A Study Of Conflict Talk Between Couples In TV Talk Shows From The Perspective Of Impoliteness

Conflict talk is a common linguistic phenomenon in every day life, containing various speech acts and speech events like arguing, disputing, quarreling, opposing,squabbling, etc. It is often seen between couples, parents and children, teachers and students, mothers and daughters in law, etc. Of all the relationships above, couples are believed to have conflict talk more frequently and more fiercely. Since conflict talk may have a negative effect on interpersonal relationship, it is often associated with impoliteness. According to Culpeper (2003), impoliteness refers to communicative strategies aiming to attack face and thus causing social conflict and disharmony. This study, based on Bousfield's (2008) impoliteness model, aims to find out the impoliteness strategies that are commonly used in conflict talk between couples and the corresponding response patterns to impoliteness, as well as the gender differences in impoliteness.Qualitative approach and quantitative approach are adopted in this study to analyze the data collected from ???????(Love Battle),a TV talk show program aiming at mediating conflicts between couples. Altogether 100 pieces of conflict talk are collected from Episode 20160601 to Episode 20161229 and transcribed from oral to written language, each containing 4 to 15 turns.Based on Bousfield's (2008) impolitness model, this study has found realization of some impoliteness strategies identified by Bousfield, including Challenges, Seek disagreement, Hinder /block, Criticize, Be uninterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic,Sarcasm, Condescend,scorn or ridicule, Disassociate from the other and Use inappropriate identity markers. Among those, the strategy of Challenges is highly employed by couples, as well as a combination of Challenges and other strategies,such as Challenges & Criticism, Challenges & Disagreement, Challenges & Hinder/block. Meanwhile, the author has identified two new impoliteness strategies ---Conjecture the other, and Expose the other's privacy. In addition, the response patterns to impoliteness in the data have been analyzed as well. It is found out that,different from what has been discovered by Bousfield (2008), OFF-OFF pairings are twice as many as OFF-DEF pairings in conflict talk between couples.This study analyzes the gender differences in the employment of impoliteness strategies and response patterns. Generally speaking, women tend to use intense strategies more frequently than men, while men would prefer a cold or indifferent way to handle with the conflict talk. Besides, women use more offensive strategies than men in response to impoliteness, while men are more dependent on defensive strategies to counter with the face attack. Two possible factors that may lead to the gender differences are summarized. On a psychological level, women are more sensitive and emotional, which makes them more likely to choose intensive strategies and become more offensive when met with impoliteness. However, men are more sensible, tolerant and with high self-esteem, which prevents them from being too offensive and allows them to care more about saving their own face. On the social level, a gender equality is being gradually achieved in China, especially in a relationship. Women in a relationship may even have a higher position than men so that most women are entitled with the power to use offensive strategies, while those men who are in a lower positions dare not to offend but to defend.