Conflict Talk In Records Of The Warring States Period From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Conflict talk, as a common phenomenon in daily life, is caused by the perception of latent incompatible goals. Its complexity due to some factors like context, social status, discourse power, and some subjective factors provides a variety of perspectives for analysis. Some scholars have summarized the properties of conflicts, a valuable resource for later researches. In China, there are only a few works about conflict talk because of the difficulty in collecting data. However, it is still important to study Chinese conflict talks and it’s beneficial to enrich the theory of conflict talk.This thesis adopted qualitative method assisted by quantitative method to explore how one person or group took advantage of appraisal resources to produce empathy, affect the others’opinions and convince them in the terminal stage of conflict talk based on the framework of appraisal theory with40cases in Records of the Warring States Period as the data. This thesis will provide a new perspective to understand conflict interaction and the strategies in resolving conflict in the field of conflict of interest. The40cases that have been selected according to the property of conflict talk are successful in resolving conflict. The software Annotool and Antconc was employed to analyze the distribution of appraisal resources in the data. The analysis proved that in order to avoid suspicion of listeners so as to realize successful persuasion, the attitudinal recourses were realized in the form of saturation, i.e. positive resources and negative resources were dispersed in speeches at a similar proportion to indicate a stance without any obvious intention. It is found that explicit resources are far more frequently used than implicit resources because most explicit resources are non-authorial affect, which has a function of powerful emotional infection while avoiding the obvious persuasive intention. Judgement and appreciation are combined with ideology and psychology of the listener so as to cater for their valuation and interest. Engagement introduces other voices to position the speaker at a favorable condition either by strongly claiming their viewpoints or by highlighting the objectivity of their speech and graduation strengthens the voice of the speaker to make the argument more convincing.