from Broken Girls S2E14A: Max B CarolineA: This is crazy. Can’t I just text them and tell them we can’t do the job?B: No, you can’t text them. We need the money. And stop with all the texting. Maybe if you were thinking less about texting with my ex-boyfriend, you wouldn’t have lost your earring in the first place.A: You should have just said it. You have a problem with me texting Andy....B: You’d think your loyalty to your best friend and business partner would be more important than some stupid animal friendship! I mean... I’m surprised I even have to tell you that, Max. It’s kind of girl code.A: Oh, I am way to tired to hear “ girl code.” Shut it down.B: Girl code, Max. Girl code.A: Shut up, Caroline. Shut up!B: I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response.A: Yeah, that was the goal, bitch.B: I don’t have time for this. I have to find an earring that you lost in one of these thousand cupcakes, bitch!A: The thousand cupcakes that you forgot to tell me about!B: And the girl code means that when a girl breaks up with someone, you don’t interfere with their boyfriend because she needs some distance!A: Well, why didn’t you tell me that when I asked you 14 hours ago?Caroline and Max have taken $4,000 cupcake business. Unfortunately, Max’s earring accidently falls into one of 1,000 cupcakes. Then Caroline blames Max for texting her ex-boyfriend incessantly. When she mentions something about “girl code”, Max, as the defender, decides to fight back for restoring her face. After several rounds, Caroline offers a concession but rejected by Max, because Max starts another attack by calling Caroline bitch. For now, Caroline turns into the defender. To maintain her face, she responds immediately.4.2.2 An emotion maintaining actTannen discusses such a phenomenon when she traces family conflict discourse from its first occurrence, an argument between a husband and wife about household duties. With the development of conflict talk, both sides probably reestablish cooperation and restore each other’s face, the spouse’s emotion is not only maintained, but also sublimed. Besides, in another research of Tannen’s, she studies the difference ofconversation style between men and women. Faced with verbal opposition, women usually use some language approaches to avoid the influence on interpersonal concordance, while men view conflict talk as the way of involvement, improving personal relations. So in some way, conflict talk helps reinforcing emotions.Example 9 from Modern Family S2E7A: Jay B: MannyA: Going to meet your mother. Figured it out all by myself. Two years ago, we got our marriage license, we went to a little hot dog stand. She said was the most romantic meal she ever had in her life.B: (silent)A: That’s it, isn’t it?B: (silent)A: Yeah, that’s it.B: (silent)A: Get this into your head, you can give me the cold shoulder the rest of your life, Jack’s not coming back. See, I could overlook the goofing off, but you could have ben seriously hurt today. Anybody outs my kid in danger doesn’t get a second chance ever. I’ll see you later.B: Did you just call me your kid?A: Oh, geez.B: You never said that before.A: Sure I have.B: (shaking his head)A: Well, of course you’re my kid. I mean, what do you think?When Jay fired Jack because of some mistakes letting Manny get hurt, Manny , as Jay’s stepson, chooses silent outcry to protest against Jay’s unjustifiable decision. At last, Jay confesses that what he done is all out of love, he wouldn’t allow people who puts his kid in danger to get a second chance. His words successfully throw off Manny’s reserve towards his stepfather. In the meanwhile, conflict talk changes into catalysator that improves father-child relationship immediately.Example 10 from Modern Family S4E1A: Manny B: Jay C: Gloria D: MitchellA: Now that he knows where he stands in the shadow of your new baby!B: What’s he talking about?C: He’s talking about I am pregnant.D: Oh, come on.B: You gotta be kidding me! GloriaC: And if you’re too set in your old ways to be happy about it, I can raise it on my own. I have done it before, and I can do it now! I come from a very long line of strong Latin。