Basic Pattern Of Multiparty Cyber Conflict Talk

The rise of research on “impoliteness” has drawn linguists' eye to the frequent communicative conflicts,thus raising plentiful research achievements of institutional conflict talk and daily conflict talk,which,however,seldomly relate to cyber conflict talk while network discourse is an important or even central mode of discourse in the internet age.Through analysing Baidu top-post discussions,the present study aims to explore the basic pattern of cyber conflict and its characteristics by addressing the following questions:1)What is the basic sequential organisation of multiparty cyber conflict talk?2)What are the major disagreement strategies used by netizens to oppose each other?3)How do the online-conversational features function in the unfolding of cyber conflict talk?4)Is there causality between the expressions of disagreement presentation and disagreement response,or between the expressions and types of discussed topics?The data derive from the discussion boards of twelve representative and controversial Baidu top-post events.317 multiparty cyber conflict talks are found,among which 305 of them with 1,308 disagreement turns are valid.By combining Muntigl & Turnbull's(1998)Three-turn Arguing Exchange with Rees-Miller's(2000)Trichotomy of Disagreement Type,with the aid of Ant-series corpus tools,I explain the sequence of multiparty cyber conflict talk,conclude the utilised disagreement strategies,as well as classify the strategies according to their impolite extent.It is found that:1)Multiparty cyber conflict talk has a feature of Tri-move Sequential Organisation: “Speaker A(one person)in Move 1 makes a claim that is disputed by Speaker B(s)(one or more persons)in Move 2,following which Speaker C(s)in Move 3 disagree(s)with B's claim by directly contesting B or supporting A”.2)Netizens usually adopt five strategies to express opposition,namely,Personal Abuse(PA),Contradiction(CTD),Irrelevancy Claim(IC),Challenge(CHL)and Counter-claim(CC)(sometimes there appear combinations of two or more strategies).Relying on impolite degree,PA and CTD belong to aggravated disagreements,IC and CHL disagreements neither softened nor strengthened,and CC being a kind of softened disagreement.Netizens are prone to utter aggravated and softened disagreements.3)In online public discussion,interactants can self-select to be the speaker without the restraint of spatio-temporal conditions and turn-taking system.With the properties of anonymity,immediacy,multiparty-alliance and so on,the sequence analysis of cyber conflict talk should adjust to the new regulations of online conversation.4)There is a causal correlation between disagreement presentation and disagreement response.An aggravated presentation is apt to result in a strengthened response,but it does not mean that a softened disagreement necessarily produces a mitigated response.As to the expression of disagreement,it is basically unaffected by the type of discussed topic.Through the case study of Baidu top-post conflict talks,this study describes the basic pattern of multiparty cyber conflict talk.The research results hopefully make contribution to the application and development of Impoliteness Theory of Pragmatics and Sequence Theory of Conversational Analysis.Furthermore,although the findings concentrate on cyber conflict,they,to a great extent,are of some significance to the disagreement(research)in other communication models in the real world.