Study On The Conflict Talks In The Teahouse Under The Adaptation Theory

Applied with linguistic adaptation theory, this thesis studies conflict talk based on the39television series of The Teahouse which is adapted from Lao She’s debut drama. This thesis also takes a panoramic view of conflict talks with an aim to reveal the historical glamour of the original and to open a wider window for further studies on the linguistic adaptation theory.Through detailed analysis on442case examples of conflict talk in The Teahouse, the thesis employs methodologies like categorical analysis, argumentation with examples, thus further seeking the root causes of conflict talk and its corresponding expression strategies. The thesis proceeds as follows. Firstly, this thesis inspects the phenomena of conflict talk from three perspectives, the physical world, the social world and the mental world. It is found that conflict talk caused by elements in relation to the physical world can also be further classified into temporal reference, spatial reference and nonverbal reference. Likewise, the social world is influenced by value, faith and communication norm whilst the mental world is governed by cognition, intention, affection and wish. Secondly, the thesis discusses the expression strategies of conflict talk based on the above classification. In accordance with the above classification, expression strategies falls into deixis, types of sentences and meaning generation. Expression strategy of deixis can be divided into deixis of one’s own, deixis of interlocutor and deixis of others. Types of sentences can be further sorted into narrative sentence, interrogative sentence, imperative sentence and interjectional sentence. As for meaning generation, it can be categorized into17types, namely objective statement, negative judgment, re-mention, repetition, melonymy, comparison, exaggeration, irony, parataxis, humor, preinstall, nonce word, two-part allegorical saying, semantic absurdness, colloquialism, circumbendibus and metapragmatic comment. Through analysis above, it is found that conflict talk in The Teahouse is overwhelmingly produced with elements in terms of the social world. Meanwhile, expression strategy for conflict talk mainly uses types of sentences with interrogative sentence as its primary form. The drama is also rich in the expression of meaning generetion and each of its subordinate method has remarkable function.