Conflict Talks Among Family Members In Parenthood From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As a universal phenomenon,conflict talk has permeated every corner of life.Conflict talk is inevitable in verbal communication because completely different beliefs,values,goals or personalities held between interlocutors.Generally speaking,conflict talk has both constructive influences and destructive consequences.If handled properly in the family,conflict talk will be conductive to our personal relationship.On the contrary,if not recognized or handled properly,it may cause destructive consequences,which is harmful to the harmony among family members.So far,there has already been much research conducted on conflict talk.However,studies of the linguistic devices of conflict talk are not systematic.There are also few studies on the the functions of the specific linguistic expressions.In addition,the causes of conflict talk and the strategies to handle the conflict talk have not been studied adequately.Therefore,the thesis chooses Linguistic Adaptation Theory as a theoretical framework and conflict talks among family members in American TV drama Parenthood season one to three as the data.Qualitative analysis is adopted to discuss conflict talk from four aspects: the linguistic devices,functions of specific expressions,causes of conflict talks and strategies to handle the conflict talks.Through the study,some conclusions can be drawn: in Parenthood,conflict talks among family members occur frequently.They mainly adopt eight linguistic devices,including rhetorical question,derogatory adjective,negator,repetition and parallelism,imperative sentence,swear word,metaphor and address form.In terms of reasons,this is because family members fail to adapt to each other’s physical world,social world and mental world.Therefore,some strategies to handle conflict talks among family members are introduced,including submission,focus-shifting,third-party intervention,withdrawal and compromise.In short,by studying conflict talk among family members with the help of Linguistic Adaptation Theory,the present study can strengthen the explanatory power of this theory,it also can help people recognize and properly deal with this phenomenon as well as construct a harmonious family.