The Analysis Of Conflict Talk In Chinese And American Job-hunting Programs

Conflict refers to a kind of contradicting or disputing state caused by the argument about different opinions, interests, principles, and purposes between groups and individuals.Its typical feature is incompatibility and contrariety. From the way of happening, conflict can be divided into verbal conflicts and non-verbal conflicts. Since the study in this thesis is about the conflict talks in Job-hunting Programs, it belongs to study of verbal conflicts.Conflict talk is regarded as a common and complicated language phenomenon, frequently occurring in people’s daily communication. The communicators can’t agree with each other in communication, thus causing conflict talk. Conflict talk is a big obstacle for successful communication. There is an intimate relationship between language and job-hunting. In recent years, people begin to study conflict talk in workplace, because job-hunting has become a widespread issue.The thesis selects conflict talk from The Apprentice and Only You to study the following questions:(1) What are the patterns of conflict talk in the two programs?(2) What causes conflict talk in job-hunting programs?(3) What are differences in terms of conflict talks between The Apprentice and Only You?What causes those differences?After analyzing the data, the thesis reveals the following findings:Firstly, conflict talk in job-hunting programs can be divided into three stages: the initiating stage, the maintaining stage and the terminating stage. In the initiating stage,conflict occurs by two means. The first type is that the speaker starts the conversation by a claim, but the hearer disagrees with him/her and the second type is that communicators use opposing question to show their disagreements. In the maintaining stage, there are three patterns: argument, repetition and interruption. In the terminating stage, conflict talk ends by obedience, compromise, ending in a draw and interrupted by the third party.Secondly, through detailed study and analysis on the data, the present study reveals the reasons of conflict talk: in the process of ostensive-inferential communication, the hearer cannot always realize the real intention of the speaker; and because of different cognitive contexts, communicators will argue with each other.Lastly, the author compares conflict talk in The Apprentice and Only You and finds that there are differences between them, and these differences are mainly manifested in the way of each stage of conflict talk. On this basis, the author also explores what those differences from the perspective of Hofstede’s value dimensions.The thesis aims to help English learners understand the reason of conflict talk and how to avoid conflict talk effectively so as to communicate with people successfully in daily life.