A Study On Conflict Talk Between Couples In Marriage Battle In Light Of Linguistic Adaptation Theory

Conflict talk is a common but complex language phenomenon in socialinteraction. The term of conflict talk can be used to refer to many speech acts andevents, such as arguing, disputing, quarreling, and opposing, etc. These concepts haveone common feature, namely, one participant disagrees with another participant whenthey have different interests or opinions. Many researchers have studied conflict talkfrom different perspectives and some achievements have been made. However, fromthe literature available, researches on conflict talk between couples in Chinese TVplays are rather limited, and TV play is a microcosm of life, so the present research isintended to make a pragmatic analysis of conflict talk between couples in Chinese TVplays.Based on Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory, the present researchintegrates both qualitative and quantitative analysis to study the features, the linguisticdevices and the inducing reasons of conflict talk between couples. The data iscollected from the Chinese TV play Marriage Battle. By the analysis on the data, it isfound that conflict talk between couples is the result of linguistic choice consciouslymade by the couples in adapting to contextual correlates, so as to fulfill certaincommunicative intention.Conflict talk between couples is the result of linguistic choice made by thecouples in adapting to context beyond the mental world and context of the mentalworld. Context beyond the mental world includes the times background of this playand the special spousal relationship in this play. The awakening of feministconsciousness is the characteristic of the times background reflected in this play. Inconflict talk, the couples often adopt five linguistic devices, that is, rhetorical question,negative comment, direct negative, imperative and irony. The amount of conflict talkuttered by the women is greater than that by the men and the amount of imperativesadopted by the women is more than two times as large as that by the men. The women are more confident and powerful in the use of conflict talk. These features of conflicttalk used by the women are just the result of adapting to the times background-theawakening of feminist consciousness. The three kinds of couple modes in this play,which are the couple of strong man and strong woman, the couple of woman superiorto man and the couple of old husband and young wife, are the typical representativesof couple relationships in the modern metropolis. They are completely different fromthe traditional mode of women inferior to men.Under the spousal relationship of strong man and strong woman, both sides areaggressive. Conflict talk between them is aggravating and the amount of conflict talkis the greatest. Under the spousal relationship of woman superior to man, the man canlay down the face timely when conflict appears. The amount of conflict talk betweenthem is the least. Under the spousal relationship of old husband and young wife, thecomplementarity of both sides makes them look for effective approaches to defuseconflict. Conflict talk between them is not fierce. However, the age gap between thecouple makes them have different viewpoints on many issues. The amount of conflicttalk between them is greater than that between the couple of woman superior to man.The different features of conflict talk between couples under different spousalrelationships are just the result of adapting to the spousal relationship.Context of the mental world contains the couples’ personalities, communicativeintentions and the couples’ respective needs. The couples’ personalities which easilycause conflict are male chauvinism, female chauvinism, sensitivity and jealousness.When one party of the couple adapts to his or her own communicative intentions ofmaintaining self-image, releasing negative emotion and mitigating conflict, it tends tocause conflict talk easily. The couples’respective needs include physical needs, safetyneeds, love and belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Conflicttalk between couples is the result of the couples’ adapting to his or her own needs andnot adapting to the opposite’.The present research integrates both qualitative and quantitative analysis toconflict talk between couples in Chinese TV play Marriage Battle from the perspective of contextual correlates of adaptability, which riches the researches onconflict talk at home to some extent and sheds some light on the future researches onconflict talk between Chinese couples. At the same time, the research provides someimplications of marriage management for the post-80s generation. Of course, thelinguistic realization and the inducing reasons of conflict talk between couplesinvolve many factors and further researches are called for.