A Study Of Conflict Speech Acts From The Perspective Of Force Dynamic Theory

Conflict speech acts as a linguistic phenomenon directly affect the harmony of interpersonal relationships.Current research on conflict speech acts is mainly from the perspectives of conversation analysis,pragmatics,sociolinguistics,folklore,cross-cultural communication and cognitive linguistics,exploring the structural forms,causes,influencing factors,pragmatic functions and mitigation strategies.Scholars argue that conflict speech acts occur due to following reasons: face threatened lacks of speech relevance,the inadaptability to the physical,social,and psychological worlds.They have proposed strategies such as avoidance,compromise,topic shift,and third-party intervention.With the emergence of cognitive linguistics and the transition of preoccupations to cognition,more and more scholars have noticed the relevance among cognition,illocutionary force and perlocutionary act.The essence of conflict speech acts is the game of illocutionary force between two communicative parties.Obviously,it’s a relatively new research perspective to discuss conflict speech acts under the theoretical framework of force dynamics proposed by Talmy.Based on this theory,this paper studies conflict speech acts.Force dynamic theory was first proposed by Leonard Talmy（2000）,it refers to the interaction of forces between physical entities,including the exertion,resistance,and obstruction of force as well as the removal of obstruction,Talmy extended it to psychological and social domains.The illocutionary force of conflict speech acts is an extension of the physical domain “force” in the human concept,where the communicative parties are Antagonist and Agonist in the force dynamics,conflict is the result of illocutionary force interaction.In order to fully explore following three issues:the causes of conflict speech acts,the influence of illocutionary force of conflict speech acts on perlocutionary act and pragmatic strategies for resolving conflict speech acts,an illocutionary force-dynamic model（IFD Model）should be constructed in the study of conflict speech acts.Duan Yun（2011）and Liu Runqing（2019）have already constructed an illocutionary force-dynamic model,but we find that this model ignores emotional dimension of communicators,which is a facet of the production of conflict speech acts.This paper complements and improves the above analytical model,applies the new model to the present study and verifies the effectiveness of pragmatic strategies.The study finds that: 1.The production of conflict speech acts is driven by social and psychological forces.（1）The social force endows the speaker with different illocutionary force,such as illocutionary force of the high power is stronger and damage the face or interests of lower power.（2）Psychological force is reflected in the speaker’s illocutionary force causing negative psychology of the hearer,such as jealousy,anxiety and inferior,which lead to conflicts between the two parties.2.Influence of the illocutionary force on perlocutionary act of conflict speech acts involves the direction and magnitude of the force.When illocutionary force of the Agonist and the Antagonist are in the same trend,the conflict intensifies.When the force tendency of the Agonist and the Antagonist are opposite,if the illocutionary force of Agonist is stronger than that of Antagonist,the conflict is solved;if the illocutionary force of Agonist equals to that of Antagonist,the conflict keeps confrontation;if the illocutionary force of Agonist is weaker than that of Antagonist,then the roles of both sides in the conflict is reversed,the final result depends on the strength of the utterance of both sides in the next round or even the last argument.3.The pragmatic strategies for alleviating conflict speech acts should be adjusting the direction of illocutionary force,the magnitude of illocutionary force and the origin of illocutionary force.（1）Using pragmatic empathy words such as “we” or “buddy”,lowering down the high-power status,or using hedges such as “maybe”.（2）Using humorous language,increasing the sincerity of speech（3）Paying attention to listener’s inner needs and psychological endurance.This paper explores conflict speech acts under force dynamics,broadens the perspective of the study of conflict speech acts,points out the causes of conflict speech acts and their mitigation strategies,and provides a certain reference value for research in this field.In addition,the illocutionary force dynamic model of Duan Yun and Liu Runqing is modified for further study and application by scholars.