The Presentation Of Intercultural Conflicts In German Sitcom “Türkisch Für Anf(?)nger” From The Perspectives Of Media Structure And Dialogues

Conflicts result from the negative emotions effected in the communication.As common phenomenon and specific cultural expression,conflict not only burdens social relationships,but also grants accesses for mutual understanding and cultural exchange.In the German multicultural society,contrary believes and norms of different cultures often cause outbreaks of conflicts.Therefore,studies about conflicts ignite tremendous academic interests,but researches about conflict scenes and talks in film and television still remain a minority.This thesis chooses the ARD-sitcom “Türkisch für Anf(?)nger” published in 2006,which features the cultural conflicts and integration dilemmas in Germany.It adopts the methods of film and television analysis to discuss the first season’s screen presentation of intercultural conflicts in this German-Turkish step-family and reveals its expression and emphasis of the conflict theme in the intercultural context.The culture theory of Hofstede and definition of intercultural communication proposed by Lüsebrink serve as the theoretical basis for collection and empirical analysis of the play’s intercultural conflict from narrative,visual and acoustic perspectives in media structure.Moreover,because of the importance of dialogs in television and conflict interaction,on the basis of Messmer’s conflict episode theory and Culpeper’s impoliteness model,this research takes one more step on quantitative and qualitative traits of conflict talks in the “Türkisch für Anf(?)nger”,in order to figure out the discussed concepts,language strategies and their functions for the expression of conflicts in the intercultural context of this TV-serial.Referring to Lüsebrink’s intercultural communication,this study gathers pertinent elements from the three media aspects,such as dramaturgy,montage,product design and music.It discusses their contribution to the frame construction of conflict theme,disclosing its traits of narrative,visual and acoustic aspects.The study then makes extra efforts to focus on the conflict dialogues,one unique part of acoustic aspect,which depend on specific contexts.After analyzing 45 intercultural conflict dialogues,the quantitative study finds out the frequency of individual participants,conflict concepts and impolite strategies.For the most frequent concepts “religion”,“gender” and “habits and stereotypes”,a detailed conversation analysis would be unfolded in another chapter,to explain the causes of conflicts and dialogue’ s contributions for the concrete expression of the theme.Results of empirical analysis show that “Türkisch für Anf(?)nger” implicates its conflict theme through multiple elements in narrative,visual and acoustic levels at first.The play takes the German-Turkish cultural differences as the main line and tells the common conflict topics of the society in a multi-dimensional way from Lena’s perspective,shortening the distance to the audience.Through a large number of objects and audio materials complemented with opposite-style images and tight shot in conflict scenes,the play’s intercultural background can be subconsciously conveyed to audience and help their perception of the dominant intercultural conflicts.Furthermore,in the conversational analysis of conflict dialogues,we can find that German-Turkish conflict is presented most clearly by dialogues.They not only disclose the causes of conflicts,such as value system and rituals,but also intensify the conflict concepts and character building.With satirical humour of sarcasm and irony in language strategies,not only do the conflict dialogues become more acute and sensitive,but these hilarious talks also stimulate audience to consider concrete problems and correct themselves in laughter.In general,this thesis unravels the construction of the conflict as the main theme of this classic TV-serial from multiple perspectives and underlines its implication of the social reality.It not only enables us to comprehend the gist,understand and accept intercultural communication and conflicts,but also encourages us to build intercultural communication competence,therefore promoting the mutual understanding of different cultures.