Communication Strategies For Conflicts In The Ingroup And Outgroup

Through an empirical and quantitative research, this thesis made a comparative study between Chinese and American respondents, which is about communication strategies for conflicts in the ingroup and outgroup. Based on the Ting-Toomey's face-negotiation theory, Hofstede's collectivism vs. individualism, Hall's high-context and low-context cultures, this thesis conducts the survey from the perspectives of interpersonal relationship, facework and cultural value orientations. Though the topic of communication strategies for conflicts has been widely discussed, combining these three perspectives together to discuss the issue is a new try. In the light of the former researchers'theories, the writer proposed the cultural value orientation (CVO) strategies, and then combined Ting-Toomey's facework strategies with the CVO strategies to discuss the Chinese and Americans'attitudes and preferences for these two kinds of strategies between two kinds of interpersonal relationships: ingroup and outgroup.Three hypotheses were made on the basis of the former researches, and a quantitative study was carried out through a questionnaire survey done among the Chinese and Americans. The hypotheses were supported and some conclusions have been reached: because of cultural differences and inter-group bias, Chinese respondents are more mutual and other-face oriented in conflicts, and communicate in a more indirect and implicit way, while Americans are more self-face oriented, and communicate in a more direct and explicit way. Furthermore, Chinese culture highly emphasizes on the division of"ingroup"and"outgroup", therefore, the strategies they adopted in the communication vary. It has been found that in conflicts Chinese respondents are more likely to use avoiding, compromising, obliging and H.C. strategies in ingroup than in outgroup and disagree to use dominating and L.I. strategies in ingroup. With regard to Americans, they agree to use dominating and compromising strategies in both groups in conflicts. Additionally, they use L.I. strategy more frequently in outgroup than in ingroup and they disagree to use avoiding and obliging strategies in both groups. As for H.C. strategy, they do not absolutely disagree to use it in ingroup and outgroup, though their attitude is not positive either. Statistical results show that Americans are less obvious in changing communication strategies according to different types of interpersonal relationships than the Chinese do. Furthermore, a conclusion can be inferred from the analysis results: compromising strategies are more likely to be used in ingroup, the closer interpersonal relationship; L.I. and dominating strategies are more likely to be used in outgroup, the looser interpersonal relationship. Finally, the thesis revealed that there is no fixed communication strategy for dealing with conflicts in any cultures, because people in any cultures will use the strategies flexibly according to the interpersonal relationships.