A Study On Implicit Conflict Talk

Conflict talk is a universal linguistic phenomenon in human interaction and has some negative effects on the interpersonal relationship.In recent years,more and more scholars have noticed conflict talk and made some researches,but these studies mostly focus on conflict talk with public confrontation,we call this kind of conflict talk explicit conflict talk(ECT in short).In fact,there is a kind of conflict talk without public confrontation in our communication.We call this kind of conflict talk implicit conflict talk(ICT in short).ICT is a kind of more special conflict talk,hiding the complex social,psychological and pragmatic factors under peaceful language covers,and also has significant effects on human interaction.Because the surface confrontation of ICT is not obvious and its face threatening acts are hidden,relative to the ECT,this kind of discourse is not easy to detect,therefore,this sort of talk has not been given due attention and is lack of more research.To compensate for this shortcoming,we conduct a comprehensive and systematic research on ICT.Based on our first-hand data collected from film,television and literary works,the dissertation takes ICT as the research object,making a qualitative description and interpretation of ICT,constructing theoretical framework of ICT after integrating politeness principle,impoliteness strategies and rapport management theory,revealing its essence,characteristics and pragmatic motivations as well as normalization construction on the structure and operation mechanism of ICT.This dissertation focuses on the following questions: what is ICT? What is hidden by ICT? What is the essence of ICT? What are the ways of initiating and responding to ICT in communication?What is the developmental trend of ICT? Why do people use this form of discourse ? What is the pragmatic motivation and operation mechanism of ICT? The exploration of these issues expands the understanding of conflict talk,deepens the understanding of human interaction and sheds light on the management of interpersonal relationship and the construction of harmonious society.The contents of this dissertation are briefly summarized as follows:Chapter One is an introduction of the whole research.It mainly includes the relevant aspects of this research,such as a brief survey of this study,its data,study methodology,study contents,study questions,characteristics and significance as well.Chapter Two is literature review.Because the ICT the dissertation studies comefrom film,television and literature works,firstly,this part untangled studies on dialogues in film,television and literary works,and then reviewed domestic and foreign research present situation of ECT and ICT.After tracking back their contributions and shortcomings,the necessity of this study is pointed out.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of this research,that is,rapport management theory.This chapter gives a comprehensive introduction to the theory,its key concepts,origin,elements of rapport,rapport threatening behavior,rapport management strategies,factors influencing the strategies use of rapport management and other related aspects.Chapter Four focuses on the definition and classification of conflict talk,aiming at a large number of different types of conflict talk.The chapter classifies various kinds of conflict talk by a certain criterion so as to clarify features and differences of each kind of conflict talk.By analyzing the difference between ICT and other types of conflict talk,this chapter gives a clear definition to ICT from several aspects and makes the characteristics of ICT clear and specific.Chapter Five analyzes the features of ICT.Compared with ECT,this chapter explores what ICT shelters so that the unique covert features of ICT are generalized and summarized up.Chapter Six focuses on revealing the essence of ICT.Because the language form of ICT is polite,while the meanings expressed through ICT are impolite.Does ICT belong to politeness or impoliteness? This question is what this chapter concerns.In order to answer this question,firstly this chapter discusses the relationship between ICT and politeness and impoliteness,inferring an important phenomenon---mock politeness and explaining it,and finally finding the essence of ICT.Chapter Seven elaborates pre-sequence of ICT on the basis of external display of sheltering features of ICT and internal exploring of its essence.This chapter expands the research object to texts,discussing the pre-sequence of ICT and its structure features,including the function of pre-sequence and its progression patterns.Chapter Eight discusses the insertion sequence of ICT.The insertion sequence is a common structure in ICT.Aiming at this phenomenon,this chapter investigates the causes,structural features and pragmatic effects of the insertion sequence.Chapter Nine focuses on interruption and repair of ICT.According to observation,ICT is often interrupted by one part of communicators or the third part beyond thecommunication,and there is always repair phenomenon after being interrupted.The repair can be divided into two types: self initiation-self repair,self initiation-the other side repair.In addition,this chapter also analyzes the theoretical evidence of causing interruption and repair,then exploring the communicator’s changes on psychology as well as interactional goals.Chapter Ten mainly studies retro-sequence of ICT.There are three kinds of future developmental direction in ICT: ECT,Indirect conflict talk and non-conflict talk.Studies on different development directions of ICT and its reasons enable us to learn the ICT more comprehensive.Chapter Eleven aims at interpreting ICT within the theoretical framework.In view of the fact that main contents of Rapport Management Theory has been introduced in chapter three,this chapter uses this theory to reveal the pragmatic motivation that people choose ICT,analyzes influencing factors that people use ICT,constructs its operation mechanism and elaborates its pragmatic strategies.Chapter Twelve brings forth to the conclusion of the whole dissertation,mainly including the display of the contributions,innovations and inadequacy as well.Contributions and innovations of this dissertation are as follows: in the first place,this research searches and collects a number of first-hand and valuable ICT data that are not easily collected in our daily life so that these data can provide materials for further studies on ICT or other researches.In the second place,this qualitative research on ICT makes up for the ignorance that previous scholars hold about ICT,broadening the scope of studies on conflict talks,deepening the understanding of human communication and manipulating the discourse operation mechanism.Last but not least,the findings of this study shares the theoretical implications on pragmatics,communication studies,foreign language teaching,translation and so on,shedding light on practical implications on avoiding conflict disclosure and constructing harmonious society.