A Pragmatic Study Of Conlfict Talk Between Parents And Adolescents

The term conflict talk, in a narrow sense, refers to a type of speech act, such asopposing, disagreeing and arguing; in a broad sense, it refers to the adversativeepisode, quarrel, disputes and oppositional argument. However, there is a commonfeature about these terms, that is, one disputant disagrees with the other because ofdifferent opinions. This language phenomenon has received studies from differentperspectives in many fields, for example, philosophy, sociology, psychology,linguistics and the like. This thesis presents the conflict talk between parents andadolescents, attempting to analyze conflict talk in the pragmatic point of view, whichwill contribute to the further study of conflict talk.This thesis centers on the study of conflict talk between parents and teenagers.This study belongs to the qualitative study based on the data gathered from the TVdramas and movies. Therefore this thesis is both theory driven and data driven.After briefing the definition of the conflict talk, this thesis also review previousstudies on conflict talk. As for the theoretical framework, the Adaptation theory isintroduced to research the conflict talk.The main body of this paper is divided into three parts according to thedeveloping stages of the conflict talk. The first part is the Initiation stage, secondMaintenance and Escalation stage and third Termination stage. Adaptation theory ofJef Verschueren is used to explain the linguistic phenomenon hidden in the line of theconflict talks at every stage. In the first part, the formats of conflict talk at theInitiation stage is explored on the theory of adjacency pair and preferenceorganization of Conversation Analysis. This part also spells out causes of conflict talkbetween parents and adolescents grounded on the contextual correlates of adaptability.This part thereby put forward the most important factor that lead to the conflict: thefailure of the interculators’ adaptation to each other’s mental and social world. Thesecond part discusses the formats of conflict talk at the Maintenance and Escalationstage. This part also does an analytic study of the linguistic features of conflict talkbased on the structural objects of adaptability at the lexical, syntax, rhetoric andgrammatical level. In addition to five formats Vuchinich proposed to end a conflict,the third part does a further study of these formats and subdivides the third partyintervention into intentional, unintentional and offering intervention. Furthermore,according to the analysis of the data, it also provides a new format. The resolutionstrategies are listed and concluded with dynamics of adaptability. Nowadays, the studies on the conflict talk between parents and adolescents arenot constructed systematically, this thesis can supplement existing studies and help toease and improve the relationship between parents and adolescents.